Mason’s passion for rocks began in childhood, and today, that curiosity has evolved into a purposeful academic path as a Geoscience major at UW-Green Bay. His dream? To help protect Earth—and one day, study rocks on Mars.
Transcript: Growing up, uh, I always went to national parks on trips with my parents, and I always liked to collect rocks. So, I’ve always just been kind of interested in everything related to nature and geology. One of my favorite labs is Mineral Identification or Rock Identification with Professor Malone because it’s like being presented with a mystery, and you have to use your tools that’s provided in the lab to find out evidence and provide reason for why you identify what you identify as what it is. And then my other favorite lab is the Hydrogeology Lab, where you use a flow model with Dr. Luczaj. And it’s really cool because you get to apply all the concepts that you learn in class and visualize it on an actual model that you can see. My undergrad research with Dr. Luczaj, it’s analyzing dolomite in this carbonate platform in China. We’re trying to refine this model for how dolomitization happens. I learned a lot of things in my research, and also just getting laboratory experience and organizational skills in a laboratory setting is really important as well. In my geoscience field trip, we went to Pictured Rock, and we saw a bunch of different formations. I actually collected some rock on the field trip, and it has like a bunch of little fossils in it. There was so much cool stuff to do on the field trip. It was a really good experience. The thing I enjoy most about the Geoscience Program is the professors. They’re so knowledgeable about their subject and they’re really passionate about it, too. And they genuinely care about their students as well. After I graduate, the thing I would really like to do would be going into working with Geoscience in like a research capacity. So, Geoscience actually would have a really big impact on saving the planet. Not just because of climate change, which it could help solve by uh trapping CO2 back under the ground, but also water scarcity. It’s going to have a big impact on the world. This is a super long shot, but if we do end up going to Mars in the near future, I think it would be so cool to do Geoscience research off planet. That would be like my number one ideal dream job. [Music]