Springtime in Sudbury

New Horizons

Last month, 23 geoscience students from across Canada gathered in Sudbury, Ont., to participate in the first-ever Student-Industry Mineral Exploration Workshop.

Sponsored by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), the two-week workshop will be an annual event that introduces students in their senior years to various facets of mineral exploration.

This year’s students were selected to participate by their post-secondary institutions.

The workshop introduced students to the mining cycle, focusing on grassroots exploration and economic geology. There were lectures, presentations and hands-on classes on mineral deposits, geological mapping, exploration techniques, geophysics, geochemistry, drilling and coring, corporate social responsibility, environment and wilderness safety.

In addition, lecturers discussed issues such as geoscience research throughout the world, regulatory concerns, geologists as financial analysts and raising venture capital for international projects.

Much of the program involved day trips to exploration projects and operating mines. Students observed activities above and below ground during tours of the Noranda and Timmins camps and an open-pit mine, as well as visits to core logging facilities and a slag pour.

The program was not without its lighter moments. There were various opportunities for networking and other social activities.

The workshop began with an industry icebreaker and wrapped up with a sit-down dinner, both held at Science North, a government-run science attraction in Sudbury.

Most dinners provided chances to network and dinner speakers addressed career ideas such as positions in mining and exploration, international geological consulting and geophysics.

Marc Rinne, a student from Thunder Bay, Ont.-based Lakehead University, left the workshop with positive impressions.

“The learning experience far exceeded my expectations,” Rinne says. “The workshop explored well beyond what I learn in academic settings.”

Of note, Toronto-based Barrick Gold contributed $10,000 toward the costs of the workshop and sent one of the company’s recent international hires — exploration geologist William Stanslaus from Tanzania — to participate. Stanslaus works with Barrick Exploration Africa at the North Mara gold mine in Tanzania.

The trip allowed Stanslaus to interact with Canadian students and investigate the mineral exploration scene here.

“It’s the one of the great things that will never get out of my memory! I will always remember you for the hard work that you have done so that everyone was comfortable and happy with the workshop programs,” Stanslaus wrote in an e-mail to the workshop organizers. “It was hard to say goodbye to all students… I’ve spent two weeks with them, friendly, happily and with great harmony.”

The deputy mayor of Sudbury, Andr Rivest, addressed students at the final dinner where Mike Connors, president of Nuclear Resources International, was the featured speaker.

The workshop was organized by the PDAC student affairs committee and its co-chairs, Scott Jobin-Bevans and Lynda Bloom. Naaznin Pastakia and Teresa Barrett also helped organize the workshop.

The PDAC paid the students’ travel and accommodation costs in Sudbury. Assisting with workshop organization were Laurentian University, the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, the Ontario Geological Survey, and MIRARCO, a not-for-profit corporation of Laurentian.