Accreditation and Chartership news
Accreditation officer Bill Gaskarth on a new monthly record for Chartership applications, and new accredited university courses.
Chartership applications peak
This month’s interview date has elicited a record number of applications - some 44 have been received to date, including two from overseas. Three are for CSci only, one for both CSci and CGeol, and 39 for CGeol . Six of the latter come from senior geologists with 20+ years’ professional experience.
We shall therefore use four venues for interviews, and over 50 scrutineers have been called up for duty. This represents about 20% of our total resource of scrutineers. If this trend continues, then we may have to ask scrutineers for their help more than once in a year unless we can recruit more.
We encourage any Chartered Geologist with over four years’ professional experience after attaining CGeol status, or who has many years’ experience before becoming Chartered, to apply to be a Scrutineer. Invitations to act are governed by the types of expertise claimed by candidates in any one area; so it may well be that some scrutineers are rarely called upon.
Applications for November interviews are also looking healthy. The Central Scotland Regional Group asked for an interview venue in Scotland and advertised this to their members. This has resulted in some 13 confirmed applications for interviews in Glasgow on November 5. We already have another six definite applications for the London venue on November 7, the application deadline for which is not until September 9. Interest is picking up from the oil and gas and mining sectors as well as from senior Fellows who have yet to become Chartered.
Accreditation News.
The University of Derby applied for accreditation of its MSc in Applied Petroleum Geoscience. This application has been successful and so is added to the growing list of vocational MSc programmes now accredited by the Society. Graduates of these accredited programmes are eligible to apply for Chartership after four years’ relevant experience, a year earlier than would be the case without accreditation.
Two other MSc courses have been submitted and are presently under review by the Accreditation Committee. The results of these applications will be published in the next issue of Geoscientist. It is hoped that more will follow and that the academics associated with all vocational MSc courses will become Chartered. Applications for accreditation of three more company training schemes have also been received and are under review by the Professional Committee.