Collaborative and social technologies have been increasingly used to facilitate distributed data collection and observation in science.  However, “Web 2.0” and basic social media are seeing limited coordinated use in building student and early-career geoscientists knowledge and understanding of the profession and career for which they have undertaken.  The current generation of geology students and early career professionals are used to ready access to myriad of information and interaction opportunities, but they remain largely unaware about the geoscience profession, what the full scope of

The geosciences and geographic disciplines are seeing a convergence in talents and skills in many parts of the respective disciplines.  The geosciences, like most technical professions, are facing a critical talent gap into the future, with too few new students entering the profession and too many opportunities for that supply.   This situation has evolved as a result of multiple forces, including increased commodity prices, greater strain on water resources, development encroachment on hazardous terrain, and the attrition of Baby Boomers from the workforce.  Demand is not the only issue, a

The geosciences have endured a long history of booms and busts in employment and enrollment.  Before 2005, nearly twenty years had past since the end of the last real boom for the geosciences.  However, with the sharp rise in energy and mineral prices, as well as a fundamental shift in the nature of the environmental industry, geoscience hiring has increased substantially, driven by both growth and increasing retirements of older professionals.  As seen in the past, enrollments of geoscience majors have tended to lag employment prospects by a couple years.  Yet even during downturns, some p

The geosciences in the United States have historically been driven by domestic needs and often resorted to importation of expertise to meet demand.  During this time, US geoscience has experienced a number of major booms and busts, but today is, as a discipline, less dependent on the immediate fortunes of the natural resources industries, but less certain of the source of demand.  Actual employment distribution has not changed substantially in the last fifteen years, with the petroleum industry remaining by  far the single largest employer of geoscientists in the United States, and even mor

Our community continually strives to close the workforce supply gap as geoscience professionals quickly approach retirement age. In an effort to bolster our future workforce, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) developed a program called the Preparing our Workforce (POW) Initiative in which geoscience professionals visit departments to discuss the many diverse career opportunities available in our discipline with geoscience students.

Many geoscience students pursue their degrees thinking that they will remain in academia or will become researchers at other public or private ventures. By the time they graduate, however, some students have re-evaluated their initial career ideas and are looking for alternatives that meld their scientific backgrounds with other interests. When those interests include communicating the novelty, excitement and value of a wide scope of modern science to the public, science writing can be an extremely rewarding path for geoscience graduates. But how does one become a science writer?

In 2011, the American Geological Institute (AGI) launched the first pilot of a National Geoscience Exit Survey in collaboration with 32 geoscience university departments. The survey collects data about demographics, high school and community college coursework, university degrees, financial aid, field and research experiences, internships, and when and why the student chose to pursue a geosciences degree.