AboutKeith Patton Expertise I can answer questions concerning physical and historical geology, environmental geology/hydrology, environmental consulting, remote sensing/aerial photo interpretation, G&G computer applications, petroleum exploration, drilling, geochemistry, geochemical and microbiological prospecting, 3D reservoir modeling, computer mapping and drilling.I am not a geophysicist.
Experience I have 24 years experience split between the petroleum and environmental industries. I have served as an expert witness in remote sensing, developmental geologist, exploration geologist, enviromental project manager, and subject matter expert in geology and geophysical software development.
Organizations American Association of Petroleum Geologists
American Association of Photogrammetrists and Remote Sensing
Education/Credentials Bachelor and Master of Science
Registered Geologist in State of Texas
Question Our daughter is going to be a senior at Mt Holyoke College where she is a geology major (3.72 gpa), she is also participating in a Keck Geology project in Svalbard this summer studying glaciers and sediment samples from them. Anyway, she wants to go onto grad school and is looking at her options. Is there a source you can think of that will list people to study under for this and what colleges they are at? Looking for suggestions for places for her to go. So far she is looking at UC Santa Cruz, Duke, BU and U Hawaii at Manoa. But she has just begun.
Answer Don:
There are a lot of them. Unversity of South Carolina is one, Old Dominion University in Virginia is another (my alma mater). What she needs to determine is what kind of Coastal Geology she wants to study.
There are a lot of different coastal types in the US and around the world and each one poses its own problems.
In Norfolk we had severe beach erosion when I was in school there, and we had a guest speaker Dr. Richard Jahns (deceased) from U of Calif. at Berkley that was on the California Erosion Commission, where they had an entirely different coastal erosion problem.
In South Carolina with there plethora of off shore islands, they have another. Florida, still another. It goes on and on. So my advice is for her to decide on what area she wants to study and go to a school that is near that type of environment or problem.
I assume you are speaking of grad school, so she will be looking to specialize and do a thesis on a particular problem.
This link is to the Journal of Coastal Research. It might be a good source of universities simply by looking at where the contributors are teaching and the types of problems they are researching.
Do a search for journals of publications on the discipline and then check out the universities or entities for which the authors work. She can contact the authors directly if they specialize in an area in which she has interest. Best to go right to the source. Most profs will give her good advice, but also check out what alumni did when they left the school. Some profs are only interested in filling seats or the next prospective graduate student slave, I mean assistant. Speaking to a few graduate students at a prosepctive university would not hurt either, to learn what its like working for and studying under a given professor. Do the profs give credit to grad students in their published papers or no? Thats a good indication of the mindset of the place.
Another thing to consider is employment. Her options will be limited to government, academia and a few engineering firms. Not much commercial interest in the study of the geology of the coasts. Engineering firms do not pay well, and geologists are treated like bastard step children, I know I worked for such a firm. The other two options will require a PhD to get anywhere.
Have her do a job search for the discipline she wants to study in to get an idea of the prospects first. If she wants to teach, thats fine, else she will be working for the US Geological Survey or Corps of Engineers.
