LAMM'S UNVERIFIED PLANETARY SCIENTIST GUIDE: HOW TO BECOME A PLANETARY SCIENTIST AT NON-PLANETARY UNIVERSITIES

Planetary Geology is a niche field that can be hard to get into. So how do undergraduates at universities with zero planetary scientists or classes even get into the field? My planetary path took off early mainly because of luck, but more concrete opportunities do exist.

During my undergrad, I was the only student who was serious about going into planetary science. I felt like I had to work harder than students at planetary schools, since networking was not readily available at my school, nor did I know about planetary opportunities that were available. Since then, I have become the in-house “planetary expert” even though I’m just a graduate student. This has been demonstrated by the numerous times professors told new undergraduates interested in planetary to speak with me.

As someone who is still figuring out my own path into the community, I originally felt like I did not have anything of value to teach undergraduates students. I do not have the same expertise and experiences as students who are in an undergrad planetary science program or someone who has actively worked in the field for decades. As a graduate student, I can only provide some basic knowledge and ideas for stepping stones into the planetary community to these younger students. This is still more than they would otherwise get since the faculty and staff are not in the planetary field, although they will help and offer what expertise they have.

To make things easier on the next generation of students, I have been compiling a document with opportunities in mind that both strengthen a general CV and help students break into the planetary field. The document is on Google Docs so it can be updated, without the link changing. At the moment, it is written with Kansas State University students in mind. In the future I would like to have a more generalized document.

This talk will discuss various techniques, opportunities, tips, unwritten rules, and other lessons learned on my journey to becoming a planetary scientist at a non-planetary school.

Note: This is based on my personal experiences at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, and was written based upon what opportunities and resources I would have liked to have known about when I first started my undergrad journey. My suggestions are not an exhaustive list by any means, because I’m still carving my own path into the field.