January 2007 ISSUE
STUDENT COLUMN
Times Good for Geoscience Students,
U of A Enrolment
Swells
BY PEGGY ELSEN
University of Alberta Student Columnist (Geosciences)
Everywhere I look, I see and hear about our economic growth in Alberta. Real estate is through the roof, and there is a workforce shortage of in many sectors.
This makes it a great time to be a geologist, be it a hardrock, softrock or an environmental geologist; we are all sought out by the industry.
Let’s take a look at just how good it is to be a geologist now compared with 1998. The starting salary for a graduating A-level geologist in 2006 is a mean of $50,131, where in 1998 it was $40,000. This is a considerable increase in a short time. These numbers were taken from the 1998 and 2006 APEGGA salary surveys.
We now have the benefit to look for the job that suits us within the company of our choice. We can turn down jobs and await better ones.
A few years ago, as our professors so kindly remind us, there were a very limited number of jobs and geologists were basically volunteering to get into the industry. As expected, the increasing number of jobs for geologists is no secret, and we have therefore had an increase in the number of students enrolled in the program. The current second year has around 75 students enrolled, compared with the current third year that only has around 45 students.
Party Time
We had our Christmas party, which as always was a big success. We had a great
attendance of 125 professors, and graduate and undergraduate students. The food
was good, the slide show enjoyable and everybody was dressed in their finest.
We had the pleasure of having Dr. John Waldron and his family, the Knotwork, play for us, as well as Nathan Steeves and his friend Matt Letourneau.
Two APEGGA student members, Jennifer Chomyk and Jordana Yuen-Jung, with the help of many undergraduate students, organized two grad fundraising barbecues. The cold weather, combined with good hamburgers, hot dogs and pop, did not keep the students away, on Nov. 20 and 22, and we managed to raise $650 in profit.
Geo Trip
We kick off the New Year with a trip Winnipeg for the Western Inter-University
Geoscience conference. It is a conference where undergraduates, graduate students
and industry get to present their research and learn about local geology.
This year, local geology trip destinations are the Rice Lake Gold Mine Underground in Bissett and the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden.