Session 6 — Guest: A Pacific Northwest Industry Geophysicist#
Format B — Practitioner Conversation Week 6 Guest: PNW environmental consulting or tech sector
“What does Tuesday look like?” · Career reality check · Industry skills
Hook (0 – 7 min)
Print a real PNW junior geophysicist job posting and project it. Ask students:
“What on this list do you already know how to do — raise your hand.”
Then: “What is unfamiliar?” Mark those items.
“Let’s find out which of the unfamiliar things our guest actually uses every week.”
Guest opening (0 – 15 min)
Guest spends 10 minutes on:
One project they’re proud of
One early-career mistake
One skill they use weekly that undergrad didn’t prepare them for
Student Q&A (15 – 45 min)
Open Q&A. Seed questions if silence falls:
How much of your job is Python vs. specialized software vs. writing?
What makes a junior hire stand out in the first 6 months?
If you were in this class right now, what would you be doing differently?
What do employers actually look at in a GitHub portfolio?
What’s a typical project timeline?
The guest should be honest about uncertainty — what they don’t know, what surprised them — not just presenting successes.
Relevance
Career: Environmental and geotechnical consulting is one of the largest BS-level geophysics employers in the PNW. The resistivity and magnetics methods from this week are standard near-surface tools for brownfield characterization, groundwater surveys, and infrastructure siting — exactly what these firms do every day.
Mentoring: Students leave this session with a concrete mental model of early-career work — one of the most anxiety-reducing things a course can provide.
Go Deeper
SAGEEP (Symposium on the Application of Geophysics to Engineering and Environmental Problems) conference · AGS career resources
Action item: REU application deadlines — this is the week to spend 3 minutes on them. Look up EarthScope, USGS Mendenhall, and NSF REU programs.