March 2006 ISSUE

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Michael Moroskat

STUDENT COLUMNS

Off to the Field is an Important Part of Geo Training

BY MICHEAL MOROSKAT
University of Alberta
Student Contributor (Geosciences)

Geoscience is very much a field-based discipline. Though there are always exceptions, the majority of the research done is based on field observations and data collection. This is, especially in Canada, primarily completed in the summer months, generally June through to September.

FIELD OF DREAMS Geoscience students and professionals end up in some of the most interesting places — even the Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. — File Photo

This means that if you search the cities there may not be much evidence of geologists around as they are all out in the field somewhere doing fieldwork, which in fact is where many of the students in geology go for those four short months that break up the school years. Come the fall there is a reintroduction of these wayward field workers back into the cities and universities to lay out all of the data they have collected and figure out what it all means.

Some students have the chance, as part of the work they do in their summer job or as a project with a professor, to go out under their own direction and collect data for their own project. This project is either in the form of a directed study or an undergraduate thesis that has been arranged with a professor in the department the previous spring.

It is a great chance for a student to take control of a small project and learn first-hand what it is like to collect data and then create a final project that will tell the others something new about what they were studying.

As students, it is difficult at first, and maybe even a bit overwhelming, to look at all this data and make any sense of it. Instead it is just a jumble of numbers and photographs that doesn’t say anything specific. But under supervision of their professors they eventually figure what is going on and a thesis is produced that exhibits the work that has been done.

These projects also act as a kind of synthesis of skills and knowledge that has been gained from three or four years of university, a kind of practical use for the education that has been completed.
Here in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta there are 21 students completing undergraduate theses and 18 completing directed studies. The only difference between the two is that an undergraduate thesis is double the credit and therefore a more in-depth study, and the undergraduate thesis is a course requirement to graduate with an honours standing.

These projects stem from and are supported by many different organizations, from the Alberta Geological Survey or Geological Survey of Canada, to oil companies in Calgary, to simply a project funded by the supervising professor. Whichever origin the project has, it serves as a very valuable learning tool to aid the student’s university education, aiding in the ability to work independently and how to start at raw data and create a piece of work that tells a story about the focus of the study.
This is useful in finding a good job after school, or getting a position as a master’s student if an undergraduate degree is not the end of the educational road.