Writing is one of the most important and frequent activities you will be involved with as a professional. As a consultant you will write reports for your clients, as an exploration geologist you will write a prospectus on a property, as a county planner you will write a staff report regarding a subdivision, as a hydrogeologist you will write reports for the Environmental Protection Agency. Our past students frequently urge that we require more writing. They spend more than 60 percent of their time writing. Well written reports reflect favorably on your abilities and knowledge and may substantially influence your chances for promotion. Since much of your professional life will be spent writing, the Earth Sciences staff believes that some training in the writing of a research paper is important. This course develops the steps many professionals use in writing reports. During the seminar, we will proceed through the steps and write a scientific research paper. Many of the ideas reinforce processes and principles introduced in English 121 W, in the new context of scientific writing. We hope that you will use what you learn in this course in other courses both now and in the future.
A former student, now a manager sent me the following email in the summer of 1999 after he looked at this web page. I asked him if I could include his comment in my web page because you need to hear what professionals have to say about writing. He agreed.
Steve,
Thought I'd drop a quick line. Part of the work I do includes trying to educate our consultants and internal environmental staff on groundwater. I wrote a groundwater manual a few years ago and have been distributing guidelines for writing hydrogeologic reports for our consultants. I noticed your web site says you're teaching geowriting. Therefore, I though you might be interested in the report guidelines.
I have found that many consulting firms do a poor job preparing reports. You might let the undergrads and grad students know that writing good, clean, concise reports is still a main part of the job. You should have seen the 2-page report that took me 8 hours to review! That consultant isn't working for us anymore.
I've also developed a groundwater course using Power Point. You
may be interested in some of the modules. I've included the definitions
module (this is the short version; the more complete version is about 10
megs). Other modules include soil sampling, well installation, water-level
measurement, groundwater sampling, and laboratory analyses.
Sincerely,
Glen M. Wyatt, R.G., C.E.G., C.HG.
Hydrogeologist
Weyerhaeuser Environment, Health & Safety
Technology & Science
Weyerhaeuser Technology Center
WTC-2G2
P.O. Box 2999
Tacoma, WA 98477
Phone 253-924-6103
Fax 253-924-6182