2019 GEOS Newsletter

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Commencement

As of fall 2019 the following general rule is in place. 

Each GEOS faculty member is expected to attend one of the three commencement opportunities  each year:

     1. University commencement - Fall
          a. Held on a Saturday near Dec 15

     2. College commencement - Spring
          a. Friday near May 10

     3. University commencement - Spring
          a. Saturday near May 10

For exact dates see the UA Academic Dates site

The Wave Approaches

It has been in the news lately. The University of Tulsa is undergoing massive restructuring based projections that many private colleges will not survive the next decade due to declining college enrollments projected to hit in 2025. This topic is very active within leadership at the University of Arkansas with hints of a 30% or greater enrollment decline coming that could be a factor in the University going to responsibility centered management (RCM). If you do not know what this is, the University of Arizona is already there and has a good FAQ; for a glimpse at the dark side of RCM in higher ed read this.

I decided to have a look at the student forecast myself. The starting point for national numbers is the Elementary and Secondary Information System (ELSi) within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Got that?

Well, back at ELSi there is something called the tableGenerator. The idea is to see if there is dip in elementary students moving through the system that will show up at my doorstep, so to speak, someday. I chose to look at first grade students (6-7 years of age). In the tableGenerator there are four tabs; in tab1 I chose 'State', tab2 'years 2009-2017' (the last year available), tab3 'Enrollments > Enrollment by Grade > Grade 1 Students (State)', tab4 'All 50 States + DC', then hit the Create Table button. The resulting table has each state on a row and each year in a column, with totals on right and bottom. A handy excel export button brings the data down to my local machine to make a graph.

The result is shown below. There is a definite peak in the data at year 2014. Kids in the first grade in 2014 were born in or after 2008 - the year of the great recession. If you have somehow forgotten about the Great Recession see this wikipedia article. Those same kids will start college (age 17-18) in 2025. The national first grade data shows a drop of 5% in total enrollment between 2014 and 2017, implying a college enrollment drop across the US between 2025-2028 with no bottom in sight (or at least in the data). Of course this is a questionable implication, it assumes US college enrollment is only driven by the number of college-age students in the US, that the drop will be felt equally across size and type of institutions, etc. But there it is. 

The ELSi table contained Arkansas (AR) data so it can be plotted on its own. A big shout out to my sister-in-law Gigi (a career teacher in AR) who put me on to the AR Department of Education who ran a report for me that brought the AR data up to 2019. Shout out to Connie C. for that! The result is shown below. First off, the data seems to have a glitch between 2013 and 2014, maybe a change in counting rules? Anyway, the same general features are present that are on the national numbers: a 2014 peak followed by a significant decline. With the AR data carried out to 2019 we see the decline flattening, but not bottomed out. The peak-to-trough decline over 2014-2019 is 7.7% -- significant but far from a 30% drop. 

Just for the record, the U of A 2018 official enrollment was 27,778 and a 7.7% decline would be 25,639 students (a loss of 2139). To be fair, the argument is not just about raw input student numbers, but public institutions being disproportionately affected and well-heeled private institutions poaching the best available students nationwide.

But, to me, it looks more like a wave than a tsunami.

SSCH Update 2018

GEOS Jobs

Reddit GeologyCareers

Organizations that have hired Arkansas geoscience graduates:

1. AECOM  ....  Jobs
2. Apache Corporation  ....  Jobs
3. Armor Energy .... Jobs
4. Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality  ....  Jobs
5. Arkansas Geological Survey .... Jobs
6. Arkansas Department of Transportation  ....  Jobs
7. Arkansas Natural Resources Commission
8. Arkansas Parks and Tourism
9. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation  ....  Jobs
10. Beaver Water District  ....  Jobs
11. Bureau of Land Management  ....  Jobs
12. Burns and McDonnell  ....  Jobs
13. Chesapeake Energy  ...  Jobs
14. City of Springdale  ....  Jobs
15. ConocoPhillips  ....  Jobs
16. Core Laboratories  ....  Jobs
17. Décollement Consulting .... Jobs
18. Denbury Resources  ....  Jobs
19. Devon Energy  ....  Jobs
20. EOG Resources .... Jobs
21. ExxonMobil  ....  Jobs
22. Engineering Consulting Services (ECS) .... Jobs
23. EnSafe  ...  Jobs
24. Environmental Defense Fund  ....  Jobs
25. Environmental Services Associates
26. ESRI  ....  Jobs
27. Fayetteville Public Schools  ....  Jobs
28. FTN Associates  ....  Jobs
29. Garver Eng. Planning & Env. Services  ....  Jobs
30. Gulfport Energy .... Jobs
31. Haas Hall Academy  ....  Jobs
32. Halliburton  ....  Jobs
33. Hoss Geosciences .... Jobs
34. Kinder Morgan  ....  Jobs
35. Marathon Oil Corporation  ....  Jobs
36. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management  ....  Jobs
37. Newfield Exploration Company  ....  Jobs
38. Noble Energy  ....  Jobs
39. NOAA National Weather Service  ....  Jobs
40. North Plains Groundwater Conservation District  ....  Jobs
41. NWA Community College  ....  Jobs
42. NWA Regional Planning Commission
43. Paladin Geological Services .... Jobs
44. PGS  ....  Jobs
45. Pure Earth Resources
46. Rogers Public Schools  ....  Jobs
47. Schlumberger  ....  Jobs
48. SCS Engineers  ....  Jobs
49. Shell  ....  Jobs
50. Sierra Club  ....  Jobs
51. Stephens Production Company
52. SWN  ....  Jobs
53. Terra Guidance .... Jobs
54. UNESCO  ....  Jobs
55. USAJOBS .... Jobs portal for all branches of US Government
56. US Army Corps of Engineers  ....  Jobs
57. US Bureau of Reclamation  ....  Jobs
58. US Census Bureau  ....  Jobs
59. USDA Agricultural Research Service  ....  Jobs
60. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service  ....  Jobs
61. US Environmental Protection Agency  ....  Jobs
62. US Fish and Wildlife  ....  Jobs
63. US Forest Service  ....  Jobs
64. US Geological Survey  ....  Jobs
65. US National Park Service  ....  Jobs
66. Vitruvian Exploration .... Jobs

Other potential organizations:
Chevron Corporation  ....  Jobs
Cimarex Energy  ....  Jobs
Environmental Services, Inc  ....  Jobs
Murphy Oil Corporation  ....  Jobs
Range Resources  ....  Jobs
Sabine Oil  ....  Jobs

Scholarship Application Deadlines (non-UA)

Jan 15      Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists 

Feb 01     Shreveport Geological Society
                     ~$1750, JR+, 8 hrs geology classes, full time

Feb 01     Geological Society of America (GSA)

Feb 28     Geophysical Society of Tulsa
                     Field camp scholarship, $2000, 3 apps/yr from UA
                     Apply through Dr. Potra

Mar 01     Tulsa Geological Society 
                     Outstanding Student Award, $1500, 2-3 apps/yr from UA

Mar 01     Society of Exploration Geophysicists
                     ~$3700, Undergrad/grad, above average GPA, 
                     120+ awards, "applied geophysics"

Mar 25     American Association of Petroleum Geologists
                     Weeks Undergraduate Grants
                     $500 to support AAPG student chapter

Apr 01     GSA South-Central Section Travel Grants
                    $500, undergrad, S-CS member presenting at S-CS meeting

Apr 01     American Geophysical Union (AGU)
                    GSSI Student Grant -- near surface, radar

Apr 15      American Geophysical Union
                 Horton (Hydrology) Research Grant
                     $10,000, three awards per year, PhD candidate
                 Dewan Young Scientist Scholarship (atm or space pays)
                     $1000, 3.4 GPA, AGU member, grad student, 

Apr 15      Ft. Smith Geological Society
                    $1500, apply through Dr. Potra

Apr 30      National Association of Black Geoscientists
                    2.5 GPA, US Citizen, Geoscience major

May 01     American Association of Petroleum Geologists
                     Military Veterans Scholarship (US only)

Dec 01     American Association of Petroleum Geologists
                     Grants-in-Aid, many opportunities

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AAG      - American Association of Geographers

AASHE  - Assoc. for the Adv. of Sustainability in Higher Ed.

ASEES  - Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

SWAAG - Southwest Division of the American Association of Geographers

GEOS Student Diversity update 2018

Gender breakdown of total Geoscience enrollment at the University of Arkansas. The last several years show a strong growth curve leading to the current composition of 33% female students. This trend is supported by an active student chapter of the Association of Women in Geosciences.

We have more work to do in recruiting and retaining underrepresented (UR) students to Geoscience. But progress has been steady over the last decade to achieve 16.5% UR students in our department. While the numbers shown here represent all UR groups except gender, an important factor is our close association with the National Association of Black Geoscientists.