IRIS Summer Internship Program

1998 IRIS intern, Margaret Boettcher (right) installs seismometers at Changbai Shan Volcano Ching with host professor Francis Wu (left).

A primary goal of the IRIS E&O program is the integration of research and education. In 1998, IRIS E&O initiated a summer research internship program to directly expose undergraduate students to current seismological research.

The objectives of the program are to enable students to experience seismological research and to present a student-led paper at a professional scientific meeting during the following academic year. Funding is provided both for the summer research experience, and for travel to the subsequent professional meeting. We target students at non-research institutions and those students with little or no exposure to seismology. Students are hosted by seismologists from IRIS member institutions. Internship projects to date have covered a wide variety of field and laboratory-based investigations. Students participated in fieldwork in China, Alaska, the Rockies, the Los Angeles Basin, and Puget Sound, and developed seismology-based K-12 lessons.

The internship program was initiated in 1998, with two host-intern matches. The program was expanded in 1999, and nine presentations, most of them student-led, have been submitted to professional meetings during the 1999-2000 academic year.

The undergraduate internship program highlights the opportunities for closer relationships between IRIS and non-IRIS institutions and has several benefits, both to IRIS and to the participating individuals (hosts and students). The program increases the exposure to seismology of a cadre of students that will go on to wide variety of careers. The research experience it provides is an invaluable experience for those students contemplating graduate school. The opportunity for students to attend a professional meeting encourages hosts to develop focussed internship projects and provides students with a sense of accomplishment. Attending a professional scientific meeting enables former interns to network with each other and with other geoscientists, share their experiences, and to investigate graduate school and other career opportunities in the geosciences.

Further information on the Summer Undergraduate Internship Program is available on the IRIS E&O web site, including reports from previous interns and application information. Details on how to apply for the 2001 program are also given at the end of this Newsletter.

From the Archives


Photo courtesy Georgetown University

Rev. John M. Daley, Dean of the Graduate School, reads the Roman Ritual as part of special blessing for a new seismograph being installed in 1959 at the Seismological Observatory at Georgetown University.

 

The Georgetown University Observatory (GEO) was founded in 1909 with a donation from a university alumnus. Because it was so close to Washington, GEO was often the first station to report earthquakes. Earthquake reports from Georgetown were often seen in newspapers or heard on radio and television news programs across the nation through much of the last century.

The seismic station reported to the Preliminary Determination of Epicenter (PDE) Office of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, DC.

GEO also sent revised readings to the Central Station of the Jesuit Seismological Association at St. Louis University. The Central Station published data from Georgetown and other Jesuit seismographic stations in the United States. The data would also be included, several years later, in the International Seismological Summary published at the Kew Observatory, England.