Dear Geoscience colleagues, As you know, the 2013 GSA Annual Meeting abstract deadline is nearly upon us. We would like to draw your attention to a session of potential interest and encourage your submissions! Ensuring a robust geoscience workforce requires contributions from all areas of geoscience education inquiry, from undergraduate and graduate curricula, diversity and broadening participation, to learning sciences and optimal education in competencies and abilities that will serve academia, industry, and other sectors of the workforce. Our session seeks submissions that showcase a broad array of efforts in advancing the geosciences as a major and a career, and advancing geoscientists into a wide array of traditional and non-traditional occupations. This could include, but is not at all limited to, research in recruitment and retention, work to align undergraduate and graduate curricula with the needs of various sectors of the workforce, efforts in attracting talent into specific career paths, and strategies for moving geoscientifically educated professionals into careers where there is significant demand, but perhaps low awareness of career potential. Additionally, we want to emphasize the unique geoscience career paths that we and many of our colleagues have followed to demonstrate how the compilation of experiences, interests and training shape one’s career over time. We’d like you to share some of your personal anecdotes to compliment the presentations about your efforts in bolstering today’s and the future geoscience workforce. We hope you will consider submitting to this highly interdisciplinary session, and joining us in Denver in October! A reminder: the GSA abstract deadline is 6 August, 2013! Sincerely, Carolyn Wilson, Heather Houlton and Eric Riggs ___________________________________ T135. The Future of the Geoscience Workforce: Preparing for Traditional and Non-Traditional Geoscience Careers Carolyn Wilson, Eric M. Riggs This session discusses the many diverse career paths and occupations students can pursue with geoscience degrees and aims to facilitate discussion within the audience about how to think about the geoscience job market differently. Geoscience Education | Geoscience Information/Communication ___________________________________ /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Eric M. Riggs, Ph.D. Assistant Dean Diversity and Graduate Student Recruitment & Development Research Associate Professor of Geoscience Education College of Geosciences Texas A&M University Room 202, Eller O&M Building MS 3148 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3148 Phone: 979.845.3651 Fax: 979.845.0056 http://geosciences.tamu.edu/profile/ERiggs http://tamu-geo-diversity.blogspot.com/ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////