Position: Environmental Management Officer
Education: M.Sc. (soil science)
Employer: BC Ministry of Environment, Victoria, BC
How is soil science a part of your job?
The most exciting thing about my job is that I get learn new things everyday and have the opportunity to discuss them with my colleagues. It is like being in graduate school; I do research projects, I investigate what other researchers have done by reading other publications and I write up the results of my research so that others can learn from what I have done. I get to meet new people who work in different sectors and who have different backgrounds as well as people who work in other public service organizations. The way that all of our work can be connected fascinates me.
What is your favourite memory of working with soil?
My favourite memory of working with soil is from a road trip with my parents while I was on spring break one year during my undergraduate degree. My dad would stop the car on every corner so that I could collect a soil sample; I wanted to collect a series of different soil samples based only on their color. I brought the samples back to school and worked on finding their color on the Munsell chart. I organized the samples in a display which was put up in the hallway by soil science lab. The display is still there, almost like a piece of me is still at the school!.
What did you like to do when you were a kid?
I wanted to be a scientist; I used to read biographies of important scientists and watched documentaries on their lives. It was so fascinating to me that someone could spend hours in the laboratory and discover a whole world under a microscope! Studying soil lets me be a scientist and explore new ideas.