Participant Checklist

What to do in preparation for the workshop on Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences


To help you get the most out of the workshop on Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences, we ask that you do several things in advance. Here's a list of those preparatory activities and their deadlines:

By June 19:

  • Make your travel plans, allowing attendance of optional sessions if possible. (See workshop program for session descriptions and choices.) For information on travel options, see the travel and logistics page.
  • Register for the workshop (includes choosing concurrent sessions; see workshop program for choices).

By July 17:

  • Upload your elevator talk (more information below).
  • Complete the learning style inventory ( This site may be offline. ) and report your results to Robyn.
  • OPTIONAL, but encouraged: Upload your teaching and/or research statement(s). Participants who submit these statements in advance will participate in small group review sessions of their statements, each group working with one of the workshop leaders. Leaders will also offer their (constructive) feedback.

Prior to the workshop:

  • Download the Medical Emergency Information Form, complete it, and bring it with you to the workshop in a sealed envelope.
  • If you submitted a teaching statement, a research statement, or both, print out 5 copies of each and bring them with you to the workshop.

Elevator Talk

In the job search process you will have very brief, yet critical, opportunities to convey your work to others. We will spend some time at the workshop discussing these opportunities. In preparation for that session, we are asking you to draft a BRIEF introduction to yourself and your research. Your goal is to convey the nature and significance of your work to a scientist (but not necessarily a geoscientist). To keep this description sufficiently brief, it may help you to think about what you could say in the time it takes to ride an elevator to the top floor of a tall building. (More than one page is definitely too long.)