BY DALE R. NISBET
APEGGA Student Columnist
University of Alberta Geosciences

February 2010

The year 2010 has already proven eventful for members of the P.S. Warren Society at the University of Alberta. After being back in class for only a few days, a group of undergrads and grad students made its way to the annual Western Inter-University Geoscience Conference in Saskatoon.

APEGGA student member Laurence Jayawardane, past P.S. Warren president, was a member of the conference contingent. He described the event as “four busy days.”

Attendees had student and guest speaker talks to choose from, as well as field trips, and plenty of opportunity to meet fellow geoscience students from universities across Western Canada.

A group of U of A undergraduates presented a poster on a summer field school they attended through the University of Munich. The poster detailed the trip through the Swiss, Austrian and Italian Alps.

The conference ended with a semi-formal banquet – and a victory celebration for the University of Alberta. One of our PhD students, Greg Baniak, received an award for the best talk in petroleum sedimentology. The award is from the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists.

GeoSkills Conference
Impresses Students

LOOKING GOOD ON THE NIGHT Student members all dressed up and somewhere to go, from left, Brad Benoit, Meghan Black, Katie Murphy, Laura Brin, Laurence Jayawardane, Josh Douziech.

An early morning bus ride took 35 students to the third annual GeoSkills Conference in downtown Calgary, Feb. 10.

Our students were joined by counterparts from the University of Calgary, SAIT and Mount Royal University. They were privy to an afternoon packed with fantastic talks by leading professionals from the oil and gas and mineral exploration industries. An evening mixer brought the students in contact with industry representatives.

With a turnout of over 170 students, plus nearly 100 industry members for the evening mixer, this was the largest GeoSkills to date. With the guidance and support of APEGGA, GeoSkills resulted from the work of a committee comprising student executives from each of the attending institutions. This committee worked tirelessly to book venues, arrange speakers and raise funds to make GeoSkills such a great success.

A special thanks goes out to APEGGA’s Tom Sneddon, P.Geol., Manager, Geoscience Affairs, along with Beckey Windley and Debbie Hemery who were the guiding hands during preparation and are responsible for a great deal of the conference’s success. An additional thank you goes out to all of the speakers who took the time to present. These include Dr. Reg Olson, P.Geol., who made the long trip down from Edmonton with a bus full of students, in order to speak on uranium deposits of the Beaver Lodge district.

Reading and Breathing

Reading Week has come and gone, having given students an opportunity to take a breather. For P.S. Warren members, it was also a chance to brush up on our skiing and snowboarding skills before we hit the slopes of Kimberly, Feb. 26 and 27.

In collaboration with Backside Tours, nearly 50 students made their way to the snowy Kootenay Mountains for the P.S. Warren Ski trip. Night skiing, hot tubs and a condo theme party night were all part of the fun.