Welcome to the Fall 2023 Department of Geosciences Seminar! This seminar provides the opportunity to engage with your department community and to attend presentations given by experts spanning a range of disciplines including some which are outside your area of focus. Seminar is important because it will expose you to a spectrum of presentations and presentation styles and will give you a chance to learn from different career trajectories.
Structure of seminar in the fall of 2023 entails regular Monday meetings in MCMR105 at 3:00 PM when visiting speakers present their work. A calendar of these speakers is available on the CALENDAR PAGE. In addition, less regular Wednesday and Friday seminars may be given by visitors or students who are presenting their research as part of a defense. The CALENDAR PAGE will be updated regularly to remain current with scheduling. Check back often.
Do I have to take seminar? GEOS598 Seminar is mandatory for graduate students in the Department of Geosciences each semester they are registered unless a petition is made for exemption. Typical reasons to not participate (and not register) include extended physical absence from campus or other extenuating scheduling circumstance impacting your ability to participate in the Monday meetings. If you wish to petition out of GEOS598 you must work with your primary advisor to forward a request to the seminar coordinator (jeffreybjohnson@boisestate.edu in Fall 2023).
How do I attend seminar? There will be no zoom-based attendance in Fall of 2023. Grading is pass/fail based upon physical attendance and timely submission of reflection exercises on the REFLECTION form. No more than three regular (Monday) seminars may be missed in order to receiver credit. However, if you are unable to physically attend seminar for whatever reason there will be an opportunity to review a research product (e.g., journal article) from the speaker and write a brief report to obtain credit. You will do this on the REFLECTION form as well.
A reflection exercise is a convenient way to think about your experience with the weekly speaker and demonstrate that you have attended the talk. Please complete your reflection exercises for each Monday's talk by Friday afternoon that same week. This is intended to be painless; you will write a 50 to 100 word summarizing what you learned from the presentation and/or what you liked from the presentation. Even though your comments will remain confidential please refrain from critical or negative evaluations in your reflection.
What if I miss seminar, but want credit? There will be no virtual attendance or recording in fall 2023, but you can receive credit for a missed seminar. Simply read the assigned paper on the SPEAKER SCHEDULE PAGE (link provided for that speaker) and write a 200 to 300 word, one page summary of what you like and/or learned from the paper.