Saint Barbara at UniLaSalle Beauvais, France

Outreach activity by Tugdual Gauchery (ESR3) | 02/12/2017

Saint Barbara or simply “Barbara Day”, also known as “Barbarafest”, is the patron saint of armourers, miners, and generally of people who work with explosives and/or in the mountains including – by extension – the geologists/volocanologist /geophysicists.

For this occasion, every year, the department of geology of “UniLaSalle Beauvais” organises an information day for the students and their parents on the world of Geosciences. To do so, graduated students (Alumni) are invited to the university to present their work and open, to the students, new horizons thanks to the round tables. It is a unique moment in the year for the students to debrief their career orientation. It is also a moment for graduated students to meet again, exchange and maybe create future collaboration.

Another point is that the university is among a system called “LaSalliens” which is worldwide community and has for principle value the spirit of community. The values are well impregnated during the studies and explain why so many graduated students, every year, want to come back to the university and exchange with the students.

As part of this community, it is for all these reasons I wanted to go back (if I got the opportunity) and share my experiences with the new students as others did it with me when I was an undergraduate. This year, I had the opportunity to be part of a round table to talk about research with other PhD students in front of students and their parents. We presented our work, gave our sentiment and it was a good experience for everyone. In fact, there were PhD students at different stages of their research, as well as Post-Docs, which gave a large experience panel for the students.

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