Today’s Student Spotlight is Carter McClellan! A Payson, Utah native, Carter enjoys hiking, rock climbing, reading, and rock collecting. Carter chose to major in geology because it was his childhood dream to become a paleontologist. After spending years exploring other majors and career paths, he came to find paleontology was his passion.
Carter has worked as a research assistant at the Museum of Paleontology. He has been able to meet with experts from around the world, learn more about prehistory, and take on his own research projects. He is currently working on bone-eating bugs from the Cretaceous Period, using fossils he dug up last summer with the museum.
Carter states that his favorite part about geology is the universality of it. Geology is all around us. Whether that is volcanoes, glaciers, earthquakes, mountains, prehistory, or even just plants, we can see how important the geological sciences are.
When asked what he would tell students interested in geology he states, “I would say geology opens up a ton of opportunities! That’s one of the things I like so much about it. While oil & gas come to mind for most people, a geology major is a great path to many other potential careers, such as surveying, mining, paleontology, and climate science, to name just a few things. It’s not just oil & gas!”