So you want to be a mineralogist...

As a new undergraduate geology major, you’re just getting started, and you need more coursework under your belt before you start to better understand your interests and decide on the next steps to your future career. Working toward a traditional geology BS degree is a great way to go. You will learn a lot of different skills that make you employable in many different industries. The geology BS gives you the credentials to do a lot of different jobs after graduation at an introductory level or to prepare you for graduate research. Some careers may take additional training (i.e., graduate school) when you start to specialize.

See the Mineral Careers page from the Mineralogical Society of America

Here’s a list that I put together (with the help of a little Googling):

• Biomineralogy (a whole new field that has opened up)

• Microscopy - asbestos remediation (or other specialization) or asbestos in talc litigation using TEM (transmission electron microscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscope), EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy), PLM (Polarized Light Microscopy), PCM (Phase Contrast Microscopy)

• Manage an electron microprobe or SEM lab

• Federal and State agencies - USGS, California Geological Survey, CalTrans, SLAC, LANL, LBNL, NASA, EPA, OSHA

• Materials Science/metallurgy - engineering applications, materials manufacturing and testing facility

• Gemology*

• X-ray diffraction analysis

• Natural History museum curation or similar

• Community College instructor - this is an especially transportable degree - there are CCs everywhere

• Medical mineralogy

• Forensic geology/mineralogy

• Ceramic manufacturing or concrete production

• Civil and geological engineering

• Rare earth element exploration (used in electric/hybrid car batteries) including carbonatite research 

• Planetary geology

• Remote sensing and satellite imagery

• Planetary geology using remote sensing or rover data

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

• Metallurgy

• Analytical chemistry

• Professional Geologist**

• Thin section and geological sample preparation

I encourage you to explore any of these more online. There may be courses in other University departments like Chemistry, Engineering, Computer Sciences, Geography, or Physics that you can take as elective courses and that can help train you for these careers. Some of these careers might also require a Masters degree to advance fully.

* Additional professional education required – here is an example of one such school at the Gemological Institute of America 

** Exam(s) required in each state in which you want to practice as a PG to qualify. Here is some info on the GIT and PG exams in California.

Potential dangers of working in the field

A couple of recent articles have pointed to potential dangers of sexual harassment or assault during scientific field work. I can't say that I'm surprised at the numbers. When you're working in a strange environment, a foreign country, in close quarters, adverse conditions, etc., the possibility of harassment or assault is increased. I am linking to the articles here to share with you. You have to be smart to protect yourself when you're in the field in many different ways.

Here is the New York Times opinion piece by Hope Jahren (University of Hawaii) about her experience in the field, including a warning to women in the field sciences, and hope that men will learn about this problem too.

This is the PLoS One article by Clancy et al. (2014) that is referenced in the NY Times article.

January 2019 update: The stories of harassment of women in the field continue. Read this compelling story of a Boston University professor and his graduate student in the field in Antarctica in Science.

Managing and spending grant funds

Are you a student wondering why your advisor can or can't spend grant funds on you? Read this post from Prof-like Substance...

Go to grad school with your eyes open!

Stipends in grad school are.... modest (see above) and don't allow the kind of lifestyle that you can maintain with a "real" job. You're still a trainee in grad school, hence all of the comics pertaining to eating ramen noodles and the obsession with free food in PhD Comics, and other blogs about grad school... (and if you didn't think you could live on this kind of stipend [barring personal or family emergencies], why did you sign up for this?)

This past week, the Professor Is In blog began a survey of PhD debt to assess whether reports she'd heard about credit card and loan debt in the 100s of thousands of dollars could be real (i.e., >$260,000 in debt for a philosophy degree). Slate Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Chronicle of Higher Education all have articles about this survey too. You can go to the results of this survey through the above link, but here's a 2012 summary from a similar NSF survey:

Over 60% of the respondents reported zero debt, but nearly a quarter reported debt over $30,000. You can enter numbers for your own grad school experience at the Professor Is In blog. Post-grad school debt is much less of a problem for students in the physical sciences and engineering probably because most of those students are offered both a stipend and full tuition when they're admitted, and because those students spend only ~5 years on average in grad school.

As an undergraduate, I went to a local state university and my parents paid for my tuition. As a graduate student at a big research university, I was single and childless, drove a 15-year-old car, shared an apartment in a less expensive neighborhood that was a bit of a drive from campus, ate a lot of pasta, and didn't eat out much. I had a teaching assistantship for $12,000 (for 9 months) and my tuition was covered by the university. I graduated with $0 debt and had a blast in grad school (and I never took a loan, never had any credit card debt, and never worked another job apart from being a grad student). So zero debt is absolutely possible.... you just have to live like a student.

I really don't understand students that complain about being broke yet buy lunch out daily, drink Perrier instead of drinking out of the free water cooler that the department keeps, buy organic berries from Whole Foods (aka "whole paycheck"), get regular facials, or drive a new car. These examples are based on real people and they are what I consider pretty outrageous choices for someone in school.  If you're in grad school in the physical sciences and you're accumulating serious debt, you're making some seriously poor lifestyle choices, or you made some bad decisions en route to grad school (perhaps a you got a philosophy/religion/english degree at an expensive, small liberal arts college back east and piled up debt?). As a grad student, you're still a trainee (you don't have a degree yet!) and can't expect the same standard of living that your roommate(s) who got a job at Google straight out of college might have. But consider, your roommates may make a whole lot more than a typical grad student, but they have regular work hours, might have a dress code, get only two weeks of vacation per year (and can't leave for an awesome backpacking trip to Chile for 3 weeks at the drop of a hat [without getting fired]), and have to regularly meet deadlines (with complete, quality work...gasp!).

If you're thinking about grad school, go read the "Why did you take out the loans" comments in the PhD debt survey, think about what living like a grad student means, and consider if grad school is right for you before diving in...

(Lack of) Recognition for women in science

In looking for information about the 2013 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco that my students and I attend each year, I ran across this photo of the 2012 Honors Ceremony to recognize scientists that have made significant contributions to the earth sciences:

I count about 23 medals hanging around necks in the first two rows of seats, and there is exactly one woman. (Did the photographer put her in the front row to make sure we see her?) I think this is appalling.

The reasons for such a small percentage of women being recognized for their contributions to earth science probably reflect in part why the numbers of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines steadily decreases from the students graduate from university through the rank of full professor and beyond:

I don't want to re-hash the various arguments about why women don't stay in STEM fields in academia - they range from "old boys club" sexism in hiring and a hostile work environment to wanting to have kids while trying to earn tenure to wanting higher salaries for less work required outside academia to a lack of support from their spouses at home to dual career couples who can't make it work - but rather to point out that whatever the reason(s), women remain underrepresented in STEM fields and that needs to be corrected.

What can you do with a degree in Geology?

In 2012, Forbes magazine listed Geology as the 7th most valuable college major with a starting median salary of $45,300, and a mid-career median salary of $83,300. Many positions have much higher starting salaries depending on the field, for example, mining and petroleum industry positions: petroleum engineers have median earnings of $120,000. A recent study from Georgetown University noted that there is virtually no unemployment in the field of geological and geophysical engineering. Most geologists are employed in the western U.S., and in the south-central U.S. (Texas and Oklahoma) where jobs in the petroleum industry dominate. A recent American Geosciences Institute workforce evaluation estimates that by 2021, some 150,000 to 220,000 geoscience jobs will need to be filled. The AGI report notes that at current graduation rates, most of these jobs will not be able to be filled by U.S. citizens.



Graduates in geology may pursue a wide range of careers in the earth sciences and related fields:

• Environmental and Geotechnical consulting firms
• Energy companies such as petroleum exploration firms
• Mining companies
• Government agencies such as the U.S. Geologic Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management
• State/local agencies such as the California Geological Survey, Caltrans, Water-Quality Control Board, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, city planning offices, state and federal highway departments
• Non-profit groups that work to study and protect environmental quality
• Engineering geology to oversee the planning and construction of buildings, bridges, roads, dams, landfills, and tunnels
• Informal educational institutions such as museums
• Technician for science departments in universities or other institutions
• Teaching at high school, community college, university levels (university teaching and research require a graduate degree)
• Science writing
• Environmental law
• Publishers and producers of science books, magazines, computer software, web material, television shows
• Asbestos consulting and testing labs
• Professional Geologist, Certified Hydrogeologist, and/or Certified Engineering Geologis

The GRE (with a 2020 update)

GRE scores are required with most applications to graduate school. You must (MUST!) study for the GRE because you can improve your quantitative score dramatically even if your math skills are good (even very good), and the quantitative scores are what science faculty look at first. And despite the GRE's shortcomings, the majority of faculty looking at graduate applications give the scores A LOT of weight. The verbal scores are frankly less important (to me and some other faculty, even at large research universities) because it better reflects an applicant's economic background (and, of course, whether an applicant is a native English speaker), and tells us nothing about your ability to write. If I want to know if an applicant can write (and if they're savvy), I look to their e-mails to me and to their statement of purpose.

October 2020 update: There is no statistical correlation between GRE scores and success in graduate school. According to this article in The Atlantic, student performance on the GRE correlates more closely to a combination of factors that includes access to expensive test prep courses and other educational opportunities that prepare students for the test, and even the "student’s own insecurities regarding race and gender." A UCSF study showed that success in graduate school is better predicted by letters of recommendation from faculty advisors who know the student well, and the amount of research experience the applicant already has under their belt.

The Earth & Climate Sciences Department at SF State has joined the growing ranks of geology/Earth science departments that have ended the practice of requiring GRE scores be submitted with grad school applications. Many universities have ended this requirement; some make reporting your GRE scores optional which makes the choice of whether or not to report your scores a new kind of problem (I advise against it unless your scores are top tier). It is not yet universal, but the number of programs adopting this new policy is growing particularly following the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, letters of recommendation aren't a perfect means of evaluation. A 2016 study in Nature Geoscience showed that women are "significantly less likely to receive excellent recommendation letters than their male counterparts" and the length of letters written for women are much shorter.

There is no easy fix here. Faculty in the Earth & Climate Sciences Department at SF State have started to use evaluation rubrics for hiring new faculty to avoid implicit bias. I think it's time to start using a similar rubric to evaluate graduate program applicants... and without a column for GRE scores!