SAGE students gain hands-on experience Kristin Kummer, right, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, disucsses how to use transient electromagnetics with Scott MacInnes of Zonge Engineering, a SAGE corporate sponsor, during the 1994 SAGE program. Through the use of various geophysical techniques that send data back to computers, the students hope to provide data that the Office of the State Engineer and Santa Fe County can use to make decisions about water and development issues. They'll search for buried pipes and other subsurface utility infrastructure at a site in Los Alamos west of Los Alamos Airport along East Road. The program is sponsored by the Laboratory's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and receives financial support from the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and a range of large corporations and small companies. Some NSF funding provides scholarships that allow SAGE students to continue their research after they return to school.
Education is the driver here.
Students are housed at the College of Santa Fe and use classrooms at the college for data analysis, report writing and classroom presentations. Research results derived from the SAGE work are published in peer-reviewed literature, typically with the students as coauthors. Now in its 18th year, more than 450 students have participated in SAGE since it started in 1983. Baldridge has co-directed SAGE with George Jiracek of the Department of Geological Sciences at San Diego State University for 13 years. Students work on weekends and evenings.