Alexis 0:00

Hello? Hello. Good morning everybody, and welcome to the MoCo Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong, your host. Nice to meet you. The MoCo Podcast is a place to celebrate and highlight women working within stem and trade occupations. Today we are extremely lucky to be joined by Dr. Jean Hutchinson. Dr. Hutchinson is a professor. The past department, head of the Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Department at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, which is a mouthful. She has over 25 years of experience within teaching and research. Her specialty is geologic engineering and rock mechanics, specifically risk management of mining and transportation. So we're looking at mining subsident, slope stability. She does loads of work for CP and CN Rail. Her specialty, again, is in landslides and discovering new novel monitoring techniques to discover these. These techniques include really crazy things like LIDAR and deep learning and machine learning and just, it's so cool. So Jean, thank you so much for coming out today. It's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you

Jean 1:04

so much, Alexis. Fabulous to see you again. And, and what a great idea. Thank you for, for doing this. I think the more stories that we can hear from, from women in our field, the better off we are. So thank you for doing this. This is great.

Alexis 1:17

You're welcome. No, it's my, my pleasure Jean. Thank you so much for having you. It's so nice to see you again. Me and Jean we met back in 2013, which sounds like ages ago now, or just yesterday when I was a grad student at Queens University. So it's an honor to have you. And I think one of the coolest things, Jean was doing all my research before I read a bunch of your papers. A lot of it was outside of my, my scope and my knowledge base. But one of the coolest things that I found and I discovered along the way was this interview you gave back in the day before you became a professor at the University of Waterloo. And you talked about this kind of serendipitous moment in your life where after your undergrad you were all gungho ready to go into oil and gas, and then due to the economics you ended up of 84, you ended up pivoting and working for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communication and Construction Management. And that pivot, that like serendipitous moment led to both A M S C and a PhD in geotechnical engineering and now 25 years of teaching and research. Could you walk us through this change and how you fell in love with the field of geotechnical engineering?

Jean 2:27

Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks Alexis. And it's amazing you, you found that old interview. I didn't even remember it still existed, but yeah. So when I did my undergraduate, there were, there were jobs in the oil and gas sector, which was really interesting. I found them fascinating and got to do some really interesting work in those days with trying to reconcile the geological models that were being used to develop, in particular tertiary oil recovery in those days. and I was fully set for a career in oil and gas and moving to Calgary. And then, as you said, the turn, downturn in 1984 occurred and there were no jobs. So in those days, pre-internet, you mailed all your, applications out to people that you hoped for an interview by mail or by phone. And I sent out 200 resumes in my fourth year. Oh my goodness. 200. Yeah. And got nothing. Wow. Nothing cuz of the downturn. So, and I was not only focused on oil and gas, I was looking for geotech and it was just a very poor time to, to come out of, out of, school at that time. So the Ministry of Transportation was hiring for the first time in quite a while, so they'd also had a moratorium on hiring for a while, but they hired 10 new engineers in that, in that training engineering program, which led me into all sorts of great stuff. I, I got to work in the field, in managing construction crews, which is remarkable to think about one year outta school doing that. And then my second summer I was, in charge of a full construction project to add ramps to the 4 0 1. I, I was the, I was the boss and, and it was a crazy thing to kind of get thrown into and an amazing learning opportunity. But I also realized that,, There was not a lot of,, opportunity, at least in the field-based work for innovation and change. It was very much a well-established procedure. Mm-hmm. And of course, you know, the materials were known and the construction methods were known. And so there was no reason for there to be a great deal of innovation in it at that time. And I thought, no, I wanna do something a little different. So then I applied to graduate school and went to University of Alberta for my master's. Phenomenal. The, the professor's there, the courses there, the students there, everything was amazing. I learned so much there. It was fantastic. Great place. And I'd always thought, well, I'll go back and work for well before I decide whether I wanna do a PhD. But there was an opportunity at that point to work with, the person who basically started rock mechanics. He had a five year appointment in a chair position at University of Toronto. And I met him at a conference just. Close to the end of my masters and, and he said there were opportunities. So instead of going back to work, I, I moved back to University of Toronto and worked with Dr. Albert Hook, who was, was the, is the grandfather of basically rock mechanics for, for most of us. again, a phenomenal opportunity. I just had amazing experiences in the field, in the courses, meeting many people who came through University of Toronto to visit him. So again, the big names in our field were all coming through Toronto to, to visit with him and give lectures and got to meet all those people. So, again, phenomenal exposure. It's amazing, amazing to hear all those things and learn all those things. So, yeah, so that pivot cuz of the oil and gas sector was just amazing in terms of the broadening of opportunities that it gave me. And in my master's I worked more on degrading permafrost and foundations and permafrost. And then in my PhD I, I built an in instru or designed an instrumentation program at a mine and, and monitored the behavior of support systems in a mind. So, you know, through those first wow formative years, I had such a wide range of opportunities and experiences. It was amazing. Just phenomenal. Yeah, it's,

Alexis 5:51

it's crazy Like Jean, that's, that's fantastic. But I also think too, it's. So interesting is that you're like, oh, it's all serendipitous and it's all this like crazy luck. That happened too without, I think giving yourself credit to how fantastic your research was. Like you were managing construction, be like, oh yeah, first year out of undergrad. You're 23 years old, 22

Jean 6:10

at that point. Yeah. Right. To be a boss

Alexis 6:13

at that level of a full book construction point at 2324 is incredible. To be that type of person and then to run a full mine program and also to do your research up north and, and to be able to have that opportunity with the foundation or the founder of Rock Mechanics is is huge. Amazing. That's so wonderful. Oh, I love that story and I love how it just kind of, Fell into place. I think it's, it's fantastic.

Jean 6:37

Absolutely. Thanks. Yeah, no, I sort of have the philosophy that every point in my career and my life, and later on, once I got married to Mark and we had our kids, every point of decision making, there were always multiple opportunities. And I always felt that whichever one we picked would be amazing. So it just happened to be the way we did things. And when we first got married, we, we said, you know, the first sort of opportunity of doing something together, it'll be more focused on my career. And then the second one will be more focused on his career. And so it's actually been amazing how all things have worked out. And I mean, who knows? I, I probably would've had a stellar career in the oil and gas sector as well, if that had been the direction. But, you know, it's worked out beautifully and, and, it's, it's just so many amazing people along the way who've helped out. The one story I do have about being in, in charge of a construction project was when I first arrived. For obvious reasons. All of the very experienced inspectors for the Ministry of Transportation on the Highway Construction Project said, who's this person and why are they here telling us what to do? And I, I fully understand why they were asking that. And so at some point, I, I phoned the, my direct supervisor from the Stratford office and said, could you come out to the site for just a day or two and just sort of help me out here? And then after that, it was no more problem. But he really understood that situation, as did I, you know? Mm-hmm. Of course. Who, who am I to tell them what to do? Of course. But, but it was, it, it worked out really well in the end, but there was that little challenge, and that was the first, without me really realizing what it meant, the first allyship in that workplace that I had. So that was also really important. It's

Alexis 8:09

so important and it's such an important, I'm happy you brought that up, because it is so important to have those early career mentors and it's something that when you're that young, you just think that he's your boss and he's helping you out and he's doing the right thing. And then when you get a little bit older, you're like, oh, no, no, no. He was standing up for me. And the reason why I got that challenge, one, our safety gear doesn't help us. Like, I mean, when I wear the safety gear, I look like an eight year old with a clipboard. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's huge on me, right? So like I just, I don't really look like a commanding finger, but

Jean 8:41

sorry for laughing, but I can There's, so that, that's the case for so many women. Yes. Right? You just look

Alexis 8:48

like who brought their child to work Dayday,

Jean 8:50

like I didn't know that was a thing.

Alexis 8:52

So it's, but it is a gender challenge and so it's so important to have that early mentorship and that's amazing that you had that in your career. And I think I. What's so wonderful because I know you personally, I know how much you've impacted my friends and peers and colleagues and Oh, thank you. You've passed that on. So like, yes, you've had these wonderful people that gave you opportunities, but you've passed it on in spades, so, so it's Oh, thank you

Jean 9:18

for saying that. That's lovely. Thank you. You're welcome. It's

Alexis 9:20

the truth.

Jean 9:23

that's great. Yeah.

Alexis 9:25

Gene, the next one is maybe kind of taking a little bit of a step back before we go full nerd out. And full g geology is your research within, geo nge. It's specific to ground hazards, so it's including mine, substance and slope stability, and it's really a focus on the assessment and management of geo mechanic hazards. Could you kinda explain what is a geo mechanic hazard? What does this actually entail, and how has the specialty changed with time and technology?

Jean 9:55

Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. so first off, those types of hazards are things that, we focus on because they will impact something of importance to us. So in my case, railway infrastructure or communities below landslides or open pit mines where there's potential for, instability of the rock or soil to impact that operation. So that sort of, Why we focus on it. The hazards themselves are all, either natural or induced by human change to the environment. So, a natural rock slope will over time, generally produce a series of different failures. Maybe small, maybe big, but those hazards are things that move of course by gravity down slope, and then can impact what's at the bottom. And in the open pit mining case, you have the same challenge, but human activity by creating that mine is accelerating the rate of change and therefore you have much more frequent and sometimes quite large volume failures that happen. So the source is always a geological environment and a geological set of, of, of faults and shears and structure and different things in the rock mass that make it susceptible to fail under gravity. And then on top of that, we have all the influences like rainfall and snowfall and, and, In particular in climate change, increasing levels of that in certain environments too. So, so those are the geohazard things, moving down slope. So that's on the kind of geomechanics side, but one of my really big research projects over the years has been the railway Ground Hazard Research Program, which is a compilation of university developed Alberta professors and people from Queens as well as students at both institutions working with CN Rail and, cp and also Transport Canada and the Geological Survey of Canada. So a very big research team that's been going for I think 18 years now. It's phenomenal how long this has lasted actually, and the impacts we've had on the industry. And so, with that research program we've been able to see. The ways that people who, you know, cover 10,000 kilometers of track in their daily job have been able to take on new technologies to support them, who can take on new ideas and ways to, to support the, the, the work that they do. But the hazards themselves are, are, are going to be occurring. It's just how do we interact with them and then from a risk side, how can we try and mitigate them and how can we protect against them? So those are the sort of focuses of both the geology and the engineering in terms of that, that world.

Alexis 12:26

That's very cool. Thank you very much. That was a wonderful description of it and I think it is very clear. One question of risk management, is it mostly prediction based of being, like where on the slope will fail or is it, after the fact of trying to minimize that slope itself? So putting up like buttresses or putting up like some sort of protection against that? Or is it mostly prediction based?

Jean 12:50

That's a great question. and I think it's evolved over my career. So part of the motivation, in fact, for this railway ground hazard research program was to try and become more proactive and predictive. Mm. because up till that point, it was very much a reactive environment. Again, with the two railway companies, they have 40,000 kilometers of track across Canada, so an enormous area to cover. And so when I first started in this research program, They were working with more qualitative, assessments where they would say, well, there've been a bunch of failures here and here, and maybe not so many in these locations. So let's focus our efforts where we've seen failures. and they would do inspections. They still do, inspections to look and see where they could observe potential future instabilities to, to forewarn in that regard. Yeah. So if they could see from a helicopter inspection or a high rail inspection, something that was gonna happen, they would do what you just said, put a buttress or, scale it down, remove it, or put in, mesh to protect it. Over time with this research project and. The evolution in the industry that's been happening. At the same time, we've been able to take remote sensing techniques, so that we can sense the change in the slope on a regular basis. And we can see very small deformations well before any failure is going to occur. And so that now gives us the basis for doing a much more network wide analysis of potential for instability, and the ability to try and think about forewarning. Mm-hmm. But one of the big challenges from a geological perspective is one rock might deform a few centimeters and fail one rock might deform tens of centimeters or in the open pit case meters before there's failure. And so that geological interpretation is still really something we're thinking about in, in, you know, Does something that's changing an inch a year or a centimeter a year matter, or does something that's changing 10 meters a year matter. Right. So it's, it's really, that's the part that's still really fascinating and, and needs the geological component to that work. Totally. That's

Alexis 14:50

really cool too, because like with geology, right, like even if you look at one outcrop, it's gonna change, it can change on a centimeter scale, let alone like a meter scale. And if you're dealing with all across Canada, I think you said 40 k of track, that is a lot of heterogeneity of geology and different environments too with different weather patterns, different permafrost, different climate change is gonna affect every single area a little bit differently Absolutely. As well. Absolutely. There's just so much to go to it, but it's very cool that now we're, we're moving towards a predictive model and using that model potentially on different areas or different fields. Absolutely. Like that's, that's absolutely, that's a wonderful thing in science. That's fantastic.

Jean 15:28

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I think I, I think we're gonna come to this a bit later in the interview as well, but I think right now I wanna say that, there's, there's a lot of evolution in our ability to work with those big data sets and build them into databases to really help inform our work. But one of the things I've seen is, is, a deep dive into some of these techniques of working with these large data sets, which sometimes forget about the geology and the variability you're talking about. And so one of the things that I, I always say is, Particularly to my very excited computer savvy grad students, you know, we still have to keep the geology in mind, right? So, so we always have to keep that geological model in mind, and, and that helps us, as you just said, kind of partition up the different areas into these might behave in a certain way and they're like something, you know, 10 kilometers away. And then this area might behave like something somewhere else. And so we can learn, once we make those connections, we can learn from one site to the next. But that's a big amount of data and a big database. And, and I think that's, you know, one of our challenges is how do we collaborate across all the data sets? How do we make them available across all the data sets, particularly with private companies, sometimes that's not so easy. And then how do we, how do we really make the best out of those data sets without, without over. Promising and overcommitting to, to things, patterns that we see. So I'm a little cautious in that regard. Prob maybe, probably because of my age, but you know,

Alexis 16:53

I think like, I think caution is probably really good. I probably would be one of those young, like grad students and be like, but I created the perfect model that I love that took me 10 years of my life to create this model. Like, yes, I forgot to label any type of rock or give it a rock name, but that's fine. We don't need it. It's a beautiful model,

Jean 17:11

right? Like yeah, yeah,

Alexis 17:13

exactly. I think that caution's a a really good thing, and I think that that's really cool. It's really cool that we have that data set, but data sets in itself are fantastic, but it comes with a whole other challenge of how do we read it, how we do minimize bias, and then how do we make it publicly available? Right. And talk absolutely. Between private companies. So, and maybe that this is gonna get us into the next one, maybe it's data and data sets, but, the next question is, what is the biggest hot button issue of geomechanics? And what's something that maybe if you're not a geological engineer, if you're in the public, where would you start to be like, this is the most important thing for me

Jean 17:52

to learn? That's a, a really great question, and it's a fairly hard one to answer, I would say, cuz it, it, there's, there's a lot of challenges. I would say. one certainly is this thinking about data and how to work with it, but we've already covered that. I would say. In general, the, the, the big challenge facing society of climate change also impacts geomechanics. so how do we, how do we understand the potential for further instability associated with these changing climates? And that can range from, from drought through to more extreme precipitation, more frequent precipitation. All ranges of those different responses, as you said earlier, that happen in different environments, in fact, have an impact on. Natural slope, particularly geomechanics. So last summer there were unprecedented droughts in, in the UK and on the eastern coast of, of England on what they call the Jurassic Coast. Mm-hmm. Because of that drought, the rock mechanic, rock masses were drying out in a way they never had before. And that was leading to failures. Yeah. We usually think of it on the other way around where there's a lot more water and it leads to instabilities. But in England last summer, those instabilities were associated with that extreme heat and drying. So on both ends of the spectrum of what ha might happen in climate change or is happening in climate change, we're seeing an impact in terms of geomechanics. So from a geomechanics perspective, understanding that is certainly a, a key component, but even more so at the ri, at the risk basis, at the risk level is really important. How do we spend money where, I mean, if we. Could ha, we had unlimited budgets, we would be spending money everywhere. We don't, we have to be realistic about where we spend money and how we think about infrastructure and how we think about instability. In terms of long-term planning, long-term work, long-term design. So the other case example that some of my students are working on right now is the events on the west coast of Canada in the fall of 2021. With the atmospheric rivers. Yeah. On those atmospheric rivers, were for the public. Were were these big rainstorm rain patterns that come off the Pacific Ocean onto the west coast of Canada and North America. And they dump a huge amount of rain in a very short period of time. Normally by November in the fall, there's maybe one or two of those. But in the fall of 2021, there were 18. Mm-hmm. So there was just rainfall after rainfall, after rainfall, saturating those materials. And in doing so, it makes the material heavier. It effectively almost floats the material a little bit in terms of reducing its strength. That's in a simpler way to think about it. That's, that's crazy. Now that's actually what's happening. So you've got extra weight and less strength in that slope. So in the case of British Columbia, that followed on from the heat dome summer, which was extremely high heat and drought, which then led to more fires, forest fires than normally are encountered. And then the, all those rainfalls, and when forest fires happen, they both remove vegetation that helps stabilize slopes, but they also make the soil respond to rainfall in a different way. Yeah. So, so those things have all led to, A confluence of, of basically a perfect storm of things that happened. And so after those events in November of 2021, every single piece of infrastructure leading from Vancouver to the rest of Canada was cut off due to slope failures due to bridge, washouts due to washouts of the roads themselves and the railways. So every part of our infrastructure was cut off for some period of time with significant influence on, on people living in the area, in particular more remote communities, first nations communities mm-hmm. That were cut off for long periods of time. So that's not so much the geomechanics and the rock mechanics, but that's the bigger scale geohazard risk management that we have to think about. And we have to think about ways to identify future plans. How do we make those communities more emergency ready? How do we, try and. Create at least lifeline infrastructure that will be more resilient to those types of events. again, we don't have enough money to do it for everything, but we have to be, more, I think, realistic and smart about how we think about infrastructure and how we, make it more resilient into the future. So that to me is one of our, from, from the more, you know, pure mechanic side, one of the biggest things we're, we're facing is how we respond to these big hazards. Mm-hmm. How we fund them and how we make sure that there's, focus on not only the big cities, but all the communities who may be affected. So it's a big, a big thorny problem that I, I, you know, that we have to keep working on. I think.

Alexis 22:21

Yeah. No, I agree. I think that's the perfect answer. And I think, I think you're completely right. I think it's such a huge compounding problem, and it's such a problem that's also so unprecedented, right? Yeah. Like with the idea. Very, at the very, very start of that answer when you talked about the uk, I mean, that goes counterintuitive to what we think about rock stability. That was actually drawing, that was causing these slumps, right? You usually think like, okay, a high volume of water and saturation that's going to lead to failure. But to see the opposite is just something very, very different than we'd originally think. And being a vancouverite myself and being in in bc, we're still recovering from those floods and. You're correct. It was, yes, the big city was hit like Vancouver was hit. It was really hard to find a lot of things. People were cut off, some communities were completely decimated. All of our area, our low line area is mostly farmland. They were all completely flooded. Mm-hmm. They lost multiple seasons of crops. So we had huge economic problems within that. But we also had small remote communities that were completely isolated and were isolated for months. Right. I think we're still dealing with a huge amount of damage, a huge amount of infrastructure, replacement and repairment and so I think you're correct. I don't know how we're gonna do it. I don't know what the future is gonna look like cuz it's a really big problem. But I think infrastructure management and risk mitigation of these, of these geo geologic and natural phenomena, I think is probably where the public should be the most aware of and probably what's going to affect the public the most, truthfully. Yeah.

Jean 24:01

I think so too, unfortunately. there's an interesting, process going on in the United States at the moment. The, the federal government put in place, I, I think it was maybe three years ago, funding, which the, the short form for is protect and it stand, I can't remember what it stands for, but it's basically funding that's focused on, asking all of the departments of transportation for each individual state to come up with plans to make their infrastructure more resilient. And it's a, it's sort of a matching funding program where once a state identifies a way to determine what are critical lifelines and what, what are the measures required to make things more resilient. Once they've made the budgets, then they can apply to the federal government for funding. But they have to show the, the resilience metrics that they're addressing. And they have to show, how they're going to try and address climate change in this funding. And I think that's, In the case of North America, that's a really leading kind of way of thinking about it and getting people to start working on it. And it's remarkable the work that's being done in a number of states across the US to respond to thinking about these changes that are coming or are, are, are happening now and how to address them. And then, well, back in my career, in 2007, I spent a sabbatical in Norway and in Norway at that time, they had something called Geo Xtreme and the Geo Xtreme project was again funded by the federal government and was really focused on how, they might. Modify some of their infrastructure, their road and culvert infrastructure and bridge infrastructure to consider future models of, of climate change. And they worked on avalanches and, and snow avalanches and materials coming down. And I think it's had a significant influence on, on them because they started at that time really thinking about if we're changing a roadway or if we're building a new one, what do we have to consider? So there are lots of really great examples of other jurisdictions that have started to think about this or are working on this. And I think, Alberta I know has recently done some work along this, and I think British Columbia is starting to do some work on this as well, or is doing some work on this as well. So it's a matter of time, before I think we all start to really address this on a, a bigger scale. But yeah, absolutely, the public should be concerned about this in so many ways. And knowing from friends who lived in Vancouver, the effect of the heat dome as well, like that was really remarkably, hard for many, many people, I think. And that's too many fatalities, I think too. So, yeah. Yeah.

Alexis 26:22

I think we were o I think we had enough warning on the heat do that. We were okay. Cuz I remember that coming up and my mom calling me right away and being like, go grab your grandmother and like take her home cuz she is 99 years old and mm-hmm. It is too hot for, for the elderly. But we still had fatalities. Like yeah, we still lost lives. And it, it was a very scary, scary thing. It was a scary natural phenomenon that you're like, this is terrifying that this is climate change. But I do think the two programs that you just mentioned are fantastic, especially the one in the US that is open data from each state. So you have 50 states that are actually actively working on it independently and then can share data. Right. So that goes back to like a public data set that I think is, is remarkable. That's kind of what we need. That's good for Absolutely. It's starting, starting to start right. To be like, okay, absolutely have to think

Jean 27:11

about this. Yeah. And if, if there are any listeners to your podcast who are interested, the, the, probably the most accessible data set at the moment that you can look at, and it's really focused on public understanding, not scientist or engineering understanding. It's based on science and engineering, but it, it really is set out so that the public can understand it is in California. So the California transportation of, transportation, department has a really great website with all sorts of things you can look at about, climate change and resilience and how they're working on it. And then the state of Colorado is also doing some really interesting work, that they're making publicly available. So at the end of this, I can send you both those links if you wanna add them to the information you're distributing. Yes, please. I

Alexis 27:49

would absolutely love that. Thank you Jean. I'll post that into this episode. I'll embed it, but I'll also post it across all of our channels so people can look at it. That's fantastic. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. That was amazing. we're gonna pivot a little bit from geo. Jill Eng, because you've been a professor for 25 years, you've had an extensive teaching, career. In your career as a professor. Is there one topic that you love to teach? Is it an aha moment of your students? Is it a foundation theory that's the backbone of their education? Is there anything that comes top of mind?

Jean 28:23

Absolutely. And, and you know, if you asked me this question every five years, it would be a different answer. It's changed, it's changed over the years significantly. So in the early days it was all the aha moments associated with technical things. And, and certainly over the years, the work we've done with, with lidar and, and change detection, we can produce these beautiful maps showing how things have changed on slopes, where failures happened, where it's landed and. The fact we are using laser systems to do that has always been really interesting for the students. And more recently we're working with game engines. So the, the engines that are behind games and behind even, videos and, and films where, I remember the first first time I really realized this was during, during the movie Brave, I don't know if you've seen it, but in the movie, brave, there's some scenes where the young heroin is running and her hair is just flowing and then she meets this big bear and, and the big bear's hair is flowing. That's all physics engines behind that. So that animation is all based on physics engines. And so working with Rob Har up in our department, who I'm sure you know as well, he's always been kind of on the computer end and the game engine end of things. And so he and I talked about this and so we've been using physics engines to simulate rockfalls. So that's also been a fun thing cuz they can see, you know, the rock starting and then it breaking up as it comes down slope. And this has led to some, actually some other research we're doing now, but. Now the biggest, kind of aha moments from my perspective and the things that I love teaching the most at the moment are two. Actually, I can't, I can't follow, don't want down to one, two. That's ok. You don't have two. Thank you. So, so the first is in, in second year. And we'll talk a little bit more in a moment about some of the other stuff we're doing in second year. But in second year we changed the second year course, which is u which is, focusing on introducing students to the ways that they, as future geological engineers might, might engage in the industry across many different components of the industry. That's the focus of this course. Half of the assignments are, are. Computational assignments, how do you calculate this? How do you work this engineering thing out? But the other half are workshops that we've developed to focus on, how you communicate with the public, how you evaluate what's a, a catastrophe or a hazard. What is the language you're using, how are you conveying scientific information? How are you viewing the world around you as a, a future professional? Engineer in this case. And to me those are actually the most interesting and fun teaching things I do now because I love seeing each time how the students respond to those things and, and the, the work that they do in those things. So that's totally different than 25 year years ago, me would've said, I wouldn't have said that. And, and I think that's, that's a. Key thing. So this past year we included some of our undergrads in a, in a graduate program, a graduate course on, on geohazard. And we talked a lot about, we had another instructor in the course, who really focused on some of the human interactions with hazards and the way we communicate with the public. And I'd learned a ton from Laura and sort of the students and all the students said, you know, this is, this is stuff we should be learning and we haven't been learning and we need to be learning. So that's an evolution for sure over those 25 years for me, in terms of what we need to expose our students to before they graduate so that they're prepared and already thinking about those f forward facing communications with the public. So that's one part of the AHA moments. And the other part of the aha moments are really a field course that I've run since, well, 2003 in the undergrad program and more recently in our professional master's program. We have a professional master's on earth and energy leadership. And in that I lead a field course that I'm actually leaving four in a week. But, but the field courses where we look at. The mining cycle or the resource cycle, we look at it from the beginning of how do you even examine the land? How do you consider, say, first nations use of the land? How do you consider other use of the land? How do you consider the impacts that you might have even at the exploration stage? Mm-hmm. Then you move through exploration, you move through all the permitting processes. And then if the project is permitted, you then do the extraction work and then the processing work, and you often generate waste. Hmm. So in that whole cycle, how do you divert more of that waste to something usable? How do you reduce the impact on the land? How do you, communicate with anybody who might be impacted by the project and from not trying to, you know, force the project on people to really get them to understand and to see whether they really truly do support the project and will see some benefit from the project. And so those are the kinds of, that that course, that field course at both the undergrad and grad level is, is my absolutely favorite teaching. The, the light bulbs that go on are, are remarkable every day on that trip. We have fantastic companies who. Take us onto their sites, they explain very clearly the challenges they're facing, the innovations that they've made, or the areas where they don't really know a solution yet. And that's something that really is amazing for the students to be exposed to, both from the perspective of those companies, but also as a group of students, cuz the discussions that they have every evening in our, in our sessions after, after the day are, are amazing. So, yeah, that's actually my really favorite, favorite teaching to do is, is tho is those field schools. Oh my goodness,

Alexis 33:36

Jean, you have no idea how much that warms my heart to hear that those. Both of those programs exist because it's such a beautiful way of thinking about geology and geological engineering. And I think that that is the type of teaching and the type of conversation that needs to happen because it's a holistic view and it's a community view of resource extraction and resource management. Right? And does this community actually need it? Will it benefit the community? How are we going to impact the natural environment? What are we gonna do about that? How are we gonna make this waste useful? Because, Unfortunately, we still are a resource-based society and in Canada we're a resource-based country. Mm-hmm. Our entire wealth is based on resources, but we do need to be more responsible with that. So that holistic view and to see that so young for second years undergraduate and grad students, that's absolutely amazing. And the communication side of it, to be able to actually communicate science is so important because I think that is one of the biggest problems in my personal opinion that I've seen, is just, scientists know all this and they're like, guys, this is what we have to be focused on, but we don't have the language or the ability or maybe the platform to actually explain it. Right. And to tell people who really wanna understand this, but they have no idea where to go to be like, what is geomechanics? What is lidar? Mm-hmm. It was touched briefly at the very start, but also as an aside, what, absolute nerd. Like dream that you can understand landslides by using gaming technology. Like two perfect things that you love in life have come and met together that you're like, yes, I love rocks, I love video games, and now I can do both for my job. Like, that's absolutely fantastic.

Jean 35:24

I have to tell you, Alexis, I, I'm not a huge gamer. Rob is Rob and his family are, my, my kids always wanted to be gamers and we always kept them away from it thinking too much screen time, too much screen time, and then here I am. So, so I remember an aha moment at a conference where I talked about, The beginning of this work and how we were using at the time Minecraft to create our, our world, our worlds. Again, all from Rob, not from me, but yeah. And I remember all the parents in the audience going, oh my goodness, okay, so our kids can keep playing Minecraft. You know, so

Alexis 35:54

it's finally given the go ahead. But your kids are probably like, come on mom, like now you do this for John.

Jean 36:01

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have much of a, a video game childhood and they, they, they played them a little bit, but not a huge amount. Whereas that's really kind of Rob's contributions to our research and it's, it's fascinating and it really draws in a lot of fantastic students who. Maybe aren't as focused on the field and are interested in the computer side. And I think that merging, again, of technologies and environments and, and kind of worldviews even is really good. It's really essential in our, in our field. We can't stay in our, I i, I know the outcrop or I know the rockfall, or I know the physics engine or game engine. We need to bring it all together,

Alexis 36:36

right? We need to merge. Agree completely. And I think like as, creatures of habit and creatures of geology, I think you do wanna stay within your lane. You're like, no, I would like to only look at my clay and I don't wanna look at anything else. So it's, I think it's really nice to have a, a mixed of both and a mix of two worlds. So it's just such a cool, cool part of research. And I also see that it's just gonna take off, like this is the beginning of it. Who knows what's gonna change with AI and artificial intelligence? I think that is gonna be a whole nother game changer to these models. So absolutely. This is really, really exciting to see where it's gonna go.

Jean 37:11

Yeah. No, thank you. No, it's so cool, Jean. It's so, so cool. So the other thing I wanted to say was, I think, that this professional master's program I mentioned a moment ago, it's focused on people who are working and who want to remain working and then they can do a part-time. It's not really an mba, but it's similar in terms of the course load and the, and the content. And I created it when I was head because talking to alumni and talking to, companies and talking to students. There, there really is this, almost disconnect between what you said. We need these resources. We, we, we thrive from these resources increasingly with the critical minerals required to drive the green energy change. Mm-hmm. Those are all extracted from the earth and in some circumstances they have fairly significant environmental and physical impact. And so that trade off between those, those challenges of needing those minerals, but, or metals, and then also trying to extract them as a key component. Similarly, getting. The still required oil and gas across the country. And I don't think we're weaning ourselves from that anytime soon. And I, I think we're, we're, you know, we need that. So that debate between pipelines and then oil by rail, for example, these are all trade offs that we have to make and we have to recognize. And if society says no to everything, then we stagnate. We can't do the things we have to do. So there has to be this balanced perspective as much as possible on these challenges. So this program, again, that I'm leading the field trip next week, it attracts, lawyers, it attracts environmental scientists, it attracts. Engineers and scientists. We've had people working for the Alberta Energy regulator as stakeholder. Components. We have currently in our current cohort, a person who works on, first Nations advocacy and resource projects. another woman who's a lawyer in Africa doing similar work. And so we, it's a very international program and it's also a very, broadly based program. And the whole idea was how do we have the conversations we need to have to understand as much as we can all these different political and policy and human factor components, and how do we help the, the resource projects that should Go ahead. Go ahead. So that we mm-hmm. We, cuz we keep sort of putting on the brakes on everything these days, it seems. And there's gotta be some things that on balance, have enough benefit to offset the cost that always comes with any of these projects. So that was, that's a. Program I talked about. And I think that's another example of this idea that you need to bring many people to bear on problems and recognize that there are some projects that shouldn't go ahead. The, the co the environmental and social costs are much higher than the benefits. So we need to have that trade off and we need to have people who are able to lead in that field. And so that's kind of been the focus of that program and we've had people from all over the world and I think in some cases they've gone back to, their home countries or remained in their home countries and are really making big change for the better. So it's been remarkable to be part of that as well, actually.

Alexis 40:08

That's fantastic and I'll link that program again. I'll add it to the resource list. That's fantastic to see. And it's, it's really cool to see that intersectionality between not just science, but also like economics and legal and First nation and community. And I just think that that's a fantastic thing. And I think that you can only really make those decisions to be like, no, no, go for a project to be like, we're actually not gonna do that. The cost is too much if you do have a broad base of understanding that it's a legal, economic, and community based, not just purely science. So that's, that's wonderful to see. And I mean, you've been busy, Jean, like you've, you've created so many programs because we're about to talk about another program that you created and this is a wonderful, fantastic new program, in the department. And it is that you have created these E D I workshops with your second year geologic Geo N students. Could you kind of walk us through how these workshops work? What goes into it? What they entail and kind of how did they come about that you created

Jean 41:11

this? Absolutely. Yeah. No, thank you. It's, it's a, it's a really important program from my perspective, and we've run them, I've run this four times now, so I've, I've captured all the students currently in program and continuing to offer it at the, at the second year level. I. So it's, it's motivated by the unfortunate reality that some of the things that I was putting up with, or just joking in the early start of my career is still happening to our students, unfortunately. So young women coming back from field programs in the summer, graduate students being out on drill sites or other locations in the field, most often in the field, construction projects, exploration projects, drilling projects, where they were being harassed or they were being belittled or their ideas were certainly not being considered. And in some cases, I remember speaking to one graduate who was out by about a year and she was on a mindset that we were actually visiting on the undergrad field program. And I said, how's it going? And she's so fantastic. And I said, well, you know, where is so-and-so Who was her best friend in undergrad? You know, she had a great. Interesting career and the student I, or the former student I was speaking with said, well, she decided to stay out of the industry. She's now going to teacher's college cuz she couldn't put up with the field, she couldn't put up with what was happening in the field and she didn't feel she had support or, or any coping mechanisms. So she just left and she left after her summer experience is not, you know, that's maybe three, maybe two, four month experiences. And that was enough for her to go, I don't want this field. Yeah. And unfortunately I'm hearing that still in so many cases, so many circumstances, unfortunately. So that is what. Initiated this, thinking about it. Meanwhile, I, my daughter, I have two daughters who are in it, have been in engineering, are now in graduate school. And one of them did some work in the field as well, and sort of came back with stories about things. And she mostly, didn't have a lot of impacts personally, thankfully, but there were a number of other young women that she was working with, who did. And so she was telling me some of these stories, and she was probably more free to tell me those stories than some of the students maybe who are a little more reticent to share all the details often. Mm-hmm. But through those two, that confluence of these, this feedback, I thought, oh my goodness, I, you know, I, I, this is not acceptable. It wa it never has been acceptable. But now I'm at the point in my career where I don't care how. Yeah, the, the men or the perpetrators view me, I don't care. And a lot of young women do care because it's their career and they see no way out of it. So I thought, I need to do something about this. I've always tried in a quiet way to do something about it and support young women and, but now I need to do something much more overt about it. And so one of the things is this set of workshops with the students in second year, and part of it is, I start the workshops with a fairly short presentation about the current statistics related to the number of women engaging in STEM studies, the number of women remaining in STEM professions, the leaky pipeline problem of, yeah. Of people just not finding career advancement or career success, even though they might love the, the, the topic or the area. They just aren't finding that. So, so leaving or realizing it's not at all what they want anyway. And so there's many reasons for the leaky pipeline, but most of it seems to be the non-inclusive workforce and the non-inclusive work environment for, for people. so I start with those sort of statistics, which is often surprising to the students in the class. And I use my personal example of I'm the first in many, many, many things that, that happened in my career. And now in our program we're 50% women in the science program and the engineering program and in the graduate program. Yeah. So it's pretty amazing how things have changed in a relatively short time. Mm-hmm. So, so we talk about that and then I give them five different written scenarios and I purposefully set it up so that there are three students at each table with a written scenario. They read the scenario to themselves and they write a first response to the scenario. A personal response to the scenario, or mm-hmm. Any, really any response to the scenario that they would like to record. It's all anonymous. There's no way I know who's writing on which page or anything else. So it's all anonymous. And so they write, they read the scenario, they write their response, and then they talk as a group. And those groups are completely randomly set up, and every single time we change to a scenario, they're with different people. They're never with the same people twice. It's always mixing people up. And, they, they talk about the scenario and then they write another response at the end indicating what came out of that discussion. And then at the end of the session, after it, we open the floor for discussion about it so that if there's any issues that, have arisen or any questions they have, they can. And we can try and address them. Then I also offer that if they want to talk to me at any time afterwards, they can do so confidentially. Mm-hmm. And then I have them fill out a final document, which is kind of a reflection on how the session went, what they learned, what else they'd like to see in a future session, those kinds of things. So that's, that's sort of how the workshop works. And then we, I've run it, I think, as I said, four times, and every time it's been a different response from the class. It's been actually really interesting. So

Alexis 46:10

that's, it's so important, Jean, what you're doing. And this is just, thank you. This is so wonderful. And before we kind of dive into the actual discussion on these workshops, I just have a couple like clarifying questions for the workshops. Yeah. They're both men and women, right? Yep. That are doing these workshops. Amazing. And all early entry, second

Jean 46:27

year students. Yeah, I mean that's the, that's the model now, Alexis, but I also did run it for third years and fourth years. The first time I did, I created it so that I, we captured everybody currently in program, so Wonderful. So I, but mostly I am doing it with second years. Absolutely. Yeah. I

Alexis 46:43

think that's fantastic and I love that you're doing it with a combination of both men and women, because I think that is such a key component that everyone needs, needs to be aware with it. And if it's not like directly affecting you, sometimes it's hard to see. So it's wonderful to have those workshops where men can see these true life scenarios and to understand kind of what's happening to their women colleagues and friends, and even mentors, like their bosses have gone through this, right. So it's just a wonderful program and just thank you so much for creating it and being loud, supporting this in a loud way because I know when I first started, I started working at mining when I was 19, and I didn't think I was so young. I didn't think that I could be loud and I, no. I, we'll talk about it probably in a little bit, but you shared this beautiful paper with, with me before this interview that you and your daughter co-wrote, which is a beautiful thing in itself, but thank you. Part of that paper, what really resonated with this idea of toughness in the field, and I thought one idea of being able to be a geologist was you had to go into the field one to work in the field. You had to be tough. Men were kind of automatically tough, but as a woman, you had to prove that you were tough and being tough included taking a fair amount of sexual harassment or mm-hmm. Or sexism. Right. I just thought that that was par for the course. Like, and I thought that I was proving my toughness by being able to withstand harassment, and that's an absolutely ridiculous idea, but I, I was 19 and I, yeah, I didn't. I didn't think you could complain cuz I thought it was just part of the culture. So it's just wonderful that you're having this discussion with young women and young men when they first start their career and they first start their education. And I think it's very sad that we still have to do that, but it's a wonderful thing that we, we have it. And

Jean 48:37

absolutely, you know, I, that makes me sort of really sad to hear that because it is the reason so many people don't love their jobs when they could do Right. That putting up with everything is just insidious and it's, it's, it's so unfortunate. It's, it's really unnecessary and it's, it's so pervasive still unfortunately that, you know, I'm just joking. Haha. You know. No, no, you're not. And, and so I think, I think the evolution I've seen in general terms in the industry is increasing focus on having e d i committees or having e d i surveys or having e d i policies and companies and I, I think most people are. Relatively early stage in this. They're, they're still developing this as they go, but over time I've seen this evolution where people are now looking at inclusivity. So let's attract people to the, to the business. Let's, let's get them interested in the business, but let's keep them, let's, let's not drive them away. And so the inclusivity is really kind of the focus that, that Katie, my daughter and I have had on this. And now we're continuing to work on, but the inclusivity part is the part that's, that we have to get right? We have to make everybody with their diverse perspectives, their, their interesting ideas that may be different than yours, but they should not be discounted because they're different than yours. They enrich the environment. They're the ideas you should be listening to. You should be trying to make your, in the engineering case, you should be making your engineering products suitable for. The diverse people who might use them. You should have these diverse perspectives. And the statistics show that anytime you have a more diverse board or a more diverse working group, you get a better product, you get a better outcome, you get more ideas. And of course, some of them may not be relevant, but don't shut it down because someone's younger than you or different than you like. That's just not acceptable in my mind at all. And so I'm really glad to see, sorry you got me on my soapbox now. No, no, you stay on it. It's fantastic, gene. Stay on it as long as you want. Thank you. But I think the, I think the, the increasing focus on inclusivity is a key part of where we have to go. And unfortunately, I still think in many of the companies at senior levels, there are women and men who just don't understand the importance of it. Cuz they don't have that personal experience. Maybe they, they don't have kids who are going through it like I am or I do. or they haven't had the personal experience. So they don't necessarily understand the importance of it. They might. See some general level, but they don't have that personal experience. So what you're doing with collecting people's real stories is also key because the more people hear about real stories and hear about real experiences, the more hopefully we start to become more empathetic to one another and understand why this is so important. So I think, yeah, I think it's, it's, it's a key part of where we have to go to attract people and keep people in the industry who can contribute a huge amount mm-hmm. If they're not driven away by all that. All that, that stuff.

Alexis 51:22

Yeah. No, thank you so much. That's really, really kind and that's kind of what we hope to do. Atmo o is really just highlight women and allow them to tell their story however they would like to tell it. Right. Like, to whatever degree they would like to tell it. So, so thank you very much. But you're welcome. I, I couldn't agree more. Like, I think inclusivity is so, so important and I think the one thing that we're missing right now is making the environment safe, especially in a field-based, Industries such as geological engineering or geology. It's so field-based and it's currently not safe for everybody. And I'm even saying this as a white woman I don't have the same level of oppression on my shoulders as some of my peers. Right, absolutely. And some of absolutely the people that have to go through different layers of oppression. And I don't have that, I only have sexism as being a white woman in geology. And still for me it's an unsafe place. So I couldn't imagine if I had an intersectional identity. Absolutely. I, I really couldn't of working in field work. So it's, this is just such an important thing and these workshops are foundational too, moving forward. So just thank you so much. And I mentioned briefly this paper that you shared the paper. It's a long one. I'm gonna try to get it right. It is called Geotechnical Engineering steps towards effective gender inclusivity in our profession. It will also be tagged with all of our, resources that we've talked about within this podcast and this paper you've written with your daughter from, who is a professor at University of Victoria and it Oh, she's

Jean 52:57

a master student. Sorry. She's not yet a professor. She may get there, but she's a master student at the moment.

Alexis 53:01

Oh my goodness. She wrote this paper. Wow. That's insane. That's insane.

Jean 53:04

That's absolutely amazing. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to clarify that. Yeah, she's amazing. She's, she's remarkable. And her, her way of thinking about these things has educated me so much as well. Like it's been amazing working with her on this cuz she, she really has a lot of friends who have, as you said, different intersectionalities and you know, most of the people that I know kind of at my age and the friends I would've had at her career stage didn't necessarily weren't maybe comfortable with some of those intersectionalities and, and identifying them. Whereas now people hopefully are feeling they can be more authentic and, and so Katie has brought. All sorts of knowledge to me that I wouldn't have in any other way. So, yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just wanted to clarify that. No, please.

Alexis 53:43

It was a fantastic clarification. And it's also for anyone who's not in academia for the fact that she is published and also doing her masters is a huge accomplishment and deserves, she deserves her flowers. That's fantastic. And that's, it's so cool that you guys are writing this paper together and it's just such a beautiful mother-daughter moment. Thank you. And this paper that you wrote it, it's really, it's a fantastic paper because it outlines these workshops, it outlines some of these scenarios that you have run and gives examples so you can read about it. It's only seven pages. It's really accessible. You do not have to be an engineer or a geologist to read it, so please give it a read. But it walks you through the different scenarios, that are all based on real life interviews. And then it gives us best practices for creating this more inclusive workspace. Could you kind of walk us through some of these best practices,

Jean 54:32

Jean? Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks. I think probably the biggest, best practice is making sure that people before they go in the field, agree to a field assignment, are fully briefed on what's included, both from a, an a living environment, a working environment, what kind of company or research support there will be if they run into challenges, how long they'll be there, how physical the work will be, because you can't really make an informed consent to do that kind of work without having that level of briefing. And I don't think many people get that level of briefing. Even myself, you know, I've now, since talking to Katie about this, I've changed a lot the way that I engage with my graduate students about we're going to be doing this and here's all the things included. Are you comfortable, is there anything we can do to make sure that, that this works for you? And, and my field projects are usually a week or two. They're not months in an environment for which for some people is very challenging. So that idea of really laying out what will be involved and what the mechanisms are, if things aren't working the way that the person is comfortable with, or if there's any kind of harassment, what are the steps for them to move forward with? Getting company support, is a really key part of it. And then the corollary of that is when you're working, what are the consequences of saying no to a field project? Because if you don't feel that you can say no, then even if you're not comfortable, you still accept the assignment and you maybe don't even bring up some of the challenges that you foresee. So, so what are the consequences on your career of saying no? And when I've talked to more senior people in our industry about this, they all say, You shouldn't be in the industry if you can't hack it, basically. And I, that, that again makes me so very sad because I think there are so many realities for different people of how happy they will be to be away for a period of time in certain environments. There's gotta be a place throughout our industry in different ways that people can contribute without feeling that that's what they have to put up with again, put up with, right? Mm-hmm. And so to me, one of that's one of the biggest learnings is how you, how you, indicate what will be happening, potentially, how you indicate what should be done if things don't go well, and, and what it'll mean for your career. And I think for some people, if they knew that the company had that philosophy, that if you can't hack it, you shouldn't be here, then they should change companies. Not leave the industry, but change companies and find one that's more amenable to that. So increasingly I'm seeing companies that are founded by, women have executive committees that are women. And, and in those cases, I think that they're more. Open to some of these conversations. They're open to job sharing ideas. They're open to Matt leave, considerations and pat leave considerations. They're open to all these other ideas about how to make the work-life balance work for people. Mm-hmm. Early in my career that you, you didn't talk about work-life balance at all. You just talked about work. Yeah. And it's an essential part of what we've had to where we need to be and where we should be more in this work-life balance. How you support people with all different realities, all different selves in this profession. So, so that's one of the biggest things in my mind, is that informed consent and knowing where to go. I think the other thing is creating competency company policies for both your company and also for anybody you work with, maybe as a subcontractor about your toler, your lack of tolerance for any of these kinds of things. That's a key part of it in my mind. And, and you know, a best practices kind of thing, almost like. Maybe the public aren't aware of this, but there are these international standards for safety and quality and work. And I think we should have an international standard for, safety and field work for people of all different, intersectionalities. Absolutely. And then I think the other thing that we sort of suggested, there are quite a few things, but one of the other things I think that may resonate is in most projects you have at the start of any meeting or any workday, what's called a safety share. And you go through in that day, you know, if you're working on, a landslide site, you may, if it rains, it may be slippery, or if you hear this kind of sound, that means this might be happening. Or there's a lot of things that you go through and say, here's what you should be aware of in your workplace. Here's the things that may happen in the workplace as a result of, of these different activities and here's what you should do about it. And we don't ever have. You know, a physical harassment or, inclusivity share ever. And we should have inclusivity shares. We should say, in this day, here's some of the challenges that may arise. Here's ways you can be an ally to people. Here's ways you can better communicate with people. Here's ways you can include people. And so in my mind, if we could go to something where you had both a safety share and an inclusivity share, we would be so much further ahead with everybody thinking about it. That's a

Alexis 59:16

fantastic ad. Jean. I love that idea of inclusivity share, like for years of safety meetings and safety briefs. I have never heard of someone talk about inclusivity or anything. E d I related. Mm-hmm. And I think what she mentioned at the very beginning of understanding. What does the fieldwork actually entail? It sounds simple. And maybe from someone who's outside of the field, they're like, okay, well that doesn't seem like a big deal. But I've had Fields work that I've gone in and they're like, yep, we're gonna send you to the woods. You'll be fine. You're gonna go out for six weeks. And you're like, okay, sick. Awesome. Again, I was 18 or like 19, and so I was like, cool, I got a job. Like, that's exciting for me. And then you come out and you're like, okay, I'm one of two women. We're living in a camp with 50 men. We have communal showers. Yes, I am again, 19 years old, and I am now in this kind of communal bathing situation with a bunch of older men. And, and I'm honestly, frankly, very uncomfortable with this and a little bit scared, right? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I've had, and I've had situations where I'd be like, okay, well you're gonna work underground and you're gonna work with this one. Guy that you've never met before, and you're gonna be really in this enclosed small space, and you're gonna be in a remote area where you have no communication and no nothing. And I remember sitting there to be like, okay, what if he attacks me? Like, you have your wrench on your thigh. Like you can like, like it's, it's just, if you don't know those, Parameters of your work, of your field work, it just can end up becoming a, a big stress on you because you instantly go there. And that man who I went, who did the survey with me, he was a lovely man. Mm-hmm. But I had never met him. He was a complete stranger. And everything in my life had put me to be like, okay, you could potentially be a threat. He ended up being a wonderful person and like no threat to me. And same with the people that I worked at that mining camp, it ended up being completely okay. And they were very respectful with the communal showers, but it was an uncomfortable thing that I had no idea that I was walking into. So just the fact that that could be outlined is super powerful in itself. And then I think what is also more powerful is that idea of field work and that what if I say no to field work? Mm-hmm. Because we're taught when we're field work based. I mean, I'm a, I'm a leaky pipeline graduate. I'll, I'll be open with that, that I, mm-hmm. I ended up leaving geology and. I loved my industry and I loved working with I O D P, but part of my work with I O D P is that it's a two month on saline position. And I did that for six years of saline, two months in the middle of the ocean, and then two months off. But I realized I got to a position that I was like, well, I think I would like a family. Mm-hmm. And I think I would like to settle down. And I think that's something that, um, maybe management doesn't consider that women who are working in field re remote situations sometimes have to leave because they have to become, they wanna become moms and start their family and Absolutely. I think that's so important that you guys can capture that with the policy of no, of what happens to my career if I say no. And challenging this idea of if you can't cut field work, you're not, you're not, appropriate in this field. It's completely ridiculous. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I could do so much type of geology from home. I can do so much. Absolutely. Data sets like it, it's changing, right? Mm-hmm. It's not. Absolutely. So this is, this is wonderful. Again, we're gonna post this, this paper and everything else that we've discussed, but please go and give this paper a read and please look into these workshops because they are fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic that you're doing Jean, and thank you. We have one last question, and it's a little bit lofty, so, so apologize for that. But it's, in terms of representation, we've talked about it, it's obviously changed, since you began because, and that largely is because of people like you who are loud and who are, who are making changes and who are standing up for women and men who are working within these fields and. You kind of represent one of the first cohorts of women working within STEM and trades fields, and obviously it's gotten better, but I still think that we have a lot of ways to go. What would be your message and what would be something that you would say to young women and men who are just starting within the

Jean 1:03:42

industry now? Yeah, again, a, a really great question and, and again, I would, I would have a different answer every five years of my career, so I'll address it from this per point. I think that there is a, A huge amount to still be done or to be done in our field. As I said earlier, the kind of green energy revolution, the response to climate change, the ability to think about societal responses to, and impacts from, resource projects, et cetera. There's, there's, there's an enormous range of, of talents and, intelligence that we need in our field. And we should be encompassing more diverse groups within this field Absolutely. So that we get a much broader basis and benefit from those tremendous range of different ideas and worldviews that people will bring to this. We'll be better off by far if we can do that. So if you're at all interested in this field, try it out. In my mind, don't, don't feel that sort of the comments that we've had about fieldwork are, are, I mean, they may put you off, unfortunately, in, in which case absolutely. You know, the field may not be for you unfortunately, but. Actually to that point, one thing I wanted to say is like a bunch of the mining companies now are creating family houses on their property. So for people who are in fly and fly out situations, they're able to bring, their chil young children with them, sometimes with their partners, sometimes with a caregiver, but they're able to bring their young children to site. And the site has set up, daycare facilities and set up environments where people can be at site with kids. So, so things are changing and, and you know, so some of the early stuff, career things for me are, are not at all the same, but as we've said, there's more work to be done anyway. I, I think that the, the, the field is amazing as, as you just said, Alexis, you can work from home on a computer, you can be in the field, you can do all sorts of, you can be in a chemistry lab if you're doing geochemistry. Mm-hmm. You can do so many different things in the geoscience, geological engineering world. And, you can, travel as much as you want. I've traveled all over the world on a very regular basis cuz I love to do that. And I've been able to do that as part of my job because landslides are everywhere. Mine, substance is everywhere, you know? So I think that in my mind it's been an incredibly rewarding career and environment in which I've been able to. As you've heard, bring together a lot of different things to try and address some of the problems, and it's really an environment where you can innovate, where you can thrive, where you can find different paths to your career. So, you know, early on I was in consulting around mind closure planning and, and when I had my first daughter, the one I wrote the paper with, I realized, As you did with the, the, the drilling program. I couldn't be sent all over the place to different places, as a result of that. And so my career has changed over the time in, in terms of my ability to still do what I love, but find different ways to do it. And in my case, being an academic, for my age, particularly being an academic when there weren't job sharing, when there weren't these other opportunities has been the way I've been able to stay in the field, have a great career, and also have two kids. So I'd say there's a path for everybody. And it's such a great field. It's so interesting. There's so much to do, in our natural world around us that, that I think hopefully people will consider it. I love

Alexis 1:06:58

that. And I thank you very much for bringing us back to the light because I think like sometimes we do get bogged down of just. Because you do need to have that discussion, that realistic discussion. Mm-hmm. But I think you're right that this is such a wonderful experience. Like yes, it sounds like I've had some scary, like, field experiences. Mm-hmm. But I've also gone to Antarctica twice and I've sailed around the world. Like that's insane. Yeah. I got to see penguins and humpback whales and Kyle that like my office morning, you know what I mean? Have coffee with whales and be like, yep, now they're Tuesday at the office. Right? Like, so that's, that's insane. And, and I love that. Pretty amazing all out to the, the beauty of our field and the different ways that you can do geology or engineering, right? There's so many pathways for you and you can pivot and change along your career. So, That's wonderful. I love that. Final end on a positive note. Thank you Jean. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. I can't wait to share this with everybody. I can't wait to share all of the resources that we've talked about. And again, just thank you so much. It's been

Jean 1:08:05

an honor. Thanks so much. And I, I think it's, as I said at the beginning, it's fantastic that you're doing this and I hope you have great success in, getting the, the word out as broadly as, as we can. And, and the guests that you have, I think will be fascinating to, to follow. So thank you so much for this and, and good luck with this endeavor of, of yours, Alexis.

Alexis 1:08:23

Thank you so much, Jean. I appreciate it. Okay, bye-bye guys. Tata for now. See you later at next week. Bye bye.