CONNECTING WITH THE NEXT GENERATION OF GEOLOGISTS THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND HANDS-ON FIELD EXPERIENCE

The Geoscience discipline has seen a recent and rapid decline in professional preparation. This decline may be countered by increased undergraduate participation in professional societies that offer a bridge between the academic and professional worlds. This is particularly important in the Geosciences where lack of career awareness has traditionally resulted in low major enrollments, along with the barriers that typically exist between legacy professionals and the next generation of scientists. Over the past decade, the Pittsburgh Geological Society (PGS) has developed a mentoring and professional workshop offered annually to undergraduate students from a broad geographic region, as a means of intersecting undergraduate students with working professionals in western Pennsylvania. The workshop involves a Friday-evening introduction where students complete a mock environmental assessment and sampling proposal based on a real, local case study, and Saturday where students observe the process of environmental drilling and participate in related field-data collection. This provides students a rare opportunity to observe the process of monitoring-well installation and develop hands-on skills related to split-spoon sampling, core logging, and hydrological and geochemical analyses of groundwater. Students have access to data from the well-field that has hosted the workshop, now with multiple wells at a range of depths across a four-acre plot. This ongoing, hands-on experience helps define the expectations in the environmental field and helps students formulate future career plans and build experience-driven resumes. The workshop also encourages soft skills for students, interacting in a semi-formal, business-like atmosphere where they are encouraged to engage professionals and ask questions. These skills are especially necessary, but uncommonly addressed in the academic realm. In post-workshop surveys, most students expressed excitement about their chosen field, though few indicated they might prefer another route within, or even without, the Geosciences. In addition to the Drilling Workshop, PGS offers scholarships, an annual student research presentation event, and multiple student-friendly professional meetings to develop their networking skills.