Since my graduation in 2004 with a bachelor's in geology, I spent the next two years in the U.S. Navy. I saw the world and had a great time, but I missed geology. So, I left the military in 2006 and was hired on by Geokinetics. I now run a 3D-seismic data acquisition crew in North Texas, producing the very plots that all geology undergrads have to study in their structure class. I have to say that I love my job -- I've traveled to more states than I can count and get to spend all day outdoors. I make daily use of all I learned from UI, from QC'ing data packages to understanding and interpreting the basic geology of an area. It takes a special breed to do this line of work. I work a month on and have 2 weeks off -- a schedule that takes some getting used too (especially since I work in Texas and live in Vancouver, BC). It's weird to say, but I'm the 'boss' out here (REALLY weird for any of you who new me in college). I run a typical 3D seismic crew, consisting of about 70 guys, 30,000 geophones spaced through a 150 sq. mile grid, seven 63,000-lb vibrator trucks, various processing equipment, and...my rock hammer and hand lens. What we do is a similar process to the 24-channel analog system that is shown in geophysics class, but on a slightly larger scale. I have the "Vandal I" on the back of my truck, and my UI flag hangs in our office; my crew definitely knows I went to the University of Idaho!

After leaving the University of Idaho in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in geology, I went to work for an environmental consulting company in Richland, WA called Freestone Environmental. I spent the majority of the next two years classifying soils during drilling at the Hanford Nuclear Site. Additional tasks at Freestone included working on remediation of petroleum contaminated sites within Washington and Oregon.

In 2006, I moved to Seattle and started working for a geotechnical and environmental consulting company, Shannon and Wilson. I work in the groundwater group with another U of I graduate, Dan McHale, who graduated in 1996 with a masters in hydrogeology. The majority of the work done in the groundwater group is supporting environmental and geotechnical projects, whether it is determining aquifer parameters to evaluate groundwater contaminate migration or dewatering for excavations. What I learned at U of I is used on a daily basis such as conducting and analyzing slug tests, preparing geologic cross sections and classifying soils. As a geologist I will always enjoy the opportunity to work in both an office and a field environment. Since starting work I continuously diversify the areas I observe drilling at including landslides, steep slopes, gas stations, under viaducts, on freeways, and in lakes.

The day after filing my dissertation (PhD 2003), I left the mountains of the west for the ivy-covered buildings of Yale University to be a Postdoctoral Associate in the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Within a year, I had applied and been accepted for the position of Collections Manager of the museum, for which I am responsible for ~5 million objects in our collection.

My job is to get the word out about all the fantastic material available for study at the Peabody and making the specimens and accompanying information available for researchers around the world. We are in the midst of a 3-year NSF Biological Research Collections grant in order to database, image, and georeference our Stratigraphic Collection, which represents over 150 years of collecting world wide.

My research is on brachiopod taxonomy and paleoecology. Also, along with my colleague Derek E.G. Briggs, I’m investigating the taphonomic bias of silicification (replacement of fossils with silica) and the effect it has on our interpretation of diversity over time. Rather than teaching, my non-research energy is devoted to maintaining and improving the integrity of the collections and working with exhibits and education staff at the Yale Peabody Museum. I do get my teaching fix though as mentor for Yale courses and Peabody Fellowship students, and a crew of interns, volunteers, and student workers.

I travel frequently for conferences and to collect specimens. My involvement with the public (museum visitors) gives me a great sense of accomplishment as I advise on exhibits about the wonders of the natural world and changes through geologic time. I’m especially thankful for all of the great field experiences I had both for classes and my research at UI. UI also prepared me for the practical aspects - writing up and presenting results, lab work, plenty of hands-on experience, like Peter Isaacson’s Advanced Paleontology course, and, between UI and WSU, providing a solid academic background for a great career!

The nearly two years since I got my PhD (in 2006) from the UI geology department have been a trip--I accepted a position as Senior Petroleum Geologist with ExxonMobil and am in the process of completing a new-hire training program. I began my first assignment in the Middle East Exploration group working a prospective reservoir in Kuwait, which culminated with an overseas trip to Kuwait city to present the results of my project to the national oil company. Our team also took a trip to northern Mexico, where the structure and stratigraphy are analogs for the large salt cored anticlines of the Middle East.

I was pleased to discover how the critical thinking and fundamental stratigraphy skills I learned in graduate school gave me an edge in working this first project; the industry perspective was new, but base geologic principles drove the project, just as in academic research.

My second assignment was with the reservoir characterization team at ExxonMobil's research lab. I worked Cretaceous carbonate stratigraphy at an oil field in Abu Dhabi. Our team is working to better understand structural controls on reservoir performance. This involved several trips to the Middle East to describe core with a group of stratigraphers and structural geologists.

In my final assignment of the training program, I've joined the production company and am working a field in East Texas, just a few offices down from Tom Jones, another UI geology department alumnus.

I know industry isn't for everyone.  For me it's about a career that enables me to grow intellectually, and to really enjoy what I am doing, both through travel and field opportunities, as well as through everyday interaction with other geologists who ask similar questions and get excited about the same kinds of problems that I do.

After graduating in 2003 with a Bachelor's degree in Geology from the University of Idaho, I completed my Master's degree at Arizona State University. My senior thesis (supervised by Dennis Geist) and volcanology class at UI led me to choose a volcanology-related graduate research project at ASU. My M.S. thesis research used numerical modeling to explore the effects of subsurface magma flow on the dynamics of explosive volcanic eruptions. During my time at ASU, I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico, Chile, Montserrat, Guatemala, and Italy for field work and conferences. Following the completion of my M.S., I joined the geotechnical engineering group at the Tempe, AZ office of AMEC Earth and Environmental, Inc, an international consulting firm. My position at AMEC has required that I utilize knowledge gained during my geology undergrad at U of I, from geologic techniques practiced during field camp to stereonets learned in structure class.