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Now at GSA: Why GSA Membership
Your Time to Shine is Important to Me
Volunteer or nominate a colleague to serve on a
GSA Committee. Start the process at
www.geosociety.org/aboutus/committees.
Student members are encouraged to bring their
unique points of view to GSA leadership.
It’s fall conference season, and this is a perfect opportunity The things I value most about my GSA membership
to plan how you can stand out to potential employers. are the opportunities it provides for professional
Career consultant Patrick McAndless, P.Geo, FGC, interaction with other geoscientists at the national
delivers video tips to help you create a strategy and regional meetings. I work for a state govern-
at your next conference. ment agency as their only geologist in a satellite office in a
small town, several hundred miles from my home office,
Building a Student Business Card and separated from my colleagues by a couple of mountain
ranges and a small desert. My job is very rewarding, but
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4PPV5KbaGU&feature=youtu.be sometimes professionally isolating. I’m fortunate that my
employer values participation at professional meetings, so
Building a Game Plan for a Geoscience Conference I’ve been able to attend national and regional GSA meetings
almost annually, and very often chair technical sessions at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qV3chj0zMU&feature=youtu.be the national meeting. I continue to be surprised at how
much I learn from attending these meetings, and not just
GSA TODAY | OCTOBER 2016 from the technical sessions. Very often, I’ll have extremely
valuable exchanges of information simply from casual
conversations in the corridors as I’m rushing from one talk
to another.
Attending GSA meetings also provides me with opportuni-
ties to interact with students. Although I’m affiliated with a
major state university, my position does not involve teaching,
since all the students are on the other side of those mountains
and deserts. I find the casual conversations I strike up with
students during the poster sessions very stimulating. I have
also taken advantage of the student mentor lunches that GSA
hosts at their annual meetings, great fun (and free food). That
kind of student-mentor interaction is something I rarely get
anywhere else.
Lewis Land
New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
GSA member since 1992
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