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, 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 at hand, the legacy of lagging supplies of new students and consequently new professionals has enhanced the problem.   The supply issue is

One of the most common complaints within scientific communities about commercial television is that the presented science is “bad.”   From the perspective of formally trained scientists, this assertion is a fair critique.  However, just as television often presents science badly, so scientists do television even worse!  The key challenge in improving the geosciences’ presence and effectiveness is mass televised media is to understand and respect the differences between the two worlds.  Television networks and production companies operate in a fiercely competitive environment in which every

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 have a substantial contribution to make for society on the issue of sustainability, however, very often that contribution is not effectively heard.  This stems from both a communication issue and a failure to be visible in its engagement of contributing to the betterment of humanity as we intensify our demands on natural resources and encroach on zones of higher risk.  In building out various communication and interdisciplinary efforts at AGI, much can be said for how the geosciences are perceived and why it is often the quietest voice in an the effort for which it often isn

For most of the last 50 years, the fortunes of geoscience programs at the university level have waxed and waned with the health of the natural resources industries.  These industries, and petroleum in particular, have experience major boom and bust cycles, of which geoscience programs often mirrored.  This relationship began to change in the early 1990’s when many geosciences programs began to offer environmental concentrations.  This shift only lasted about five years before job opportunities began to decline in that field as well.  By the mid 1990s, for the first time, the fortunes of geo

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.

The YES Network is an interdisciplinary global network of young and early-career geoscientists that connect primarily via web-based technologies to collaborate on geoscience projects, organize international conferences, and develop resources that help young and early-career progress along their academic and career paths into successful geoscience careers. The YES Network was formed as a result of the International Year of Planet Earth in 2007.