Opportunities

Professional Conferences

Students and faculty regularly attend and present papers at professional meetings, such as the Geological Society of America.

Junior Seminar Field Trips

All majors take the Junior Seminar, which culminates with a week-long field experience. Because this experience is so valuable, the seminar theme varies so that students may participate in the field-related portion of the course up to three times.

Current themes and field trip locations are:

• Tectonics & Sedimentation: mountains of Virginia and West Virginia
• Ancient Environments & Present Environmental Geology: Appalachian Plateau, Kentucky
• Coastal Processes & the Environment: Sapelo Island, Georgia.

Internships and Summer Opportunities

In addition to departmental internships (see Courses) many students participate in specially arranged summer internships or faculty research in Alaska, Montana and New Hampshire. Some recent examples:

• Indiana Geological Survey studying Lake Michigan Coastal deposits.
• U.S. Geological Survey in Utah studying natural hazards.
• Army Corps Coastal Engineering Research Center Facility studying coastal processes at the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
• Greenland Ice Sheet Project, a NSF-sponsored cooperative research program, to study ice-core records of past climates and atmospheric chemistry.
• Research with a faculty member in Denali National Park, Alaska, assisting in a regional tectonic study of volcanism, faulting and mineral resources.

Off-Campus Study

Marine Geology: Semester or year-long program at Duke Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina.

Seminars

Regular seminars during the school year typically involve informal or formal talks by students, faculty, returning alumni, and other professional guests.

Departmental Involvement

Geology students play an integral role in teaching, research, and departmental functions. By graduation, well over half of our majors have served as teaching, research, or departmental assistants.

Graduate and Professional School

• About 65% of our students attend graduate or professional school eventually. About 40% go on directly, with annual acceptance rates ranging from 95%-100%. Recent schools include:
  • Cornell University
  • University of Arizona
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Wisconsin
  • University of Waterloo
  • The Pennsylvania State University
• The most popular fields of study include: hydrogeology, structural geology/geophysics, sedimentary tectonics/sedimentology, geomorphology.

Career Data

• About 60% of our majors seek employment directly following graduation with about 80%-90% of that group securing meaningful employment within six months.
• The most popular fields with a bachelor's degree: hydrogeology, environmental geology, education, petroleum geology, energy resource development.
• The most popular fields with an advanced degree: hydrogeology, university/college teaching, environmental geology, government service (local, state, and federal), energy resource research and development.