Dear Prospective Graduate Student,
Our graduate student body is very diverse, bringing a variety of educational and work experiences as well as social and cultural backgrounds to the department. We get to know fellow graduate students and faculty in our smaller research groups well, which provides a great support network for our thesis and class work. At the same time, there are may opportunities, both academic and social, for meeting graduate students in other subdisciplines and in more informal settings. Following are some of the unique programs that we feel make the grad student experience here intellectually stimulating and fun.
Strong Research Groups and Communities
Several informal seminar series have been formed in order to create an atmosphere of information exchange and a coming together of several groups within the University who share an interest in a particular research area.
- Hard Rock Lunch Seminars - speakers and attendees include students, faculty, researchers and visitors, both from inside and outside the University. Speakers present new ideas or results and practice giving talks for meetings, thus providing an excellent opportunity to get input from others and to advertise their work. Although open to all, typical attendees are those with interestes in petrology, structural geology, tectonics, solid Earth geophysics, and geochemistry.
- Minnesota Geological Survey Brown Bag Lunch - MGS hosts talks by people who represent various research institutions and businesses whose focus is on the geology and ecology of Minnesota.
- Paleoclimate Lunch Seminars - informal lunchtime talks, also by students, faculty, researchers and visitors, with the main focus of interest being that of the various aspects of paleoclimatology -ranging from ocean science to paleontology to magnetism.
- Quaternary Paleoecology Seminar Series - meeting one evening each week, this series' audience is generally, that of faculty and grad students from geology, ecology and anthropology who listen to and converse with guest speakers from inside and outside the University.
- St. Anthony Falls Laboratory Seminar Series - a weekly, slightly more formal seminar series with folks from a wide variety of resources who touch on topics ranging from sedimentology to geological engineering. Speakers have been grads, faculty, and researchers from geology, civil engineering, soil science, and ecology, as well as visitors from MIT and NASA.
Cross-Group Communications
On a broader scale than the aforementioned informal seminars, we organize many events and gatherings to encourage interaction and camaraderie crossing research group lines.
- Departmental Seminar Series - like most geoscience departments, a more formal, weekly seminar series is provided. Graduate students in our department, however, play a key role in the organization of the series and in obtaining speakers who represent the whole spectrum of geoscience topics.
- OGRES (OnGoing RESearch) - This lunchtime gathering provides students with an opportunity to present their ongoing research in an informal manner thus allowing for questions and feedback from peers and faculty alike. Students have found this to be extremely helpful for feedback, presentation experience, and exposure to different areas of interest.
- STUPOR (Slides to Unveil Pictures of Our Ramblings) - This event is as silly and informal as it sounds. Each Friday, about 5 p.m., folks gather to look at slides that have nothing to do with geology. In fact, if geological terms are spoken, one must suffer the consequences...bottlecaps. This is a welcome diversion from all the hard word done in classes and on research projects.
- Bagel Hour - bagels, coffee, and quite often, homemade treats, are provided for a mid-afternoon break each Monday, allowing people to catch up on the weekend's happenings.
- Field Trips - from time to time, some of us graduate students take it upon ourselves to organize other activities, which the department has been good about supporting. Some activities are student-run seminars and field trips. Recent field trips organized and run by graduate students have been to the Pacific Northwest, Desert Southwest, and Texas.
- Assorted parties, social outings and extracurricular activities serve many purposes. The department holds two potluck lunches during the school year. The spring potluck doubles as an awards ceremony where scholarships, fellowships, and awards are presented to well deserving students. Other activities include the fall and spring departmental picnics; 'Short Attention Span Reading Group'; intramural sports including soccer, ice hockey, and volleyball; and the regular happy hour on Thursdays after seminar.
Lists of seminars are posted on the web: http://www.geo.umn.edu/docs/Seminars.html
|
