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BY AFSHAN KABA
University of Calgary
Student Contributor
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National Engineering & Geoscience Week, Feb. 27 to March
7, helped raise the awareness of geology and geophysics, and
also provided a great opportunity for geoscience students to
get involved.
GeoScience students celebrated the week by holding a lunchtime
barbecue on March 5. Despite the cold weather, the turnout
was great! A special thank you goes out to Mark Danyluk, president
the Geophysics Undergraduate Student Society, for organizing
this event.
Students from our department helped out at APEGGA events by
going to elementary schools on March 3 and 4, to educate kids
about what geoscience is really about. The two schools visited
were Silver Springs Elementary and Mount View Elementary.
There were demonstrations at the schools on how earthquakes
happen, as well as a display on groundwater flow. The elementary
students and parents alike responded well to these demonstrations,
and seemed to be quite interested, so we may have a lot of
mini-geo people on our hands here!
The week came to an end with Geology and Geophysics in the
Mall, March 6 at Market Mall. The Department of Geology and
Geophysics set up about a half-dozen tables with displays and
activities designed to educate the public, in a fun and informative
way, about what exactly geoscientists do.
Particular themes of tables this year and in past years have
included representation in specialties such as structure and
tectonics, paleontology, minerals, hydrogeology, meteorites,
geophysics and petroleum. The goal of this day is to spark
young minds for geoscience’s future, so the target audience
therefore is generally school-aged children.
An excellent showing from the public and members from the department
made the mall event a success. It seemed as though everyone
had a great time.
Sports
Geology and geophysics undergraduate groups enter sports teams
in the university intramural league every year. Here is a
look at what’s been going on this year so far.
In the fall semester we had an outdoor soccer team, called
Rock Stars, in a co-ed league. There were lots of new people
who turned up and it ended off being a great season.
There was also an ultimate Frisbee team, Magma, which was also
in a co-ed league. This was the first year that the student
societies put in an ultimate team. Everyone had lots of fun
trying a new sport, and we managed to pull off some wins! Way
to go Magma!
Volleyball was another popular one. The Rock Smashers, once
again a co-ed team in a co-ed league, started slowly but ended
up with a good finish to the season.
The men’s ice hockey team, Rock Stars, is the longest-running
intramural team we have. The Stars ended off the fall season
well. They are having a great winter season as well.
There was such a demand for hockey sports that a second ice
hockey team, called simply Geology Team, was created. The new
team had a ferocious start to the season, but has recently
suffered its first defeats.
All of the teams that played in the fall semester are back
in action for the winter semester, except for the Frisbee team.
A special thank you to Caleb from geology’s Rundle Group
for providing us with updates of our teams.
Pieing Update
Geoscience students raised just under $400 to go towards the
chosen charities, in the pieing event reported on last month.
Engineering students raised about $3,000. Since our department
is about 1/10th the size of theirs, this wasn’t bad at
all.
A special thanks to Jana Hanova from our department for taking
the time and effort to head up this project, and to the many
other students who volunteered their time.
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