Highlights
Student Profile: Stephen Scheidt
Not every career path is a direct route. Some are winding journeys made rich by meaningful side trips, unexpected detours, and inspired meanderings. In the case of Stephen Scheidt, doctoral candidate in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science, his willingness to remain open to possibilities and his keen intellectual curiosity have led him on an educational odyssey across the country and around the world.
"To survive as a researcher you have to be flexible and creative," says Scheidt, and flexibility is a quality he has been honing for quite some time.
Scheidt completed his undergraduate education at the University of Toledo where he majored in environmental science.
"I took a lot of chemistry, biology, and geology classes and the geology really brought the whole environmental sciences idea together for me," offers Scheidt. "I liked how all of these subjects fit together." After graduation, he accepted an internship in Washington, DC, with the President's Council for Sustainable Development. That led to another intern position with the Environmental Protection Agency and, ultimately, graduate study in geology at the University of South Carolina.
But it was his first "real job" after completing his master's degree that gave Scheidt a taste of the adventure that he has come to seek in every subsequent endeavor.
"I was looking for work in the United States, but there weren't a lot of interesting positions available," explains Scheidt. His search led him to Saudi Arabia where he spent more than half a year in a temporary research position, studying the country's coastline to assess the aftereffects of the oil spill that occurred during the 1991 Gulf War. It was the thrill of a lifetime. And one that he found difficult to replicate after his work was cut short when political upheaval in the Middle East necessitated an early withdrawal from the country.
"I worked for another, smaller environmental company here in the States where I gained experience in basic groundwater remediation, environmental clean up, and some mining exploration, but the corporate work was not academically driven enough for me. I missed the aspect of discovery and using new technology."
It was during this period that Scheidt heard about the work that Associate Professor Michael Ramsey was doing at the University of Pittsburgh.
"I was hungry for the adventure and creativity that research offered and Michael Ramsey was pursuing very exciting projects."
Working with Ramsey on his study of deserts, including using thermal remote sensing satellites to understand how dust storms are generated and how deserts are formed, led Scheidt to his own research on dust in the atmosphere and its ultimate effect on regional weather. It is this research that earned Scheidt a prestigious NASA Earth System Science (ESS) Fellowship for the 2006-2007 academic year, an award that comes with the possibility of renewals for up to two more years pending productive results each year.
Scheidt anticipates graduating in 2009 but, not surprisingly, he is not locked into any specific "next step."
"I want to stay open to the possibilities," says Scheidt. "That might be continuing research or teaching, but I want to always actively encourage others to pursue science."
