Program Testimonials

Eric Kuhl, Engineer, Team 2

"As far as the program goes, I have nothing but good things to say. I enjoyed everything from the actual industry exposure to the hands on field work. In addition, I can't say enough about the team experience that I had. You picked three of the brightest people I have ever met, to share this experience with me and I truly think that the team atmosphere helped improve the learning experience."

Tin-Wai Lee, Geophysicist, Team 2

"The best parts of the program are that it is interdisciplinary and it is team-based. We were able to approach problems with different perspectives and insights because we had the background in different areas and were able to get input from the rest of the team...Because there were four of us, there were a lot of checks and balances. My teammates perspectives made me make sure I saw the bigger picture (like when we were writing the GCAGS paper) or conversely they made me not miss relevant details (like assumptions in my input data for my fluid substitution data)."

"The tough part about the program is that you are constrained by the field and the data and you have to come up with something that 1) is new and has scientific merit and 2) not what your teammates are going to do. It is the opposite of what traditional grad students do. They come up with a hypothesis and then design and collect data to prove or disprove it. We have to find a problem or question with the data that we already have. This made me panic in my first year and a half because I didn't know what to do. Don't get me wrong--this is not a weakness of the program, but rather the challenge the students must face."

GeoSystems Initiative, 305 Deike Building, University Park, PA 16802
Phone: 814-863-7072, Fax: 814-863-7823, Email: geosystem@geosc.psu.edu