Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Geoscience Careers #1 - Renewable Consulting with Andrew DeWitt

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Geoscience Careers #1 - Renewable Consulting with Andrew DeWitt · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, how are you?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: I can't just not laugh looking at you sometimes.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: You were looking particularly confused, and I think it's because you had your big NASA panel set up.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: You have three screens, you got how many keyboards do you have?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: You caught me looking up at one of my screens.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, gotcha.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's it's not confusion this time around.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say, you and I got mad at each other today, this morning, and you you know what I'm talking about?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You were I was upset with you because you were upset with me because you think I am technologically illiterate.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, oh my gosh, I sent this guy the link and he can't open it.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: And Links Link stymy, Chris Boy, despite the NASA screen.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, that's just not true.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not true.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it's a it's a rare episode where we don't have at least some technological difficulty between the two of us.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's I know that's why I'm always on early.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm like, I know I'm gonna have difficulty here because the partner that's setting me up, I think you're setting me up on No, you are setting me up on purpose to fail, and I don't appreciate that.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Every once in a while I'll send you the wrong link.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like Andrew said like Andrew said in this interview, he says, wow, you guys have been doing this for how long?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: You guys cannot get your technology down.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: He did call us a train wreck.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this time it was probably my fault for copying the wrong link or something.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I think we've got to sort it out.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: We'll get it ironed out.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think by year six we'll probably get this ironed out, don't you think?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Three more years.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is four years for us about doing this for that's a long time.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and we still can't figure it out.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um so this is the first this is kind of a fun interview.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Andrew DeWitt, who is uh a close friend of both of ours.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we chose to interview Andrew, I think, Chris.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Let me let me pitch this, I think, because you because you pitched this idea uh I think initially, but we've kind of been having this revolving conversation about for a long time about interviewing people in industry.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we didn't really know how to get into it, like how to start to tackle it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so we decided to interview Andrew, who is a close friend of both of ours and works in a geoscience adjacent industry.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So Andrew's a director at Atwell LLC, which is an environmental consulting group.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's been in the environmental consulting world for most of his career as a professional, I think.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Andrew has a master's degree.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Him and I graduated high school together.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: We took your summer science class together, and that was really a trip that solidified for me and initiated for him the sort of passion for geoscience and the this sort of career trajectory, I think.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's why we chose to interview Andrew, who we both know quite well, very well, and are close friends with uh in this this episode to kind of lead into the industry geologist perspective, which we'll have a whole series coming up, and we'll continue to interview people in the geoscience industry uh about their perspectives.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's gonna come across in the interview that we are all very, very comfortable with each other.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be like a kind of a different interview from that standpoint.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I think it's a good thing.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um, but our other interviews coming up, our next interview in this series is gonna include Erica Dolman, and it that takes a little bit of a more of a normal tone for the for the way that our interviews go.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so Andrew, you know, provides a very different perspective.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, he's been in the environmental consulting world, he's moving up the ranks quite quickly in the environmental consulting world, worked on some really cool projects, including the Keystone Pipeline Project, which he talks briefly about, and is now kind of a a regional, if not national, leader in the offshore wind farms, solar farms, like really getting into this alternative energy space from an environmental consulting perspective.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a really interesting view of the geosciences.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: But Chris, I have a question for you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: So Andrew also teaches the summer science class with you now.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So he's a co-instructor on the summer science trip, but he's also on the school board at Huttsville High School.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: So is he technically your boss?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make him your boss?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: How does this work?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I cannot believe that you just sprung this on me.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I suppose this is a in a roundabout way.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says he is like directly.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like he you report to him your day-to-day operations.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: He actually requires me to call him every morning and tell him what I'm gonna do that day.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he has to either approve or disprove that you know Crystal Lights cannot do that.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, he's he's he's a tyrant, actually.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's a tyrant, I mean ruling with an iron fist.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: When he gets to the city.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, you and you guys teach, so I all that oh that joke to say that you guys teach summer science together and it's sort of deeply invested in education and mentorship, and that comes across very much in this interview.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, hey, if you like Planet Geo, go to our website, planetgeocast.com.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: You can send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: On our website, there's contact us links as well.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can view all of our past episodes, learn about us, you can support us.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: We really appreciate that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we also appreciate if you would give us a rating in a review, because that helps the podcast algorithm and helps us get the word about geosciences out there to more people.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Andrew DeWitt coming your way.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: No, we're good.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: I was telling Andrew that it's rare that an interview goes by without Chris having technical difficulties.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't have the link, and I know you have it in three places, Chris.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: I emailed it to you for Riverside, I sent you a personal email.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good point.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: And our our shared planet geo calendar has it in there.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know the the fiasco with my storage on on Google Drive, right?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I cleaned out all my email and I wiped all of it out on accident.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I am I'm starting from scratch.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have three three emails in my zero.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that was not our normal intro to interviews, and uh the reason is because we have Andrew DeWitt with us, our good buddy Handy Andy.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Andrew, welcome to Planet Geoman.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that'll be the last time you call me Handy Andy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just put that right out there right now.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Andrew.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: What are you gonna do about it?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you're right.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: I can't reach through the screen, but if I could, we'd have we'd have some words.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: As Chris always says, this is my podcast.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: I get to say what I want, right, Chris?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: I do.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Not today.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not today.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew DeWitt.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: How the heck are you, man?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's good to be here.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's been two weeks since I've seen you.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've and and we spent the three weeks together 24-7.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm a little uh I'm going through withdrawal.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: A little bit of withdrawal, I hear you.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: I hear you.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet you are too.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta be hard.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so Andrew, I always lead off with this question, and I'm really interested into your insight into it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: But how tell us your story on how you got into geoscience because there was definitely an aha moment for me.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know there was with Jesse.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us your story.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so for me, when I was in high school back in you know the early 2000s, I thought I wanted to go to college and pursue uh a degree in biology because I wanted to be a biology teacher, high school biology teacher.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then in the summer of 2004, I had the opportunity to go on the summer science trip.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: And um we'll talk about that probably in a little bit here, but um it was on that trip where I learned a lot about the geology of all the areas we visited out west.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: That was for me an aha moment.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: I remember being in the Black Hills up on the top of Little Devil's Tower, and I remember literally like tearing up, like the views up there, looking around, hearing about the geology, talking about its importance, the views and and everything else.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: It really took me.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, you know what?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's more to learn here, and I want to learn as much about it as I can.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, the aha moment literally was on Little Devil's Tower.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: And from there I decided to take a geology class in high school, uh, taught by Mr.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Mr.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Bullheis here.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh should we end or should we call him Mr.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: Bullheis for the whole episode?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: We probably should.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Do we need to call him Mr.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Bullhouse?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think we should so I took I took the high school geology class, and after that I said, you know what, I'm I want to learn more.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I went to Grand Valley and got my bachelor's degree in geology with a minor in biology, and uh went from there.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: So that was my aha moment.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: It was in the black hills.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Quick question about that, Andrew.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: When did you tear up?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did you tear up when the sun came up, or did you tear up when the sun was already up then and we just started talking about how this came to be?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: How did the black hills form?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: What at what point?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: What was it for you?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: So for me it was the view.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris, back then, we did that hike during the day.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So we did not do the sunrise hike.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: So now we take the students, we get up at 3 a.m.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: and we hike up and uh watch the sunrise, and that's amazing, and that gets me too to even to this day.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: But back then it was the view during the day, but it for me was it was always the view.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, wow, this is this is sweet, this is cool.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: It had been the first time I'd ever been out west, and I knew I wanted to know more.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, Andrew, uh another question about that, because I know that we journaled, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: We had to journal during uh we were on the same trip, the same summer science trip.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: We actually shared a tent.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of where we became quite good friends, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And do you have you reread your journal from Summer Science?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you still have it, your high school summer science journal?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or did we turn those in?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I don't remember, because I remember you talking about journaling at Little Devil's Tower.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so a lot of times when we get up to uh the top of a hike, wherever we are, we we the student's journal.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, so when I was a student, I journaled and I remember I remember being very sappy.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I don't I haven't read it recently, but I remember saying this was a really cool, really special feeling, really cool opportunity, and that it was gonna probably change my life, and it certainly did.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, Andrew, walk us forward, like walk us through your career up until this point.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can you give us the the quick summary?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Chris and I know this, but but give us the quick summary and maybe give us your like evolution in thinking about geoscience throughout that process.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: I when I went to Grand Valley, I thought I wanted to be a biology teacher when I was in high school.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: But when I got to Grand Valley, I thought I wanted to be a geology or earth science teacher.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I took all the education classes, I started going down a biology minor track because in Michigan you got to have a minor in order to teach.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it was probably a year and a half in where I thought, you know what, teaching while I like it, it's not something that I I want to do for a career.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: I knew there were other opportunities for me to be impactful to students, and uh there certainly are, and I certainly do that today.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: But I I decided to go into geology with the intention of becoming a consultant.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: But my options, I wanted to keep my options on the case.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because you lost time, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because you were going into education.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you lost about a year, didn't you?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, I lost a year.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: But looking back at what I do today, that biology background is actually really important.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't have I probably wouldn't have done it any other way.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um when I was at Grand Valley, I had a lot of opportunities to do undergraduate research.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: I presented uh conferences, I helped write papers, and I took advantage of some opportunities that kind of came my way.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that really kind of sparked my interest was an undergraduate research project that I did at a local river.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: We were mapping basically substrate temperature anomalies in a local stream and looking at how groundwater interacts with surface water and what it means for temperature and how temperature could affect aquatic organisms and fish and things like that.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: So after Grand Valley, I decided to go to Missouri State and study uh basically rivers, fluvial geomorphology.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: While I was there, Andrew, Andrew loves to say fluvial geomorphologist.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ask him, Andrew, what what are you?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am a fluvial geomorphologist.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He loves to say that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then students like putting aww kind of thing, you know.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I I I must say it's a cool word.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I would call myself that too.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's way cooler than geochemist or you know, uh igneous petrologist.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: To be clear, I'm not a fluvial geomorphologist, but I have studied fluvial geomorphology.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, all right.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I like to say it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: But part of what I knew, I knew if I wanted a job in Michigan that's related to earth science or geology, I had to have a background in water of some sort, and I had to have some understanding of sediment, sediment transport.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so to me, fluvio geomorphology covers both those things.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really studying rivers, how they behave, why they behave that way, etc.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so I had a a research assistantship there through an environmental institute.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's called the Ozarks Environmental and Water Resources Institute, and they funded my master's, and I had opportunities to do basically consulting work while I was going to school, which was a really powerful thing for me.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I guess I I don't know, Andrew.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: I we you know, we went through this process much at the same time, right?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so we talked frequently throughout this.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was definitely not that um insightful or like forward-looking.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Did you go into like when you were looking for graduate schools?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Did you look for one on rivers specifically because you knew you wanted to work on water coming and coming back to Michigan and like why rivers and not lakes?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why not some other groundwater type problem?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how did you sort of sift through the options available to you?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no good question.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I did, I knew I wanted to study rivers and watersheds, and there was a part of me that kind of thought about doing like river restoration work at some point because I knew that's I knew that was a career, particularly out west and in other you know, regions, but I I knew I wanted to keep my options open, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: I had some advice from others that said, listen, if you're if you're studying water and you're studying sediments and you're studying earth system processes related to those things, you're gonna have some pretty broad opportunities.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: And and to me it made sense.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: And the other thing about river science that I love so much is that you can like you can watch it happen, right?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: You can see what a river looks like before a flood and come back after a big flood event and and watch how it changed and watch how how that stuff happens on a human timescale and apply those things and those observations and that data on geologic time scale, which is also important.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's that was kind of my mindset.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I love rivers.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: I like to fish, I like to be on the water, you know.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: Here in Michigan, we've got a lot of them.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: We've got a lot of lakes and things.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that had something to do with it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's something lakes are amazing, but there's something about moving water.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: I agree completely with you that and the time scales of of uh change are as you said, like totally obvious.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And we've been doing this this series on rivers, largely led by Chris, but uh in part because it they're super interesting and they're super impactful.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Everything from levees to contamination to disappearing streams, all that stuff, like it's super important to understand.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Andrew, that's awesome.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to put a pin in the fluvial geomorphology discussion and and come back to it a little bit later on and talk specifically about maybe interactions between humans and rivers.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll come back to a more detailed geologic discussion on on that topic.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But uh before we do that, I want to ask you about your job today, like your job specifically.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So can you describe your job?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm really interested also in how your degree plays into what you do today.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh did your degree prepare you for the job you do?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you had a redo, would you perhaps pursue a different degree for the job that you do now?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it does.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: It does.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'll kind of take it, take it in kind of pieces here.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: So my job today, I'm a I am one of two directors in the environmental group at a company called Atwell.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: Atwell is a full service consulting, engineering, and construction management company.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: I've been here for about three years.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Before I came here, I was at a global company within an office based here in Michigan.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: I started off my career doing um field geology and contaminated site management type work.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: So groundwater monitoring, soil sampling, remediation type work.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: I did that for a short bit and I had an opportunity after that to work on some pretty large and complex projects from a permitting perspective.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I started off doing oil and gas permitting and impact analyses, and then from there did some mining work, telecommunications work, and then slowly over time got more and more into renewables.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: So, fast forward now, I've been at Atwell for almost three years now, as in a and now I'm a director here.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: My day-to-day is frankly, I spend a lot of time on the phone.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I as director, and you can ask my wife, she's like, Do you ever not talk on the phone?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I work from home.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: I work from home here, but um, and she's off for the summer.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: She works at the school.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, my job as director of our group is to make sure that we're staffing our teams appropriately, that we're pursuing the right opportunities, that we're being strategic in terms of what clients we want to work for, what projects we want to pursue, and just making sure that we're continuing to grow at a sustainable rate while at the same time giving opportunities to our staff.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: So we're doing a ton of power and energy projects, primarily commercial scale solar projects and also large-scale wind facilities.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also working on some offshore wind projects.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I started doing that when I was at my previous firm, but since I've come here, we've we've been supporting another client.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: So it's been um it's been a really rewarding experience.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: But my day-to-day is not in geoscience.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: My day-to-day now is in management, leadership, and business development.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So and what about your degree?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So because you it's not in geoscience, your degree is in geoscience, you don't do geoscience.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you had a do-over, would you do it differently?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why or why not?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I don't think I would.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: So you guys you guys know me pretty well.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't really have a lot of regrets.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I make the most of what I got.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I um I think that a geoscience degree is so valuable.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris, we talk about this with our summer science students, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: The skills that you develop as a geoscientist, in my opinion, and I'm obviously a little biased here, but in my opinion, are unlike a lot of skills that you develop in other in other kind of lines of science, if you will.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we are as geoscientists.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: So in geoscience, we're collecting data, we're making observations in the field, and sometimes we're asked to draw conclusions that are not always from point A to point B, right?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes there's things missing in our data sets or things missing in our observations, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's really uh a delicate dance between science and art.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I think the critical thinking skills that you develop as part of that process are really important.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great answer.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I like that a lot, but how I guess can you make it can you expand on that from we have a lot of uh students or people who are just deciding whether they want to go get a degree in geoscience who listen to this podcast?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Can you make it more explicit?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like you and I, we graduated at a different time, a slightly different time.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, has it changed from your view?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: You're hiring people now.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Do you value the geoscience degree as you just stated when you're looking at two resumes side by side?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Does it factor in?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if so, how?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can you speak to that a little bit?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I uh since I'm a geoscientist, and I because I said what I just said, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: I do give a little preferential treatment.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I feel this I mean I feel the exact same way, and I think you're I think you're right, but I just want to I don't know, I don't know if everybody feels that way.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so how do your colleagues who aren't geoscientists feel about these hiring decisions?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious about that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, here's the deal.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be honest with you guys, degrees are really important, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Especially when we're talking about specialty kind of roles within the organization, that's really important.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes, not sometimes, almost all the time, more important to me.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I interviewed three people this week.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Last week I interviewed five people.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: More important to me is passion.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: If people are passionate about what we do, that's huge.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: If people are gritty, you know, if they can handle a little bit of adversity in their resumes or the conversations that we have, kind of demonstrate that, those things are really, really important to me too as a hiring person.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then the last thing is just, you know, speaking of resumes, right?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Just demonstrating your resume that you've done some things that are kind of above and beyond, whether it's volunteer work or whether it's undergraduate research, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like most colleges or universities don't require a lot of undergraduate research.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: But if I see a resume that shows that someone has kind of gone above and beyond, that says a lot.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so the advice that I give to young, aspiring scientists is do those things.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Do those things when you're young, do those things when you're a college freshman and sophomore and demonstrate and be able to talk about those things.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that goes a long, long way when it comes to hiring good people.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'll take people who are gritty and passionate over someone who may have the perfect degree from the perfect university with the best GPA imaginable, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have a follow-up question on this, because I'm really interested in something, Andrew.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know then like you and I deal with this a lot on the trip that we co-teach summer science, okay?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have kids that are passionate about science, and uh what recommendations do you have then for people that want to go into a niche field?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: You have some strange hires.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you hire bat biologists and you know, just really, really specialized people.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's your recommendation on people looking for their degree that want to then work in their degree, if that makes sense?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: So first of all, I think the first and I tell this to our kids too, to our students, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Pick a field that you're passionate about, but also be uh understand that flexibility is important.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: And just like it did for me, and just like it may have for for you, Jesse, and certainly like it did for you, Chris.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like when you're 17 years old, 18 years old, your idea of the future is much different than what reality will be, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so my advice to those students is don't be afraid of staying a little intentionally broad.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be afraid of change.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: Some people are like If I if I decide on one thing, I can never change my mind.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: The reality of the situation is most of us are gonna have multiple jobs in our career.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, as educators, maybe that's not as as true, but for the rest of the world, most people have three or four or five jobs, and that's okay.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: And as long as you're happy and you're doing what you're doing and you're and making good choices, like there's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Did I answer your question?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're just saying don't be afraid to follow what you want, but also don't be afraid to leave it broad.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a good that's exactly right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I knew, Chris, I knew that I wanted to be in geology or or science in some way, shape, or form.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: But I also knew that in order to have a job in that field, I didn't want to pigeonhole myself.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: So studying water and sediment and studying the environment and things like that, and anthropogenic or human-induced causes of change and disturbance, those are all things that I knew would apply to multiple different opportunities in the in the job field.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what I did.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my advice.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And your point, too, about when you're 18 and not really knowing what you want.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I knew one thing when I was 18, and that was that I did not want to be a teacher.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I that was the last thing I was, and I was dragged kicking and screaming into this profession.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I didn't know anything when I was 18 years old.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great segue to transit I like I have a question about the next step.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we've kind of been talking about like undergrad.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: How do you decide about undergrad degrees and stuff?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: How this is maybe three parts, but I want to talk to you on graduate school a little bit.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how did your master's degree serve you personally, Andrew?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Two, number two, how do you view PhDs versus master's degrees versus one-year masters, like applied masters, internships?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you view those differently?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And three, like, has that changed since you and I were going to grad school, do you think at all?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because we get like your multi.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: If a question is not long-winded, it's not worth asking.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like repeat after me.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to keep it short when you're doing a repeat after me with Andrew.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like maybe two-word repeats.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: He's been on the phone all day talking to people.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: I have been.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: I have been.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: I literally had 10 meetings today.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's bizarre.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, no, I I got your question.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: I was just gonna give you a hard time because man, that's a lot.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's a lot to unpack.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: So one, yeah, yeah.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's doctory.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to my world, Andrew.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's so doctory.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like just say it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: Just tell me what you want to know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: So one, all right, how has my degree served me personally?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it served me personally in the ways that we already kind of talked about.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, my master's.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, excuse me, I like I said, my undergraduate research, I started doing some work in rivers, and I'm like, hey, let's continue this.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is important for the reasons we already talked about.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: But also, beyond that, my research assistantship and the funding that I got, it allowed me to work for an institute, right, where we were consulting with different agencies and different kind of doing small projects on how you know watersheds are impacted by different things, right?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we did like a study on how fields applied with biosolids could affect runoff water quality, for example, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were doing science around that and using that science to answer some pretty tough questions to inform some decision making, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds like that was kind of a linear your various steps a little bit between your masters.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like some people, I guess if you did a if you did a uh master's in volcanology, would you be where you are today, do you think?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is kind of another like how much does the degree, the title matter versus what you did it in, I suppose.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what I'm good question.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good question.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Chris.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And short also.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Look at you go.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know well it was and it was yeah, to the point.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Go, Andrew.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: So to answer that that question, I think, which I think now is one B, and I'll get to number two and then number three after this.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: So speaking of linear linearity here, so that's a hard one for me to answer, and here's why.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like I love volcanoes, but I never thought that I wanted to do like volcanology or research.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you like research in volcanology.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: I you guys have interviewed some really impressive people with some really impressive resumes on volcanology.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know that that was something that I thought was ever a an option for me, and then it wasn't really an interest from a career perspective for me.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now, and there's not that many volcanologists, there's not that many like professional volcanologists in the world, right?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, like it's super interesting.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's like studying dolphins and biologists.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how many people in the world study dolphins professionally?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably a lot of people who want to go to grad school for it, but like there's not a big great career path for it.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, it it's a tension, I think.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that was it is, it is, and and so and that's it, and that's why I said earlier on, like, it's okay to be intentionally broad as an undergrad and even as a master's student.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell I can tell you this when I'm hiring for jobs and consulting, a master's degree is very when I look at it that on a resume, it's meaningful, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so it is it is a good degree to have.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: It is a good degree to have because it shows that you've completed a process, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: It shows that you know how to collect data, you know how to understand previous research, you know how to do science, and you know how to write about it and communicate about it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know how to work independently as well.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly right.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hold on, we haven't gotten even to two yet.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, uh one C are we interrupting with question one?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: One C.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, well, two was how what how you view a PhD versus a master's versus versus a bachelor's.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: I would put some weight into a master's degree over a bachelor's degree for sure, especially in our line of work.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And a PhD from my perspective is probably not needed.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: And here's the deal, and Jesse, Jesse and listeners, like no offense here, right?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: But like people with a PhD are very specified, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: They're very specific in what they do.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew, they are a lot of things.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: They are a lot of things.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: We have to we know your audience, Chris.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you're uh doctor in the house right now, and just come out and say it over-educated.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Just say over-educated is the word we're trying to, you're trying to beat around the bush here.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, you're right.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't know if that's the over-educated.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the point is you do a lot of you do a lot of things on your own, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: You have a team of folks that you're collaborating with, grad students, and you know if you have students that are supporting you and other colleagues, but like in order for us to be successful in consulting, like we we gotta have 10 people all rallying behind the same thing, and we gotta be able to do it and communicate it effectively.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes, again, no offense here, if PhDs, like they've they're focused on what they want to focus on, and sometimes those skill sets don't translate as directly.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Does that make sense?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I see, yeah, yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: It makes perfect sense.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I also want to I want to put out there that I only like to pick on my doctor, okay?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesse is my doctor.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: All the other doctors out there, you guys are awesome.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the one that I am most acquainted with is not so much, and and so but he's mine, and so I agree too.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's all right.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Good qualification, Chris.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I mean okay, let me get us back on track here.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: So the question three was what is question three?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: He lost question two.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Would I change anything?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Would I change anything about what I do?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: And my answer is I'm not sure.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: The question was, how has that changed since we went to school?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like how question number three is how has like has it changed since you and I, you know, were applying to graduate school?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like has the system that you're in changed in the last you know 10, 15 years?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And in the future, like give us a little bit more forward-looking, or is it kind of is a master's always going to be useful from your view?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it potentially changing?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's all these new degrees coming out.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm interested because there's like uh Earth and planetary science degrees that you can get a planetary science major, you can get a PhD in you know sustainability.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like what I don't know how to do.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, let me interrupt you a second.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then let's just let's change the question because who cares about what it was like when you guys came out?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just ask this question because it's a really good question.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And just for time's sake, let's jump right to that.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: The three of us we've we've talked about this uh in detail.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever we get together, this kind of comes up almost always.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it is uh you know, the geoscience brand has a lot of like subsets to it, like sustainability, environmental science, we have hard up geology, you have geoscience, you have planetary science, you have hydrology.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts about all of these things?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, like is there a best fit?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's very confusing.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: To the listener, like it can be very I get confused.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm in this industry, I watch departments be rebranded from geology departments to planetary science departments to sustainability schools.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's confusing like what's actually changing and what's actually new and what's different and how they compare to each other.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm as confused as everybody about this.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean you got geology programs that are being rebranded into geography programs now.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Andrew, take the question.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have the floor.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, and when I hire folks, like I just said before, it's a good question, but it's and when I'm looking at resumes, it's not it's not as important, maybe, as some people think.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that's hard for maybe hard for an educator to hear, it might be hard for a student to hear, but to I can I interrupt with that?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Can I interrupt on that, Andrew?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want to what advice would you want me to give students?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Would it would your it sounds like your advice might be just like don't stress about it so much?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because that that would be welcome to me.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really care what you're doing.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Take classes you're interested in.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, work hard.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Work hard, right?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: Be curious, and find something you're passionate about.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: So here's what 90% of the work that we do is in renewable energy.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's not a lot of degrees in renewable energy consulting.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it just doesn't exist.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it probably does somewhere, so forgive me if I'm wrong there, but my point is that's not as important to me.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Me knowing what I know about geoscience and what I think is still being taught in geology departments across the country, it's a solid degree that build that allows you to allow students to build a lot of great skills around problem solving.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, that's what consulting is it's solving problems for our clients, it's helping them navigate complex regulatory environments, and that's not a cut and dried thing.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, less important is the specifics about the degree, and more important is the ability of somebody to demonstrate that they just know how to get stuff done and they know how to think critically in that respect.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great answer.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: I really like that.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you know, there's a lot of people, a lot of educators, Chris, I don't know, weigh in here, but I I I feel like there's a lot of educators that are looking for guidance because the geoscience industry is sort of changing underfoot, right?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't have my finger on the pulse of where you know new mineral lithium mining companies, what their concerns are, right?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like so it's important to get this feedback, I think.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and let me be clear, right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm not doing geoscience every day, like I mentioned, and and I don't have a whole slew of geoscientists on my team, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: So this is just my opinion as a director at a you know consulting firm.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that there probably is a place for folks that are hydrologists.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: There certainly is, right?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Especially if you want to do contaminated site management or look at groundwater interactions and with surface water or mining waste and those sorts of things.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's there are certainly needs for those individuals, and those individuals should make sure that they're aligning their class choices and their their kind of degrees with with what they kind of want to do.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: My point is we're doing a lot of new stuff.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're doing a lot of stuff, like frankly, when it comes to renewable energy permitting, for example, there are certain jurisdictions that just don't even understand or have the sophistication yet to know how to get these jobs to get these projects permitted, right?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: There are townships and and municipalities that have have no ordinance for solar development.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: So this is all very, very new.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: So take that uh for what it is as well, and and just know that it's it's pretty complex.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so my opinions kind of reflect my experience.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I have a uh I want to throw something at you here, Andrew.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna call this halftime in this episode.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for the halftime show, I would like you to answer this question.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is your funniest Jesse Rymank story?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, no, we need to filter this very hard.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I have editing control here.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: Funniest.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there's so there were a lot of there was there was a time in high school, Jesse and I have known each other since what third grade, Jesse, and we were locker partners in fifth grade, and we didn't get real close until and high till high school.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean we played sports together and things, but we didn't get real close till high school and until summer science.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: But I think in high school there was a time when you got mono, potentially.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And we all know we all know that mono is the kissing disease.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm not gonna share too much more uh out of that, but there were some funny, some funny things with Jesse and and who he may or may not have been kissing in in high school.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll just we'll just call it that.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: We'll just leave it at that.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's put it this way.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: There was a big family outbreak of uh of mono in the at the uh at the Christmas, you know, the annual Christmas party, and a bunch of us were all laid up with mono in the um in the new year.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: I had to miss basketball games because of that.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: I remember being so pissed off.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: I and then I had to wear the uh like the Kevlar pads.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Is it your kidneys that get inflamed with mono or something where you can't get hit any yes, or is it your liver?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Or your liver, one of them.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't remember which one, but anyway.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's really too bad that you're filtering so much because I think I would appreciate some name drops here.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we'll leave that for another time.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I guess so.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we will okay.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Halftime is over.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was a good halftime show.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Andrew.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: We appreciate that.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so back, so let's talk about your specialty, Andrew.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Fluvial geomorphology.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about or I want you to talk about some of the ways that humans have affected river systems.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Classifier here or qualifier here, Andrew.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um tread lightly, because Chris has been on the river and streams thing for like going on a year now, so you better tread lightly and say the right things.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't I want you to I want you to like lump me into the fluvia geomorphology category.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like I'm can I be an honorary inductee to this, please?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: For a little bit.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't know.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Human interactions, you can throw dams into it, uh whatever you want.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just let's get into that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I mean how much time do we have?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: No, I'm as much time as you want.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: I want I want a good answer.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: I want to I want a good answer.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have as much time.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesse has a heart out, but you and I can talk.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, there's so many different things.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: So some of the obvious things are things like impervious surfaces, right?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: Impervious surfaces are surfaces that don't allow water to infiltrate you know the ground in a way that it otherwise would if that surface wasn't there.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: So things like parking lots and shopping malls and and neighborhoods and things like that, right?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the idea here is if you add more impervious surfaces to a watershed, that water that would normally hit the ground, infiltrate into the shallow groundwater and get to streams and rivers, right?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, that water may be more rapidly diverted into a stream or a river, and that changes what we call the stream hydrograph.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: So the time between a huge or any type of rain event and the time that a surface water body reacts to that rain event is different when imperfect services increase, right?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: So that's just one example.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that has all kinds of indications for and say this is a strange thing that I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna pull you out of the weeds a little bit, Andrew.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: And make can I can I interpret what you just said there a little bit?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because Chris is usually pulling me out of the weeds.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: But let me just simplify it, really simple.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: And when a big storm hits, usually uh in a natural way, the river will increase gradually.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: So if you look at over time, the water flow, that's hydrograph.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: If I remember if I'm remembering back to my uh undergrad geology days, hydrograph is like the f the river flow over time, and so that'll increase gradually and decrease gradually.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: But what you're saying is with all these impermeable surfaces, it'll spike up.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: The hydrograph will like spike up and you'll get more flooding.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is that one of the results here?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, okay.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Jesse.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh can we just say this then?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: That all these impervious surfaces cause water to get to the rivers faster.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Rivers flood more frequently.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we're having 500-year flood events way more frequently than every 500 years because in large part because of all these impervious surfaces and water's getting to its destination much, much faster.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: That works too.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, there we go.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think, Jesse?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Was that better?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was the same, I think, is what I said, but you know.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe not, but no, but that's exactly right.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: You guys are you guys are exactly right.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that has implications for how the stream behaves, what it looks like, right?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: You'll see streams in these environments that have abandoned their floodplains and they're very much incised because there's more water than they're used to conveying, that kind of stuff.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Other examples, things that humans have done to affect rivers are things like farming practices over human timescales.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: The Midwest of the United States looked a lot different, you know, 150 years ago, 200 years ago than it does now, and those land use practices could change the way rivers behave, things like deforestation, things like metropolitan areas where we have flood walls, you know, things like that.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: Those these rivers can't behave the way they otherwise naturally would.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: So those are all sort of the physical ways that streams can kind of change based on human behavior.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can I ask a follow-up then to this?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: And what is your favorite river and what is your the most interesting river you know of?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: I I've seen a lot of rivers.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: This is gonna sound like this is gonna sound like such an Andrew answer.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is gonna sound like you have to make fun of me for this.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the thing.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I did my master's thesis research on the James River in southwest Missouri.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a super I mean, there are certain portions of it that are absolutely beautiful, right?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not known to be a really pretty, really unique river.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: But to me, it's special because my wife and I got married.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like so we got married, we had almost no money, right?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: We moved to Missouri, and seriously, our entertainment was like collecting data on my river, right?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's what we did.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's it's special to me because of that.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the Missouri Ozarks, the Ozarks in general, are really underrated when it comes to the river.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's the the current river, the Jacks Fork River, the Buffalo River, some of these wild and scenic rivers that frankly are really underrated but absolutely beautiful.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: We would spend a lot of time canoeing and kayaking these rivers, and they're absolutely gorgeous.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: So those are great in the top ones.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Sir, I feel the same way about the Acosta Nice complex where I did my PhD there.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Ugly rocks, but here we go.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: They're special to me.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're special.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Andrew.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's always got to bring it back to Acosta.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about rivers, and now he brings into old planet zircons and uranium-led geochronology, right?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that the title of this episode?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Andrew, I'm not gonna make fun of you for that answer because I so appreciate that answer.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's about you know the memories and and connections that you have to that river.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that I a lot of people can relate to.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's great.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: And is there a river, I don't know, most interesting maybe, or one that like if there's a news article about it, you're always gonna click on it.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: Either locally where you live now, or like, you know, nationally or something, one you've worked on previously.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean the Yellowstone River is an obvious one because we go see it every summer.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: And last summer they had what was it, Chris, a 500-year event, and it was absolutely devastating.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I think this past summer there was uh a train derailment that had a spill into the Yellowstone.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean the Yellowstone River is absolutely gorgeous, and it's very pretty and it's very sensitive ecologically as well.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and very unique geologically with the water, you know, falls and things like that, and Yellowstone Lake and stuff like that.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know, that's probably the other one.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the longest undammed river in the United States.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Newfoundland, that's great.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is a great factoid.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: On that note, let me ask can I ask the next question, Chris?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Can I take this one about kind of uh about summer science?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know the answer to this, Andrew.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very curious what your answer is.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you you teach the summer science class, the one that we really became friends on, and Chris was teaching it.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: He taught us geology out there.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: You now teach it with Chris.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was shocked about this because if you would have asked me two weeks ago, how long have you been teaching it with Chris?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: I would have said like two years maybe, and you told me it was six years?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Have you guys been teaching it six years together already?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's been six.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is our sixth.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, time flies.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you said before you wanted to be a teacher, but you work in environmental consulting and you're moving up the ranks there, and you're director now at Atwell.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the pitch when you were talking to Atwell and you're like, hey, I need to leave to go out west for three weeks in the summer to teach high schoolers geology?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: What was your pitch to them?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like how and and how did they receive that?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what was that conversation like?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're kind of you know, there's some tension, maybe like you know, a job and this teaching thing, which is great and obviously an awesome opportunity, but like how did that go and how do you view that?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: So another 17-part question for me, but I'll go.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: So frustrating.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: I will I can answer it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the deal this is such an important thing to me personally and to my family.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Summer science has been amazing.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's really important to me.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I've been with Atwell for almost three years now, but I've been doing summer science for six, right?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: So, this was a discussion that came up during the hiring process.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: I made it clear to them that this is something I don't.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Want to give up, and it's something I'm really passionate about, and I told them why, right?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm interested in education, I'm interested in making a difference in students' lives, you know, these these sorts of things.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: To them, it was an absolute no-brainer.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: So they actually they encourage me to do that.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: I have all the support that I need, but not only that, they fund a portion of the program.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: So they donate dollars to our general fund.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: We give scholarships to students who go on to pursue degrees in fields that kind of align with what we do.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: We also, if there's a student in need, the trip costs$900 per year right now to for the students to attend.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: That covers everything, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes there are students that that aren't able to do that, and so we we cover it for them.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: So the pitch was easy, and the pitch is listen, these kids are our future, right?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be our our employees, they're gonna be our clients, they're gonna be our educators, and Atwell understands that value and understands that importance, and so it was a really easy sell for me, frankly.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm so lucky to have that support.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Were they easily sold?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Very easily, yeah.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: No, no record at all.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Which I want to say is very uh interesting to me.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a touching thing, actually, for me.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I get emotional just thinking about it.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I love Atwell because of this thing.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think that there are a lot of companies that would jump on something like this and give that kind of support to.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not this is support on so many levels that it's hard for me to actually comprehend.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest thing that they give is they give you.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're willing to let you go.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: You do some work on the trip.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I do most of the bus driving, and and when we have internet coverage, you're working, you're doing things and so on.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, you're gone for three weeks and they give that, they give you up, which is a big give because you're such an important guy, which I want to come back to in a second.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is the other ways that they give financially and it's uh hard for me to to comprehend how much I appreciate Atwell for that uh support.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because I'm an educator, right?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I pour into my students' lives every day, and they're pouring in in this way, which I think is is just a really cool thing that's not very common in the world today.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I I couldn't agree with you more.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very proud to be there, and it's a difficult thing, right?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: You see me getting up early and staying up late to work when I need to, but the support that I also have from my amazing team, they understand the importance too, the people that I work with day to day.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that that's really that's really meaningful too.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: People can chip in and pick up where I leave off on things or take things on, you know, and that's that's really special.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a it's just a powerful thing all the way around, and yeah, it's an honor.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's super cool.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: So have you I I just thought of this six years, that's long enough for somebody to graduate high school, graduate college, even, and be maybe working in the field.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: Are there people I know Chris, there's people you've taught who a lot of people that you've taught who have gone on to environmental consulting careers.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: Andrew, uh have you seen that as well since you've been to summer science?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: I have, absolutely, which is really really fun.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: And we have interns at Atwell as well.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got this year we had so we've got that's a part of what they do.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a part of what that's an additional thing that Atwell provides to this in terms of support.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: It is so this year we had an intern, former summer science intern.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: He did such an amazing job.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: It was really good to stay connected with them.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, we see that, and then I keep in touch with all these people.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: And the letters, the letters that these students write to us and our leaders kind of after they've been impacted by this is actually a really, really special thing too.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: They get a lot of a lot out of it as well.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, Andrew, can we just kind of come back a little bit?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to come back a little bit to education.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: And you made a comment about staying broad and you the fact that you got remind me, was it a geoscience degree or an environmental science degree or an Earth?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I can't remember what your actual undergraduate degree degree.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: Geology degree.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: So bachelor's in geology with a minor in biology.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: And for staying broad, I kind of students often struggle, I think, with this, or at least I get questions about this, like, okay, I'm getting a geoscience degree at Penn State.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is a good minor to maybe have?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: And some people, you know, want to have the art history minor or the the really random uh, you know, one that they're just interested in, which it sounds like that's great.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a benefit to keeping very broad, in your opinion, in that regard?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: And both for you personally and for high for for you know students themselves, other students?
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think there are some bounds.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: There probably are some bounds around how broad to be, like art and geology, you know, not the there's very little overlap, but biology and geology, certainly chemistry, certainly physics, right?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like so that's my that's my in your biology minor, did it like it really functionally served you well?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like it would, you know.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: You're understanding like water and ecosystems, like they go really hand in hand when you're talking about fluvial geomorphology, right, Chris?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we just talked about meanders and plants, they they interact really well, so that makes sense.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: Would chemistry be the same in your field?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: I do okay I do think so.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I and in here's why, because there's enough overlap where an understanding of chemistry helps you understand a lot about geology and about magmas and things, right?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: But it also the same is true with water quality.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: Understanding contaminant, migration, things like that.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Those are all things that overlap very nicely.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, uh so I have a question for Chris, maybe.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, can I ask you a question?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would love to field a question.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's not about you, but it's not that stressful.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Six years.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm I'm having trouble getting over the fact that you guys have taught together for six years.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because I remember very vividly when Andrew called me and was like, hey, Chris wants me to do summer science.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: How has Andrew DeWitt changed as an educator in six years?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um Wow, be careful.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so now I'm gonna get sappy.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so Andrew is really, really gifted.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: He could have been a teacher, he could have been a high school geology, you know, geoscience teacher, and he would be phenomenal.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um He's more gifted than me teaching when I put students to sleep really well in Yellowstone.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I do Andrew does really do.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, Andrew does not.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, Andrew does not.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um he does such a good job, and he always has right off the bat.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was very, very engaging.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: He has a gift, and but he knows this.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think for summer science, and I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but you're kind of scratching an itch too that you have.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're very good at what you do now in your professional day-to-day and all that.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're a great director for Atwell, but you would have also been a great educator.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: So he hasn't changed much over the course of the six years, other than just simply doing a class like this.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: You really have to know your stuff.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the longer you do it, the more you know.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really it.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're able to bring in more things, and and he brings in experiences from his profession too, which I think is such a cool aspect to Andrew and I working together in summer science.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: I do the historical geology stuff.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: I talk a lot about how these places were formed over vast amounts of time.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew brings in the practical aspects, he talks about the Keystone Pipeline, he talks about renewables, he talks about careers.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is able to take the geoscience field and turn it into something that the kids can put their hands around and say, Oh, so I really can do this as a job and make a living, and actually a really good living.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what continues to evolve the longer Andrew does this.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: I do appreciate that, Chris, seriously.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, more than you know, I do.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate that.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you've told me that before.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm yeah.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm curious about that.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: That that's I mean, I it's not surprising knowing you, but it's a little bit surprising because I would imagine, even with my experience in the education field, I would have a hard time plugging into summer science easily, like right away.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'd have a hard time hitting the ground running on summer science with high schoolers.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a different, you know, it's a different thing than a lot of things.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: So Andrew, I don't know.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris is spot on.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this definitely scratches an itch for me.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I could have continued to pursue a career in education, right?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Formally, long-term education, and be a science teacher like Chris is.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, I think it's it's a way to kind of give back, frankly, to the students and frankly give back to the program that really helped shape kind of where I am today.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's a pretty, a pretty special and a pretty powerful thing.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: But you're exactly right, Jesse.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like it wasn't easy.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: That first year, I mean, it's hard.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: And every year it's it continues to be hard to stay relevant, right?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: To make sure you're updating your content and and and making sure you're you're staying up to speed on new things, whether it's new science or new technology or new opportunities for me and consulting or you know, things like that.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: New high school slang, like what the words you're saying mean.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, this year, this year was eye-opening.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: This year like the the the dictionary, the dictionary that is being you know written here is is intense, but it's no, that's part of it too.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, like it's it's really just a way for me to scratch that itch, like Chris said, and it's really a way for me to stay engaged and hop to hopefully have some impact.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, honestly, guys, like you guys know me.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm a sappy guy.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I really think that my purpose in life is just to get the most out of people and to help people be the best that they can be and achieve their goals.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so whether that's a 17-year-old student or a client that I work with, or frankly the 65 people that are on my team, like I just want people to achieve achieve the best, do the best they can, and this is a way to do that.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: So uh it's a powerful thing, it's a special thing.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: So on that note, could you help Chris become the best podcast host he could possibly be?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because oh my god.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're three years in and there's a lot of work to be done here.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, well, you know, like what?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, first you go first.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me how to become a better podcast.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you just gave a pretty rambly answer to my question.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: I would have everything I said was relevant to the case.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very good, heartfelt answer.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it very much.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I didn't have it too.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me how to become a better podcaster.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now I feel bad because I'm gonna say no, Chris, Chris, you know how I feel about you, man.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: I love you.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: I love both of you guys like like brothers and beyond.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Christopher, you do like to rant, let's be honest.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: You are a rantor.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like what?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: What do I rant on?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: You can be long-winded sometimes.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I know I can be too.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: But the good here's the good news.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: The good news, Chris, is that you've got a good editor.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's an edit button.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's the edit, there's the edit button, right?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Andrew.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have a I have a question.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to young Andrew, 18 years old, heading off to GVSU.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have done anything differently if you had that fresh start?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like you guys know me.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't really have a lot of regrets, you know.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris, I feel like you have the same mentality.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: And part of that and me, frankly, probably comes from you, just because of the influence you've had on both me and Jesse over the years, right?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: But like I I tend to um contemplate decisions a lot.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you know this, Chris.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like when we I mean, when we decided to build this house, this new house that we're in, right?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: I it took me a long time to make some decisions there.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: When I decided to leave my previous company to go to Atwell, literally I was recruited for three years.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then COVID hit and things changed, and even after I had an offer, it really it took me a while.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess the only re some of the only regrets I have are just related to the timing that it takes me to make some decisions on some things.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: But part of that's what also makes me who I am, you know?
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think that's another interesting thing.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like people like you guys who who don't really look back and have regrets.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a it's a great character trait.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: Are there decisions you didn't make?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or not decisions you meant didn't make, opportunities you didn't take, or opportunities you wish maybe you hadn't taken.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: That ended up kind of being a waste of time or something like that.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like even just kind of little things.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think, you know, as as students, and I I still feel this way too, there's like so many different opportunities.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: You you kind of have a hard time filtering through them, and sometimes it's the the decisions you don't make that are quote unquote regrets, maybe, or something like that.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris, I I would actually like your thoughts on this.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: But for me, like the sum of that is like you really don't know what you don't know.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: I could have had some really special opportunities had I decided, just as an example, right, to stay on campus at Grand Valley, right?
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe things would have been different, or I would have had formed new relationships that would have kind of changed my trajectory or changed my outlook on things.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: But here's the deal, and I I strongly believe this.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you look back at decisions and think about what could have been, you could drive yourself crazy.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: I just don't let myself go there.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a happy guy, and that's a genuine thing, and and I uh that's just the way I live my life, you know.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm getting philosophical here again, but I don't know, that's my perspective.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I I wouldn't answer that any differently um because I think you know happiness to me is not about getting what you want, it's about wanting what you have, and that's that's how I I feel like put that on a t-shirt.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting a Chris Bullheis t-shirt made with all sorts of stuff.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: Erosion happens.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: What was the other one we just came you we just had, Chris?
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to stop geology or something like that.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: Was it was it it's hard to stop geology?
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what you said the other day.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound is it really?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound familiar.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um you don't yeah, yeah, but I I went into Grand Valley and and fell into geology, and that's the direction I went.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and now I'm a teacher, right?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I could have just done the easy route and uh gone right into earth science and teaching, and I would have been teaching when I was 22.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't start teaching until I was 25.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that I'd be as effective doing things like summer science or taking my geology class on field trips if I hadn't had those experiences myself.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, I cannot imagine Crisple Heiss as a 22-year-old teacher.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: My gosh, I was not ready for that.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I needed a couple more years to to like mature a little bit.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't change it either.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, and here's the thing too, just real quick, just on the education part and the public education piece.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it's so important.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like I've been so deeply impacted by Chris, right, and other teachers and coaches that I had in high school that have really helped me and guided me in ways that have kind of made me who I am today, frankly, right?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's part of the kind of giving back thing with education.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: But also for me, you know, I was I was on the education foundation board in our district for a few years.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now I'm on the school board, I've been on the school board for a year.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: To me, like just giving back to the community, giving back to the students, and really helping people find the best in themselves and helping kind of influence that is something that's really important to me.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I love consultant, you know, being a consultant because I get to do that, but I also get to lead people, manage people.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's the science side of what we do, there's the financial side of what we do, there's the management side.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: It really scratches a lot of those different itches.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just science, it's not just people management, it's not just finances, it's everything.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, it's a very it's a really rewarding career.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: Every time you talk about it, it sounds like a really sort of a great career.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: And a great career for you and a great career for for really any, I mean most people, but uh rewarding for sure.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, Andrew, before we wrap it up, we always end our interviews by asking what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: You guys know me.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have a few of them.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: So Okay.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sit down.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sit down, get another drink, you know.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the thing.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: So the first one was before I was a geoscientist, right?
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: But it was, we touched on this before, it's when I decided I wanted to be a geoscientist.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: So going back to this, you know, the hike that we did up to Little Devil's Tower when I was 17 years old on the summer science trip, I knew then that this is what I wanted to do.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't do exactly geology every day anymore, or geoscience every day anymore, but I certainly use the tools that I learned through that experience to to hopefully be good at what I do now.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so that to me, the the view there up there, the way it affected me, I think, is is one of them.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's probably at the top of the list.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: But also is the fact that just a few years ago, my two little boys and my wife hiked up to the top of Little Devil Star with me at night, and to bring them to the place that really impacted me, you know, at that time was really special too.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was just a cool thing.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then the second one, I think, honestly, like if I'm being totally honest, was six years ago when Chris called me, and I remember exactly where I was.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_03: Chris doesn't call me often during the day because I he knows I'm usually on the phone, right?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: But he called me at like two o'clock in the afternoon, and I was like, Oh, I better I better answer this, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I answered it, I walked over, it was this open office space, we were all in the office.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is before, well, before COVID, obviously.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_03: I answered it, I said, Hey, give me a second, I'm gonna walk to the conference room.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: I walked to the conference room, I stood in the corner of the conference room looking out the windows, the windows are all glass, and he was like, Hey, I know you're busy, but uh I got a quick question for you.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, Okay, what's up?
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Do you want to teach summer science with me?
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Christopher, I have no I have like no idea how I'm ever gonna get three weeks off of work or how I'm gonna be able to do that with my job and with my family.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Jackson, my youngest, was like one.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: How are we gonna make this work?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: And my answer was I don't know for sure how we're gonna make this work, but yes, I want to do it.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, We'll figure it out.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: So that's number two.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then I think number three for me was this is the last one, by the way.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the number three for me is when I was fairly new in my career at my previous company.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: One of our senior partners walked up to my desk, the same company that you know, where I took the phone call from Chris, right, years later.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: He walked up to me and said, Hey, I'm working on the Keystone XL pipeline project, and we need some help.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: And this was like six months into my career after my master's, right?
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, Would you be interested in helping us out?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, wait, like Keystone XL, like the Keystone XL, like the project that we see numerous news articles about, yada yada.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_03: My answer was was yeah, I have I'm happy to help, right?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that opportunity from him, and I didn't even report to him at the time.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: I later did because we were working so closely, but that opportunity that came from him really, I think, catapulted me into my career in terms of leadership and complex projects and managing people.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_03: And before I knew it, I was going to Washington, D.C.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: to meet with the State Department.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like what seemed like every other week, it really opened up some doors for me, and uh, I worked my butt off and got lucky in doing so.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that really helped me in my career progression.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my long-winded uh Chris Bullheis-esque uh answer to your question.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, those are three very excellent ones.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, say yes to to opportunities, even if they're a little unsure of what they might be or how it might work.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's great advice.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: And you guys, like I I gotta say this, I gotta say this real quick.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna cut you off again here, Jess.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: We've known each Jesse, we've known each other since we were like what, third grade, second grade, something like that.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: Chris, not what how old are you in that?
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_03: 10?
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_03: How old is an eighth grade third grader?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_03: I should know.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_03: I should know because I have one.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_03: Third grader eight.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're eight.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, whatever.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there we go.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, and Chris, we got to know each other right when I was uh a track athlete on your track team.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: But like I think that this podcast is just a I gotta say it, it's just a super cool you guys can edit this out if you want.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_03: But this is just a such a cool opportunity for people to get to know you and get to know a little bit more about geology, and also something that's I think really powerful that's influenced a lot of people.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you guys know what I think about you, and I think that this podcast is a special thing.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell Jesse this, well, I've told you this too, Chris, when I'm traveling for work and I put my earbuds in and I listen to you guys, it feels like I'm hanging out with you, you know?
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like it feels like we're hanging out, and then I get a phone call from one of you, and I'm like, guys, I feel like I've just been talking to you for two hours, you know?
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like Yeah, then you don't want to talk to us.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we call, you're like, I don't want to talk to you right now, you know.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've just spent two hours with you.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm done.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: So hurry up.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so thanks, thanks for having me on.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know why it's taken three years for me to be on, but thanks for inviting me finally.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I know.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for coming on this week.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: And to be fair, this right here was good.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it this is a good interview.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're awesome.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse and I are just really grateful that you agreed to give up some of your time and and be on our podcast.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: It means for coming and uh and giving us an hour, hour and a bit of your time, man.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: And always good to talk to you, always good to see your face.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you can see all right.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.