Challenge Bowl Finals and Student Leadership Symposium 2008

A report from an Italian student

I wish to report here my experience gained during the 78th SEG annual meeting, which was held in November 2008 in the fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), and how I had a chance to partecipate to the activities specifically organizzed  for students.

With the assistance of the EAGE-SEG Italian Section the Italian Regional Challenge Bowl was organized in Rome during November 2007. Strongly encouraged by our professors, we decided to participate to this contest. After a very exciting competition, in which we fought fiercely up to the very last question,  we  succeeded in being first ahead of all the other teams. The Challenge Bowl is a game, a quiz, but also  an opportunity to meet and to match against other students. It is open to any student, either italian or foreign, and it is an extraordinariliy all-involving experience.

As it is well known, the winners of the various Regional Challenge Bowl gain the right to participate to the Challenge Bowl Finals, which take place at the next SEG Annual Meeting in USA.

Taken by a strong excitement I left for Las Vegas. When I arrived there, my high expectations were entirely met. I was surprised by the level of attention and care SEG devotes to students. The annual meeting is indeed also a very good chance for academia and industries to meet each other. I was very impressed assessing how much students are rated by the leadership of the EAGE-SEG, Italian Section and by most of the best oil and service companies.

Of course also the Challenge Bowl Finals had an extremely high profile, very nicely chaired by Peter Duncan. We had so much fun indeed!

As president of the SEG Student Chapter in Naples I had also the opportunity to participate to the Student Leadership Symposium (SLS). This is a two-days event were the most active among SEG students meet together and with SEG leadership. SLS is sponsored by Chevron. The  Student Leadership Symposium (SLS) is another fantastic experience. I really enjoyed the internatonal frame of the event  and I learnt so much from the experiences reported by the other Local Student Chapters in the world.  The leaders of the SEG Student Sections described to each other the activities  performed, the difficulties encountered and how they were solved, and the goals reached. Our Student Chapter is very young and meeting with other more experienced student leaders  was a great opportunity for me to get ideas and to better understand nhow to imporove a Student Chapter.

The annual meeting offered me also a chance to attend the tnteresting technical sessions and the opportunity to present a poster paper. SEG annual meeting is unanimously considered the primary international event for applied and exploration geophysics. Indeed this experience was first of all relevant for my education, and it greatly contributed to broaden my scientific knowledge and know-how.

For all of the above reasons I wish to thank SEG and all those people who organized the Italian Regional Challenge Bowl, thus allowing me to participate to the SEG Annual Meeting and to the related student events.

Lorenzo Cascone, President of the SEG Student Chapter of the University of Naples Federico II