Job opportunities: AWG's Geologist in the Park program

The Association for Women Geoscientists has just announced their Geologist-in-the-Park positions for 2009. These are temporary positions, usually for the summer, for women geoscientists to work with the staff of specific national parks, sharing their expertise. In the past, the positions have been aimed at professionals or graduate students, but all the announcements this year invited advanced undergraduates to apply.

The specifc positions for 2009 are:

NPS Headquarters and Unspecified Parks of applicant’s choice
Storm Hazard Analyst

The GIP will assist with a project assessing the storm vulnerability of natural and cultural resources in coastal national park units and contribute to ongoing research or develop a unique project within the larger on-going NPS study. A thorough understanding of how past storm events have impacted coastal parks is critical to improved management of these resources, particularly within the context of rising sea level, a cycle of increasing storm frequency and continued coastal development. The participant is encouraged to submit brief outlines (less than one page) for potential projects in specific coastal parks. This project is an excellent opportunity to fund storm hazard research that would benefit both the participant and National Park Service. The work location is flexible. The participant may work either in the NPS Lakewood CO office, independently from her home, or in a park. More information about park units can be found at http://www.nps.gov/

Applicants should be advanced undergraduate or graduate students whose educational background and career objectives are in coastal environments. Applicants must have completed basic undergraduate course work toward a degree in geology, biology, environmental science, engineering or a related field. Students who are beginning graduate or undergraduate thesis projects, are especially encouraged to apply. Professional level applicants are also welcome to apply. Experience with ARCGIS 9.x is preferred.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
Geologist

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a World Heritage Site and includes part of one of the best preserved Permian-aged reef complexes in the world. The rock has preserved an ancient sponge-algal reef and the environments associated with the reef. The park also contains Carlsbad Caverns, one of most spectacular caves in the world.

The GIP will conduct field mapping onto aerial photographs and topographic maps at a scale of 1:24,000. This includes measuring stratigraphic sections, bedding attitudes, fault orientations, and other measurements. The participant will use a GPS to identify the locations of measured sections, geologic contacts, fault locations, and other field measurements. The participant will also use GPS to georeference measured sections and field study sites from previous published studies. The work will involve hiking over rugged desert terrain in a variety of conditions that may include a wide temperature range (40-100 degrees, depending on time of year), high winds, and inclement weather. Elevations may range from 3,000 to 5,000 feet.

Applicants should be advanced undergraduate or graduate students whose educational background and career objectives are in geology. Applicants must have completed basic undergraduate course work toward a degree in geology, and must have some experience with basic geologic field mapping techniques. Applicants must be able to read topographic maps and be able to navigate unmarked terrain using a compass, maps, and aerial photographs. Students who plan to pursue geology as a career, or those with a strong interest in field geology or carbonate geology, are encouraged to apply. Professional level applicants are also welcome to apply. The applicant should be able to work well independently and be comfortable working solo in rugged, sometimes remote terrain (a field radio will be supplied and must be carried by all personnel working in the backcountry).

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado
Paleontologist
May 26 to August 14, 2009

The Florissant Formation preserves an abundant flora and fauna of fossil plants and insects that were deposited in late Eocene (34 million-year-old) lake shales. The participant will assist with ongoing projects relating to the paleontologic resources of the monument. Primary responsibilities will be on a new excavation project to collect fossil plants and insects from the late Eocene Florissant Formation, and on the monument's ongoing project to inventory and monitor fossil sites. Other duties may include some of the following: preparation and curation of fossil specimens, inventory of collections, updating database from field observations, compilation of a manual to document fossil sites, and assisting visiting researchers. The participant may have an option to use up to 50% of the time for research if they have a research plan defined and approved beforehand, and especially if they can develop it into a graduate thesis project. Work time will be split between office, lab, and field, according to project needs.

Applicants should be advanced undergraduate or graduate students whose educational background and career objectives are in paleontology. Applicants must have completed basic undergraduate course work toward a degree in geology or biology, with an emphasis in paleontology. Students who plan to pursue paleontology as a career, or those who are beginning graduate or undergraduate thesis projects, are especially encouraged to apply. Professional level applicants are also welcome to apply. Experience with Access database is preferred. The applicant should be able to work well independently.

The deadline is usually April 1, but this year the deadline will be flexible, and the first well-qualified applicant is likely to be hired for each position. If you're interested, contact the park in question as soon as possible for more information.

The Lab Lemming has a job (and good advice)!

Fingers crossed here, but it looks like the Lab Lemming has a job. And he's also got some advice worth remembering:

My best leads and tentative offers came from non-geologists with whom I had interacted professionally- representatives of instrument manufacturers, contractors, government agency personnel, and even academics.

The lesson here, far as I can tell, is to be nice, professional, and competent no matter whom you’re dealing with. ‘cause you never know which of those people will be the one who is hiring when it all comes crashing down again.

In a rough economy, it's worth remembering that.

Opportunities for grad students interested in working in national parks

From a friend who now works for the National Park Service: Park Break.

If you're a grad student interested in a career working in a national park, you can spend spring break learning about national park management and research careers. Park Break is designed to give graduate students experience that could lead to work in a national park. And for geoscience students, it could lead to a summer internship through the GeoCorps program.

Applications for Park Break are due by December 31, and applications for the GeoCorps program are due by January 31.

Demography, geoscience jobs, and crystal-ball gazing

When I got the latest Geoscience Currents from AGI, I immediately printed it out and hung it on the wall in the geology majors' study room.

Here's why:



AGI collected information from a variety of groups that keep track of various employed geoscientists and graphed their membership by age. (They don't have information from any mining industry groups; SEG in this case is the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, not the Society of Economic Geologists.) Hydrologists are the only group that has significant numbers of 40-something geoscientists; my generation was not hired to work for the oil & gas industry.

I hung up the page because of this line from it: The majority of geoscientists in the workforce are within 15 years of retirement age. But after I hung it up, I wondered about the assumptions being made about future employment opportunities.

When I was a senior in college, I had The Conversation with my academic advisor: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" He suggested that I go to graduate school. His generation had been hired to educate the Baby Boomers, he said, and his generation was going to retire soon. There would be lots of academic jobs to replace people like him. If I went to grad school then, in 1989, I would get done just in time.

I did go straight to grad school, though I would have taken a job if I had found one. But when I graduated, jobs were hard to come by. I know a lot of talented geology grad students who left the field after their post-docs went nowhere. My advisor's generation did retire, yes, but there were many more grad students than there were retirements. And there weren't many jobs in industry, and the USGS wasn't hiring, and academic departments were being closed.

The situation for industry jobs now may be different. There are far fewer undergrad geology majors than there were in the early 1980's. The supply of young geologists may very well be lower than the demand.

But it's a matter of supply and demand, not of needing to replace the exact number of geologists who are about to retire. How many geologists will the oil & gas industry need for the next thirty years? What if oil production has peaked? What if concerns about global climate change combined with high oil prices drives a shift to different energy sources? How many geologists will oil & gas need during busts? How many will the mining industry need? (And what will they be mining?) My Magic Garnet Ball isn't clear enough to tell. (Stupid inclusions.)

I know that "the market" is taking a beating right now, but I still look to it for signals that industry really needs geologists. Are people being hired with bachelor's degrees? What are they making for salaries? Are companies offering to pay students to go to grad school, or do they expect students to prepare themselves for a job that may or may not be there in two or three years? Are PhDs with some industry experience getting new jobs when they are laid off (and how long does it take to find a new job)?

I've adjusted the things I cover in structural geology to try to fit the needs of students who might work in groundwater, in oil, or in mining. I want my students to be ready to take jobs if they are available. But I wonder whether we are being honest about the future. I can't predict the stock market... and geology jobs are as much at the mercy of economics as other jobs are.

Edit: Andrew at about.com discussed a related article in GSA Today here. (The GSA Today article discusses the age distribution of GSA member, and has as a take-home message that my generation of geologists needs to take over leadership roles in geoscience organizations. The Structure/Tectonics Division of GSA has had multiple volunteers for leadership positions from my generation in the past two years, at least. My generation of academics is barely post-tenure, though, despite being old-school already. We're not used to people taking us seriously.)

Blogging GSA: the future of jobs in geology

I'm heading for Houston and the Geological Society of America meeting tomorrow. I'm going to miss the Sunday sessions, but people following discussions of the employability (or not) of geology graduates may be interested in the abstracts from this session: Perspectives on an Emerging Workforce Crisis in Geology: Assessing a Looming Irony.

As someone who has lived her entire life in the Ivory Tower (or the Sandstone Fortress, in my current job), but who advises students headed for the Real World, I'm particularly interested in the perspectives of people in the industries that employ geologists. (Links take you to the individual conference abstracts.)

Oil and gas (Exxon-Mobil, BP)
Mining
Consulting engineering
Environmental Geology

(I'll be at the meeting from Sunday evening until Thursday morning. My talk is the last one in a session on Thursday... but at least it's possible to get back to Durango in time to teach on Friday, even when I have to leave in the afternoon.)

Edit: Some quick comments from an academic perspective, on ways that industry can ensure a supply of well-prepared employees. (I will add to this as I have time.
The kindergartener is climbing on me.)

Job fairs and other college recruiting: Colleges usually have some office that helps students find jobs, craft resumes, and so forth. Ours puts on job fairs every so often (like next Wednesday). I rarely, if ever, see geoscience employers listed with the recruiters. (Even now.) And students who have not chosen a major may hear about the opportunities at job fairs. In addition, the college career services offices may have things like electronic job listings, electronic resume services, and so forth, and may make those services available to alums - those things can make the job search process more efficient.

Question from a reader: Americans abroad?

I have another question from a reader, from the comments on another post:

Along the lines of advice...do you have any for a recent graduate looking for graduate schools and only finding schools in countries other than the U.S? I am interested in structural geology and tectonics and have a particular interest in the effect of past glaciers on pre-existing faults; more specifically how isostatic adjustment affects rates of faulting. I have found several researchers in Canada and was wondering if you knew anything in particular about Canadian graduate schools and/or funding?

One of my senior thesis students this year is going to grad school in Canada next year, for similar reasons: the best program for her interests was in Canada. I don't know the specifics of her funding, although I know she does have support lined up.

The nature of graduate programs varies between countries, but I've gotten the impression that the Canadian system is similar to universities in the US.

If you've got very specific research interests and have questions about any grad school (in the US or outside the US), I would suggest contacting the person with whom you want to work, and asking him or her*. They might not know (especially details about foreign student visas), but they might be able to direct you to someone who can answer the question. You also might find information on the university's web site. (For instance, I found this information by googling "university british columbia foreign student.)

*It's worth considering Female Science Professor's comments about e-mails from prospective grad students. If you've thought about your research interests, talk about them.

Any comments from readers? Advantages/disadvantages to doing a PhD in another country?

Question from a reader: preparing for jobs in hydrology

I've got a question from a reader, and I'm probably not the best person to answer it. She's a sophomore geology/environmental science major, and she's looking for advice about how to prepare for a career in hydrology/environmental geology.

What will exist in three years? Where are we going? How do I ensure I will be marketable as a woman in the geology field? What things should I be involved in now that will help me then?

I don't have a crystal ball (and my Gore Mountain garnet, although big enough, is blurry and hopelessly stuck in the Precambrian). And worse, I've never worked outside academia. I get some ideas about what it takes to get a job by talking to recent alums, and to people who might hire my students, and to people on the internet, and by reading the American Geological Institute's workforce data snapshots. But that's not the same as having been there myself.

So, with those caveats, let me gaze into the Magic Garnet Crystal and see what it says.

What will exist in three years?

I get the sense that hydrology jobs have remained fairly steady, compared to petroleum and* mining (which have boomed). Hydrology seems to be driven by government regulation - local, state, and federal agencies hire hydrologists for monitoring or research or to collect data that will make it possible to tell what's changed, and private environmental companies exist to help other companies comply with regulations. So I think the future of hydrology depends on who wins the next election (at all levels of government). But hydrology doesn't seem to boom or bust the way the resource industries do.

Also, hydrology/environmental geology has hired geologists in the last twenty years. Petroleum and mining companies are currently trying to hire young geologists to replace the ones who are about to retire. My generation (who got work as hydrologists) isn't retiring yet, so hydro probably won't experience the same squeeze.

So my guess is that there will be jobs, but it will take some work and searching to find them. (I don't have a good idea of exactly what those jobs are likely to involve. Anyone reading want to answer?)

What things should I be involved in now that will help me then?

Employers often contact people that they know (college professors, students who have worked for them in the past) when they've got a job opening. My department gets a lot of e-mails asking whether we've got any good students who could work during a summer, or who are ready to take a full-time job. We've started forwarding the messages to all of our students, but if a professor can think of someone immediately, that person has an advantage in applying for the job. So you want your professors to know what you're interested in, and to think of you when those questions come up. (That's potentially a women-in-science problem, if the professor remembers the male students first.) Doing a good undergraduate research project on something related to hydrology might help you stand out.

Internships can be good opportunities to explore career options. Working for a government agency (like the USGS) during college can make it easier to move into a permanent position after graduation. And internships in the private sector can help you build a resume and might lead to a full-time job, as well. (Finding interships can be difficult. Talk to your professors, and check out your college's career center. They might have good leads.)

Networking in general helps, too. The Association for Women Geoscientists can be a good group for networking - the chapters have activities in various parts of the country, and the newsletter discusses career issues a lot. (Also, environmental geologists seem to be very well-represented in AWG.) There are mentoring sessions for students at regional and national Geological Society of America meetings. Some regions of the country have regional hydrology societies, which could also be good resources.

It may also be good to prepare to become a certified professional geologist. You can also become a student member of AIPG (the American Institute of Professional Geologists). (And even if you don't, there is career information on the student section of their website.)

How do I ensure I will be marketable as a women in the geology field?

You know, I don't think women have a lot of individual control over the sexism we experience. So... be good at what you do, be assertive, network, write and revise your resume, etc., etc., etc. It's not very different from advice I give to male students. But beyond that, if you don't succeed right away, if you get asked annoying questions about your personal life, if you get harassed... don't blame yourself. And keep trying. The biggest piece of advice I could give to a woman in science is: cultivate resilience in yourself.

The second biggest piece of advice would be to find friends (or family, or a partner) who will support you in what you want to do.

That's the advice of the Magic Garnet Crystal. It's full of inclusions, though, so it's not the most trustworthy oracle around. Hopefully some other readers will comment.

* See the comment by BrianR below. Brian works in the petroleum industry, and has seen hiring slow down this year.

Job opportunity: intro geology in Durango (adjunct)

Our longterm adjunct just got an offer he couldn't refuse to return to mining geology, so we're looking for someone to teach at Fort Lewis this academic year (fall and spring). He's currently scheduled to teach Earth Systems Science, Physical Geology, and an upper lever interdisciplinary general education course called Resources and the Environment during fall semester. (There's some flexibility in the courses - our Mineralogy prof is on sabbatical in the fall, so if you love to teach Mineralogy or into natural disasters for non-majors, mention it.) Our current adjunct has an M.S., so I think we would consider hiring people with M.S. degrees or higher. It will involve a lot of teaching, but could be a good job for a recent PhD who needs teaching experience, a recent M.S. who wants to check out academia, or anyone whose life goal is to live in Durango. (Ski! Snowboard! Kayak! Mountain bike! Rock climb! Soak in hot springs! Live surrounded by geology that looks like this and includes sedimentary rocks of all ages except Ordovician, old granites and gneisses, young volcanics, deformed metaconglomerates, gold, natural gas, coal, braided and meandering streams, several different types of mass movements, a couple glacial moraines... and that's only the stuff that we regularly use in teaching.)

If you're interested, send me an e-mail (shearsensibility AT gmail DOT com, or google my name and find my work e-mail), and I'll put you in touch with the department chair. (Adjunct hires generally don't involve formal job searches and ads, so we are searching our informal networks. And my informal network includes this blog.)

Advice for students looking for a terminal M.S.?

I teach undergrads. I advise undergrad research theses and then... that's it. But a lot of my current students go on to Masters programs, and eventually work in industry or in government. I'm not sure I'm a good adviser for them, though - I went straight to a PhD, with nothing but a summer internship at the USGS for practical experience in the field. So I although I've got ideas about what students should look for in a PhD program, I'm not very confident about helping find a good M.S. program.

My advice about grad school has always been that the research project will be the real focus. Classes won't be as important as for undergrad (and grades won't be the point - learning and using the material will be). The research project builds independence, critical thinking, field and lab and computer skills - it's where you do science.

But is it, for an M.S. student? Every M.S student that I've known does research - but does it foster the independence that takes one from student to professional? Or does M.S. research exist more because academia sees the M.S. as an intermediate step towards a PhD and post-docs and eventual professordom? Or does M.S. research exist because universities expect professors to do research, and students help accomplish it?

(As an aside - sometimes I wonder whether undergraduate research exists for the students, or for the professors, as well. It's hard to judge professors on teaching and mentoring - publications and grants are easier to count.)

Beyond discussion of the research, I tell students to get a feel for the kind of mentor their adviser would be. Some students thrive when given independence; some need direction, and don't mind having the adviser drive the conclusions of the project. And for M.S. programs, especially, I tell students to consider the connections between their program and potential future employers. Some schools have good connections to the USGS or to state surveys; others are well-connected to the environmental industry, or to mining, or to oil & gas. Some have connections in some areas, but not in others.

And I tell students that an M.S. doesn't have to define their life forever - people switch sub-fields (or even entire disciplines) after a Masters degree. (It's more difficult to change directions after a PhD, though it's not impossible, especially to move into the business world.)

Am I giving reasonable advice, or am I missing something critical here?

Using blogs to advertise for jobs?

I've got a question, oh readers. I've been asked to pass word of a job opening on to anyone who may be interested. It's open to people with an MS or a PhD, and it's field-oriented and teaching-oriented without the pressures of a tenure-track academic job. It's the kind of thing that I suspect many exhausted geology post-docs or disillusioned MS students might be looking for (assuming they wanted to live in the Bay Area). So my first inclination was to describe it on the blog, figuring that there may well be people reading who would love the job.

But, on the other hand... there are lots of organizations that fund their publications, in part, with job ads. I'm a member of some of them (AWG, GSA). I think the friend who sent me the ad expected me to pass it on to former thesis students, not to advertise it to the world at large. (I don't think she knows I have a blog.)

So. Are job ads appropriate for a blog? (I would only post ads that I thought were unusual - not typical ads for faculty positions, which are usually in EOS and Geotimes, or for industry positions. But if I saw something interesting and out-of-the-ordinary, I might pass it on.)

Job-hunting suggestions

A couple soon-to-be geology graduates commented on my last post, saying that they hadn't seen any job openings for anyone with less than a year of experience. I'm going to list some things that I would do, if I were looking for a geology job. Warning: I've never had a job outside academia, and we've got alums in the mining and oil & gas industry visiting campus and recruiting - I don't know if any of these types of searches would actually work.

1) Use google to find some companies. I would try search terms like "mudlogging" (which turned up at least one company looking for workers on its first page), or "copper exploration." (Try lots of different metals, too. Look at the financial pages of your local newspaper - what metals are selling at high prices right now? Gold, copper, molybdenum, uranium...?)

2) If you find news about companies, google the company's name and see if they have any ads online. (I know Newmont and Barrick Gold are hiring, and I've heard that there are positions for molybdenum exploration - maybe with Climax? - in Colorado.)

3) Even if they don't have ads, send a resume looking for an entry-level geologist position.

4) Look in phone books for "environmental" or "geology" to find local consulting firms that may be hiring. Towns with significant resource industries (like my across-the-border neighbor: Farmington, New Mexico) are more likely to have jobs - look for places that are geology boomtowns. You won't find jobs everywhere - but you don't find gold or oil everywhere, either.

5) Tailor your resume to the company you are applying to. Don't tell mining companies that you want to work in the petroleum industry, or oil companies that you want to clean up groundwater. If you're open to lots of different industries, have lots of different resumes.

6) Keep trying, if your first few attempts don't land you a job.

7) Be flexible. You might find a job that isn't in your dream town. It might not even be on your dream continent. But if you work there for a little while, you might get valuable experience that will let you get another job, or will ground you in reality as you work through grad school. (Or you might learn that you want to go to law school. And that's a good thing to know.)

Good luck!

(And for the rest of the geology bloggers, especially those of you in industry... what would you do, if you had a B.S. or B.A. in geology, and didn't have industry connections, and wanted a job?)

Teaching for a new geology job market

Geotripper asks whether the sudden boom in geologist hiring is a good thing. We got into geology for the love of it; can one become a geologist just for the money?

I've got a slightly different question (but one that Geotripper alluded to at the end of his post): what would happen to our teaching if students suddenly started flocking to geology majors?

I've never seen boom days for geologists. I graduated from college in 1989. Nobody was recruiting geologists then. I went straight to grad school because I got an NSF fellowship, and it paid. The alternative, as far as I could tell, was flipping burgers. I went to job fairs in grad school, but there weren't many recruiters. My friends who did dissertations on basin analysis or copper porphyry systems had trouble finding jobs; the companies certainly weren't interested in young idealists who specialized in structures in metamorphic rocks. Most of my grad school cohort got jobs in academia or in government, or became computer geeks, or got MBAs, or disappeared from the geology radar.

I've had the fortune to teach in good undergrad departments. (My current department has more undergrad geology majors than any college in Colorado, including 20 graduates this year.) But even here, surrounded by spectacular mountains, our intro courses are mostly filled with students looking for general education science credit. I see 50 to 100 intro students a year; one or two of them go on to be geology majors. We constantly worry about our numbers of students. Will we recruit enough freshmen? Will we attract enough transfer students? How many sophomores are registered for Mineralogy?

If we suddenly had the numbers of students who want to major in something like Accounting, though, I wonder what I would do? I'm used to intro classes full of students whose interest in geology is marginal, at best. My sophomore mapping class, however, is a complete zoo when 30 students register for it. If we were flooded with sophomores, I would need to divide the class into at least two sections, which would make it more difficult to schedule everything (since I also teach Structure and Earth Systems, with labs, that semester). My goal in the mapping class is to make sure the students leave with the skills to do field work in the rest of their classes. Would I be able to give the students the individual, hands-on attention that they need? And if I had 30 students in Structure at the same time, would I be able to function? Would I be tempted to weed? (I probably wouldn't need to; students have to take chemistry, pre-calculus, and Mineralogy before they take Structure.)

Our students are being recruited right now. I know of offers comparable to the ones quoted by NPR and Bloomberg. I'm advising the seniors not to get used to high pay, and to take care of their debts and retirement planning ASAP. I wonder how I would react to freshman who were only in it for the money, though. I'm used to an entirely different market, one in which a geologist has to survive on love of the work. I might still be too much of an idealist for industry.