Being on the Executive Committee has been an interesting experience and I value the learnings and connections that have come of it. Most recently, I have had the pleasure of working closely with John Fernando, the current Assistant Director of Educational Services. He is a very keen and organised individual and I trust that Educational Services is in good hands when he takes over the directorship in the spring. Thank you for all your help and dedication John!

With John and the rest of the subcommittees, we have planned a plethora of events for the rest of this year and into 2010. We have a full complement of luncheons to offer this fall including a joint luncheon with the CSPG and several special SEG sponsored Lunchbox talks. Not to mention the recently hosted Microseismic Workshop and DoodleTrain to round out the educational program. With the persisting negative economy we are experiencing, I wish to thank all of you who have volunteered and/or attended these events in support of our organization. Without you, the CSEG would not exist.

Luncheons

We have a full range of luncheon talks to present this fall, including a joint luncheon with the CSPG on Arctic Exploration with Tom Brent of the GSC. Please see www.cseg.ca for more information, including the new spring technical luncheon program, and ticket requests.

Lunchbox

Thank you to Bill Goodway, who was kind enough to present his SEG Honourary Lecture, The Magic of Lamé, at Lunchbox October 16, 2009. Upcoming events include two special lectures, co-sponsored by the SEG and the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), as part of the BEG Centennial Honourary Lecture Program. Please see www.cseg.ca for abstracts and registration information.

Outreach

The Outreach committee, ably headed by Annette Milbradt, is busily organizing activities to enlighten high- and junior high- school students, post-secondary students and the public about geophysics and career opportunities. In October, Outreach took students from 3 high schools to Seismic in Motion for Students, giving them the opportunity to observe seismic field activities organized by the CAGC. Outreach continues to attend high school career fairs and to give in-school presentations.

The university student outreach subcommittee is very active and has raised the number of post-secondary students in our society to around 250, up from about 70 in 2006. This is in part due to the committee’s presence at university career fairs as well as corporate sponsorship of the student members. Thanks to CNRL for being the 2009 sponsor and to Boyd PetroSearch for being the upcoming 2010 sponsor. This is greatly appreciated by all.

Outreach representatives attend university conferences and career fairs. They also organize the CSEG Challenge Bowl, a highly entertaining geosciences knowledge competition for students held during the CSEG convention. This year’s winners were Hossein Aghabarati and Fereidoon Vasheghani, from the University of Calgary, and they won an expense-paid trip to the 2009 SEG Convention in Houston, to compete in the Challenge Bowl finals, held October 26, 2009. Congratulations!

Public outreach includes attendance at major career fairs in Western Canada and participation in the Honourary Address. This year’s Honourary Address was held November 3, 2009 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium and honoured the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin, the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, and a local anniversary – the 100th year since the discovery of the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park. The speakers were Brian Keating of the Calgary Zoo and Paul Johnston of Mount Royal University.

Outreach is greatly involved with the Earth Science for Society exhibition at the upcoming convention, GeoCanada 2010. This expanded super-KISP (Kids in Science Program, which has run for a few years) will bring up to 2000 junior high school students and the public to the Corral to see five themed pavilion displays.

Of important note, the Outreach committee will be moving under the CSEG Foundation as of January 2010. This is exciting news and I wish the committee well in its new position. Best wishes.

Convention

Next year the CSEG will participate in GeoCanada 2010, which is a joint convention with other Canadian Earth Science societies, not exclusively the CSPG and CWLS. It will be held May 10-14, 2010 at the Roundup Centre. Once every 10 years, a convention is hosted which brings together Canadian Earth Science societies to provide a rare opportunity to learn about wide ranging topics concerning all societies. As such, CSEG members will need to ‘compete’ for technical session time, with many other societies, as the number of sessions that are directly relevant to CSEG members will depend on the number of abstracts that CSEG members submit. The final mix of sessions will be decided after all the abstracts have been received. For example, ten years ago at GeoCanada 2000, 7% of the abstracts submitted were from CSEG members. The convention objective is to maximise inter-society integration, so papers that combine different aspects of the Canadian Earth Sciences will be particularly welcome. Abstracts can be submitted online until January 15th 2010.

DoodleTrain

The 8th annual CSEG DoodleTrain ran this fall, November 2-6, 2009, with 19 courses offered. David Lumley gave the Keynote address, 4D Seismic Monitoring of Subsurface Fluid Flow. Attendance numbers were not available at time of printing but lower than usual enrollment due to the economy was noted. Thanks to Bill Nickerson who leads an innovative and dedicated committee. Look for more exciting and interesting courses to be available in 2010.

Microseismic Workshop

The CSEG sponsored a sold-out Microseismic Workshop held at Canada Olympic Park, October 13-15, 2009. The event was a success with 120 attendees from Calgary, British Columbia, Ontario, Houston, the UK and even Kuwait. The technical program boasted over 50 talks in 10 sessions covering topics from acquisition, processing, error analysis, engineering and interpretation of microseismic data. Thanks especially to Paul Anderson for chairing the event and to all his committee members for putting on a fabulous show.

As is this is my last column as an Executive Committee Member, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Executive Committee and all the volunteers who are a part of Educational Services for their assistance and enthusiasm over the past two years. It has been a great pleasure serving with you all. Thanks especially to all the committee chairs, Annette, Bill, Paul and Rick, who have worked endlessly and tirelessly to put together exciting and challenging educational programs for the CSEG. Last, and most certainly not least, a special thanks to Jim and Sheryl who manage all us volunteers. They are immensely helpful and infinitely organized. I don’t know how they do it.

The CSEG is looking for volunteers on various committees so if you are interested, please contact the CSEG office for more information. Remember to bookmark the website, www.cseg.ca to keep yourself informed of all CSEG activities during the course of the year and remember to participate.

End

References

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