Cassie Petoskey:
Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. I'm Cassie Petoskey. I use she or they pronouns. And I'm the Director of the Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program, where our goal really is to help Weinberg College students explore career options through connecting with alumni. So thank you so much for our alumni for being here with us today.
And we're going to spend some time. Amelia is going to take us through some prepared questions for our speakers. We'll get into it. Are you okay? I feel like I always talk at the worst time too. So no worries. And then we're going to save plenty of time for questions at the end. And Shai is going to moderate questions from you all. So please, we'll save plenty of time for that as you all are writing [inaudible 00:00:44] down throughout. And I think that's it without... And of course, thank you to Geoclub for partnering with us on this event. Very excited to have you all bring this idea forward and work with you all on this. So thank you. And without further ado, I'll pass to Amelia and Shai. Why don't you introduce yourselves first and then we'll go to our alumni speakers? [inaudible 00:01:06]. Amelia:
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Amelia. I'm a second year. I'm a Bio and Earth Science... Technically, Earth Science minor, but whatever. And I'm the president of Geoclub. And I'm so grateful that you all attended this event. We really wanted to be able to show people what Earth and Environmental Sciences can do for you in the future and expand the idea of there are [inaudible 00:01:29]. Shai:
Hi, guys. I'm Shai. I use he/him pronouns. I'm a senior majoring in Earth and Planetary Science. I'm education chair of Geoclub. So also very glad to see so many [inaudible 00:01:40] here, and I'm excited to hear all the wisdom that our alumni have to offer. Thank you guys. Amelia:
Yeah. So to start us off with some questions, can you share with us more about your industry and current job function and introduce yourselves while you're at it? And if you could speak to the microphone, that would be wonderful. Cassie Petoskey:
Yeah. We're recording it. Sorry. Seems silly. Max Jones:
Sure. Yeah. My name is Max Jones. And speaking of the future of your careers, I'm the near future because I graduated in June actually. So I am a class of 2024. I'm currently a Master's student at the Chicago Botanic Garden and I'm working as a conservation biologist and wildlife biologist. And so right now I've just returned from seven months of fieldwork in Panama doing work on forest fragmentation and animal movements. And I'm super excited to talk about all that and then also how I've kind of gotten to this point, especially so fresh out of undergrad. And then moving forward, I'm also going to be moving to Germany this summer to work with some scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to keep working there. And so I'm going to be talking mostly I guess about my time networking at Northwestern and then how Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science has led me to the strange position I'm in right now. Margaret Isaacson:
Hey, everyone. So my name's Margaret Isaacson. I graduated in 2015. It's been a minute. I'm a graduate of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, and currently I am a conservation and outdoors division manager at the Parks and Rec department in Evanston. So I'm pretty local. My position title is a long way of saying that I oversee our local nature center and all the programs that we run out of that facility along with the park services team that oversees the maintenance of the public restrooms around town and the athletic fields around town and picnic areas. So happy and excited to be here and talk to you all. And I think what I'll focus on, but happy to answer any questions, is how my experience in the department brought me to maybe an unusual career path and sector of the workplace, which is parks and recreation. Amelia:
Thank you. So what were some of the impactful classes or experiences for you in your undergrad at Northwestern that led you to pursue your career path? Margaret Isaacson:
Max, I feel like yours is in more recent memory, but I'll dig back. Max Jones:
Okay. For mine, I think I'd probably start with saying ironically Spanish. Spanish led me down a snowball into this world of Latin American conservation that I've found myself in. And it was really that triggered the start, but then also I had everyone in the Environmental Science Department urging me to branch out and try new things, which was something super interesting. And so then specifically which classes, I'd say the GIS class with Elsa Anderson that I took was incredibly impactful in my senior year. That's been a skill that I've used all the time going forward. And just knowing these different kinds of programs like that have made it really easy for me to quickly pick up new kinds of analysis or feel comfortable going into different fields that I might not have experience with at the time.
There was that, and then I'd also say my community ecology class from... That one's with the Biology Department, although I think Environmental Science students often take that too. That one just exposed me to a lot of different kind of paper readings. And so at first I thought those classes were very unfocused, but then I realized the goal is to expose you to so many different kinds of scientific thought that then you can... You find that one paper that you get really, really into for some reason and then that ends up being the rabbit hole that you follow down into the career that you want. Margaret Isaacson:
The first thing that I'm thinking about back 10 years ago is some of the field experiences that I went on with the various classes, everything from Earth 201, that [inaudible 00:05:45] like trip, which hopefully is still around, to doing lake sediment coring up in Wisconsin on a frozen lake in the middle of February. That's right. Maggie remembers that hopefully. It was very cold. It was very, very cold that day. A lot of dancing on the ice to keep warm. So these experiences in the outdoors, they built on my passion for camping, my passion for spending time in the outdoors, but I got to be doing important science while I was out there.
And now as a parks and recreation professional, my job is primarily outdoors and the goal of our Ecology Center here in Evanston is to inspire families, young kids, adults, people of all ages to spend time outdoors, whether that's through a quick class, through a whole summer of summer camp. But really it was those experiences doing science outside that showed me what can I do to inspire other people. "My professors are inspiring me now. Is there something more local, maybe less academic that I can have an impact on a broad range of people?" So I think those experiential moments were really important for me and really didn't guide me directly to parks and rec, but reinforced my passion for the outdoors and for inspiring that in others. Amelia:
Max, you mentioned a bit about how your connections and networking that you had here are important. I don't know if that's applicable to you, but if you'd share a bit more about that, I'd love to hear. Max Jones:
Yeah. Sorry. Give me just a second. You guys, it really was like... It's a funny thing on how you get started in these things because it's never the path you originally take that ends up to where you end up in the end. Because I think I started with one of the professors who was teaching an introductory climate change course my freshman year. I worked with her on processing photos of trees for a while and then that slowly led me to meet the people at the Chicago Botanic Garden. And then even though my research interests don't perfectly align with them, I did a thesis with Trish, with Patricia Betos, as my undergrad thesis advisor. And Trish is a mover. She loves pushing people to go do more and more and more.
So I ended up going and doing a thesis in Costa Rica for my undergrad field work. And this is what I mean by the snowballs because I started taking photos of trees and then I ended up in Costa Rica doing sea turtle work with Trish and then from there I met the people that I worked with on this project as well. So that's the number one thing that I always recommend is don't be afraid to follow a lead, even if you don't know exactly where it's going to lead you to in that moment. Margaret Isaacson:
Yeah. I could add a little bit to that. Not so much networking here on campus, but just post-grad when you start out at an opportunity. My first job was a part-time... My first job after post-grad was a part-time position with the Ecology Center. It was limited hours. I was learning on the job how to lead programs, completely new in the environmental education field, but I then left and came back two times and in four different positions leading to the one that I'm in now.
So I think, like you said, following a lead, even if you don't know necessarily where it's going to take you, building relationships with the folks that you work with, the folks that... Whether it's academic or professional or just a summer experience, those are connections that you're going to take with you along the way. They might be people that you meet again. They might not. But like you said, Max, it's going to take you somewhere. And I think I wouldn't be where I was now if I didn't have the Ecology Center, for example, in the back of my mind and just building back towards that in some ways once I found something that I was excited about. Amelia:
That's great. Thank you. What has surprised you about what you learned or did during your school days that helped you in your work today? I hope something you learned helps today. Margaret Isaacson:
I can speak to that a little bit. So when I was an und
