Voice of One Delegate
John R. Griffin
The Nebraska Geological Society is an affiliate of the Mid-Continent Section with one delegate. As that delegate, I am serving my second 3-year term to the HoD for the Nebraska Geological Society (NGS) and AAPG members residing in Nebraska. Before I was elected delegate, previous NGS presidents appointed me twice as an alternate delegate when I was attending a meeting that the society’s delegate could not attend.
The Nebraska Geological Society meets four times a year, twice in Lincoln, and twice in Omaha Nebraska. The present NGS membership consists of oil and gas consulting geologists, independent and industry environmental geologists primarily involved in groundwater problems, state and federal geology employees, geology professors, and students.
The NGS HoD delegate is elected by the AAPG members at a society meeting.
As a delegate, I inform the NGS AAPG members at the society’s meeting of the issues that will come up in the HoD and ask for their opinions, for example, last year’s vote to initiate the position of Vice President of Regions and this year’s proposed graduated dues plan. As the single delegate for NGS and the state, I receive applications of new members and members requesting reinstatement. I read through the applicant’s information and references. If I know any of the applicant’s references I will contact them to find more information. If I personally do not know the applicant and his or her references, I will contact a listed reference and ask him about the applicant. Another duty that AAPG headquarters has asked me to do is to find and talk to members and student members who have let their membership drop in order to get them to continue as an active member or find out why they dropped their membership and report the reason to AAPG.
I and previous NGS HoD delegates have talked to NGS members in the environmental geology field about joining the AAPG Division of Environmental Geosciences and have asked them to give talks at the Mid-Continent Section meeting, so far with limited success. However, we have been successful in getting student AAPG members by suggesting that students who have received grants from the NGS, join AAPG. Recently the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, has started a student AAPG chapter and the students have been attending NGS meetings. Many of these students are interested in the petroleum industry and with the increase in employment opportunities in the profession, we should have fewer of these students dropping their membership after they graduate.
I first attended a National AAPG meeting in the mid-60s while in graduate school and later attended Pacific Section meetings when I was working in the Sacramento Valley of California. I joined AAPG in 1980 when the company I was working for in Casper Wyoming, sent me to the national AAPG meetings and field trips. As an independent consultant, I continue to attend the annual meeting, go on field trips, attend Mid-Continent bi-annual meetings, and occasionally a Pacific Section meeting.