Bill Magee earned his BS from SES in 2009 and his MS from SES in 2011. Bill now works as an exploration geologist for the Shell Oil Company.
Contact: wrmagee@gmail.com
"OSU gave me a firm foundation in key geologic concepts and classes and provided me with the skills and experience needed to perform high-level quantitative research. I also made excellent friends in the grad program that I still keep in touch with (and sometimes collaborate with) today."
Where has your degree taken you?
After graduating with my Bachelor’s, I was the recipient of a NAGT (National Association of Geoscience Teachers) internship at the USGS in Fort Collins, Colorado. I worked on campus at Colorado State University and did field work in Rocky Mountain National Park that summer. I studied nitrogen cycling in alpine glaciers and overall glacier health in the park.
I returned to OSU that fall to start my MS with Dr. Terry Wilson focusing on structural geology and rift tectonics in West Antarctica. I also assisted the installation of many remote GPS and seismometer sites across West Antarctica with the POLENET Project.
During my MS program, I spent my summers interning with Shell in Houston on Gulf of Mexico Exploration teams. After graduation, I took a role with them and have worked in several different basins exploring for oil and gas (Gulf of Mexico, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Trinidad).
How do you feel your experience, specifically as an SES/geology student at OSU, prepared you for your career or life in general?
The SES BS courses had a balance of all “classical” geology skills needed to be a professional geologist. Mineralogy, Petrology, Sed. Strat., and Structural Geology are all part of my daily work in some form or another. Field Camp is the capstone of all of these topics and starts to bring all of those skills together in one setting. Myself and just about every one of my coworkers would tell you that they wouldn’t be the geologist they are today without Field Camp! Enroll in Field Camp!
What is your favorite memory as a student?
-Late nights of finishing structural geology labs at 2:00 AM with the entire class
-Temple Hill mapping exercise with David Elliot
-Rain on every single Structural Geology Field Trip
-Field Camp nights on the Wasatch
What advice do you have for current and future students?
Hold onto your textbooks, stay curious and have an open mind. Curiosity, especially with science, can solve many mysteries and help you become a better scientist and citizen of this planet.