Above left: Louise Vick; right: YEG committee meeting in the garden of the Louvre. From left: Louise Vick, Julia Loffler, Stratis Karantanellis, Alejandro Celli, Pedro Martins (Photo: Andrey Kazeev)
At the annual mid-year board meeting in Paris (7-8 April 2019), the IAEG Executive Committee voted the chair of the new YEG (Young Engineering Geologists) Committee to the Executive Committee with voting rights. Louise Vick, a Canterbury engineering geology graduate, currently holds that position.
Louise, who is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow at The Arctic University of Norway in Tromso, provided the following additional information.
The goal for the committee is to promote the interests of the young members of IAEG within the organisation, and to help young members integrate into the organisation. IAEG recognises that its young members are the future and wants to do everything it can to support their growth.
I was introduced to IAEG during the Auckland 2010 IAEG congress. I really enjoyed the events geared specifically towards young members and wanted to be more involved. Since 2014 I have been working with Pedro Martins (Beca, Tauranga) to develop the role of the young members in a more official capacity. Being elected as chair in 2016 was the first step. Following that, we (Pedro and I) appointed a committee, ratified by the IAEG Board. We had a great amount of support from the board at the time, especially from Scott Burns (President) and Mark Eggers (Vice president for Australasia). Luckily, the new/current president and board are also passionate about supporting the initiatives of the YEG, and in April the committee had it’s first official meeting in Paris. The committee comprises seven active people: Julia Loffler – Argentina, Stratis Karantanellis – Greece, Alejandro Celli – Argentina, Pedro Martins – New Zealand (originally Brazil), Bimbola Aluko – Nigeria, Andrey Kazeev – Russia, and myself – Norway (originally NZ). We are proud of the fact that we are gender-balanced, international and a mix of industry personnel and academics. We feel that we can adequately represent the YEGs around the world. The Paris meeting was a success, and Pedro and I stayed on to attend the concurrent IAEG Board meeting where we presented our budget and plan. It was determined that the chair of the YEG committee will now sit on the board. This is a great achievement for us, as we now have a lot more influence within
the IAEG.
In September at the Jeju Asia Regional Conference the IAEG council will decide whether the YEG chair will have voting power. We will present our 5 year working plan there.
We are currently working on our webpage (www.iaeg.info/category/yegs/) to make it easier for YEGs to see how we are networking, and how they can get involved. For now if people are interested they are welcome to contact me or Pedro.
See page 12 for more on Lousie’s adventures in Norway.