A hiker stands on the top of an outcrop looking over a distant mountain scene. Text reads: "Beneath Your Feet. A geoscience podcast."

PODCAST EPISODE #4: Reefs and Reels: Evolution and Communication with Charlotte Spruzen

Summary In this episode of Beneath Your Feet, A Geoscience Podcast, host Veronica Klassen interviews Charlotte Spruzen about her research on ancient reef systems in the Yukon and their role in the evolution of complex life. Charlotte explains how these ancient ecosystems provide clues about early animal life and Earth’s changing environments. Beyond her fieldwork, she shares insights on geoscience communication, including her experiences making educational TikTok videos and the challenges of debunking misinformation online. The conversation highlights the importance of making science accessible, engaging, and accurate in a digital age where myths can spread quickly. Listen now: You can also listen to our podcast on these platforms: Spotify Apple Podcasts Amazon Music Audible Read along with the podcast transcript: Introduction Hello, everyone. Welcome to Beneath Your Feet, A Geoscience Podcast. I’m Veronica Klassen, science communicator, geology enthusiast and your host. Here at the APGO Education Foundation, our mission is to spark curiosity and passion for the geology of Ontario. Whether you’re a geology nerd, science enthusiast, or nature lover, this podcast is for you. Join us as we geek out over fascinating geology, uncover the hidden stories and secrets of our extraordinary planet and explore the captivating world beneath your feet. Veronica Klassen Welcome. Thanks so much for being with me here today. Today I’m going to be talking to Charlotte Spruzen, who is a PhD candidate at McGill University, studying the evolution of complex life. So, thanks for being with me here today. Charlotte Spruzen Thank you for inviting me, I’m so excited to be here. Veronica So, yeah, why don’t we just start with, tell us a little bit about yourself, who are you and what do you do? Charlotte Yeah. So I’m Charlotte. My pronouns are she/ her. I came to Canada three years ago, so I’ve been in Montreal since then, working at McGill University. I’m a PhD candidate in sedimentology and stratigraphy. So that’s basically looking at sedimentary rocks and seeing how they change as a function of distance from the shoreline and how sea level changes as well. And before that, I was in the UK, as you can probably tell from the accent. I love it, I love Canada, I love being here. I am really into my research and yep, that’s a little bit about me. Veronica Amazing. Thanks so much. Yeah. And I found you via your TikTok channel, which is really fun. And so you also do a little bit of science communication there, which is also a really cool part of what you do. Charlotte Yeah. I keep forgetting to plug that. Yeah. So I do a bit of science communication under the username @charbonate. And I do that on Instagram and TikTok it’s the same content on both and I make videos about mostly sedimentary rocks but I’m moving a little bit more into climate change just because I feel that’s important in the current political landscape. Veronica Yeah, that is definitely very important. All right. So with your studies, what what is it day in life look like for you both when you’re out doing research in the field or when you’re at home at the university? Charlotte So my time, as you kind of alluded to, is split between fieldwork, which is maybe like 1 or 2 months per year and office work. So when I’m in the field, it sort of depends on where we are. But most of my fieldwork has been in Yukon, so that’s helicopter fieldwork out in the Ogilvie Mountains just north of Dawson City. It’s an absolutely beautiful part of the world and I’m so lucky to work there. And a day in the life there, we’ll be staying in like individual tents. So we will have slept in the tent overnight. You wake up, you go into a group tent, you make coffee, you make breakfast, which is normally just oatmeal with just the same thing every single day. It gets pretty boring. And then we leave at, you know, between 8 and 9 a.m. and we go out into the field and we do between an eight and a ten hour day. And we’re walking off to the outcrops and we’re studying the rocks, mostly taking what are called stratigraphic logs. So that’s when you walk up a hill and you’re measuring how the rocks change through time. Well, how the rocks change up the hill, which means how they’re changing through time. And then we come back, we make our dinner, which again, is pretty much the same thing every day. It’s just a dehydrated meal and you add hot water. And so we have that. We have maybe some like, fun snacks and then we go to bed. So, yeah, it’s very much the same routine, but different rocks every day, which is pretty cool. Veronica Hm, that’s awesome, yeah. Charlotte And then when I’m in the office, again, there’s like a lot of, so I guess kind of the opposite of the fieldwork where there’s a lot of variety. I’m kind of doing something different every day. So sometimes I might be doing some lab work measuring the geochemical composition of things. Sometimes I might be writing or maybe doing some coding, figure plotting, basically preparing things for manuscripts or for my thesis. And then other days I’d say most days right now I’m doing microscope work. So my main area of interest is looking at really thin slices of carbonate rocks and trying to figure out if they’re getting more complex through time. So I’m just spending hours staring down the microscope looking at these tiny little like micron scale features, which I love, but it does give you a headache after a little bit. Veronica I believe it. Okay, awesome. That’s super cool. I love that, there’s so much variety in what you do. I think that’s really fun. How did you get where you are? Like, how were you originally

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Aerial view of a landscape with rolling hills, a valley, and a river. On top of the photo text reads: "Geo Careers. Mary-Anne Hildebrandt." with the icon of a pickaxe hitting a rock.

Geo Careers: Mary-Anne Hildebrandt

What is a career? Merriam-Webster defines career as “a profession for which one trains, and which is undertaken as a permanent calling.” With more workplaces embracing the idea of flexibility, the weight of words like “permanent” and “calling” evoke something else entirely. Career originates from the Latin carrus, as in a wheeled cart, which some interpret to mean chariot (Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.). It sounds a great deal more epic than logging into a laptop for another Zoom call. Imagine you and your coworkers embarking on a journey in chariots each day. Surely, with that as your vision, nothing is out of reach. So, what do you do for a living? It’s a common question for any social gathering, and yet, my answer is met with surprise. People are surprised to learn that I am not a teacher or nurse or some other career that matches their perception of who I am. No one has ever guessed that I am a geoscientist. Why? Do I not look or sound like a geologist? This encounter is not exclusive to the public. In truth, I’ve even been mistaken for an administrative assistant when standing in my office wearing head to toe safety gear surrounded by rock samples, and that’s not to say administration staff don’t do field work. They most certainly can and do! It’s that everyone carries bias, and when no other information is available, we fill in the missing data with assumptions based on our own perceptions of the world. Even recently at PDAC, I was asked if I was there as a member of the media, and not a geologist. Who knew that you could work in an industry for 17 years and still feel at times that you don’t quite fit other people’s perceptions of your job title. Every day there are lessons, and some are only learned much later.  When I left university for my first summer field position in 2006, I intended to return for a Master of Science, but looming student debt and other family obligations drove me to stay in the industry. I dreamed about continuing to hone my skills in the areas of geoscience that I enjoyed. Early on, I had a conversation with a manager of a team I wanted to join about my career aspirations, and he tried to put an end to those dreams. He explained that no company would invest their finite resources to support my development in this field because I was a woman, and at the age of 25, I was too old. In his experience, it wouldn’t be long before I would marry, have children, and pursue a different career. I left that conversation feeling devastated because this manager was someone that I truly respected. At the time, I didn’t know how to challenge the underlying beliefs and assumptions that he had conveyed about me. I questioned whether saying anything at all would make a difference. Who was he to decide what my future would hold? That evening, I resolved to not let his ignorance define me.   Did you stay in Geoscience? I have had the good fortune to have worked in the field of geoscience since graduating and successfully achieved my designation as a Professional Geoscientist (P.Geo.) in 2017. Drilling, sampling, mapping, and modelling led me to a deeper understanding of the influence of geological processes, sample bias, and error within spatial models and mineral estimates. In addition, the depth and breadth of the technical projects I have been able to work on has increased not only my technical skills but also my leadership skills. After working for several years as the person performing the annual reconciliation for Mineral Resources and co-authoring the technical report on the resource, I was appointed to carry out the duties of Competent Person (as defined in the SAMREC and the JORC codes) for the deposit I had spent years mapping and modelling. A Competent Person is responsible for preparing the technical report used for public disclosure of a Mineral Resource and Reserve. In the Canadian context, a CP would be similar to a Qualified Person or QP under the National Instrument 43-101 Standard. CPs, like QPs, are considered to be competent to sign-off because they meet or exceed the knowledge requirements and have enough time working in a particular commodity, like gold. There are other requirements, and for those working in the industry, it is best to be well-versed in the governing code or standard for your jurisdiction. It’s an incredibly important responsibility that cannot be taken lightly, and I was honoured to know that those in power trusted my capabilities to appoint me into that role. Although I enjoy the technical aspects of my work, I have found mentoring and coaching others to be equally, if not more, rewarding. My career has carried me to remote areas across Canada and even overseas to Botswana and South Africa. I am forever grateful to have been mentored and supervised by professionals who are highly respected in their field. These are the people who saw the value I could add to a team and a project, and they were instrumental in why I stayed the course. I found professionals from all disciplines were always there to lend a hand or an ear to help find a solution to the latest problem.  One project that I had been assigned was to create a spatial estimate for a stockpile. This was not the norm and fell outside of our regular workflow. A stockpile is not an in-situ deposit. To use it in a business plan, my work still needed to answer similar questions that would be asked during mineral classification of an in-situ deposit. There are a number of factors involved in this work, but to keep this brief, these are the types of questions that needed to be considered: How did the mining team place the rock? Do we have confidence in the volume of the stockpile? How was the volume measured? At what frequency was the volume measured? Do

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Underground photo of a mine site. Tools and various machines sit in front of a wall covered in wire. Text on top of the photo says: Geo Careers Melissa Ng.

Geo Careers: Melissa Ng

One question that I often am asked is, “How did you pick mining as an industry?” That answer is simple: De Beers commissioned a raw diamond exhibit at the University of Alberta where I attended school. This was my first introduction to mining and the idea and complexity around mining, which I found fascinating and challenging. The second question I always get asked is: “How did you get to where you are now?” That answer is a little more complex. We all take different journeys in life and career. Some experiences are within our control, and some are not. People always joke: “If I knew what I knew now, things would be different.” But there is no journey, no growth, and no success without those experiences. They are unique to us and mold us in the unique individual we are. So, to me, the real question should be “How has your experience specific to your career helped you to get to where you are now?” I began my first job search after graduation with enthusiasm, looking for the job opportunity that would launch my career. At the time, the market was hot with international opportunities, as well as Canadian prospects, which meant that I could be picky about the opportunities I pursued. I knew from my summer jobs doing exploration work in the Northwest Territories that I wanted a fly-in fly-out position at an operation and not field exploration work. My husband and I were married in 2007, right after my graduation, so choosing a fly-in fly-out role was a lifestyle choice we were making so that we could stay in Edmonton. My parents were born and raised in Saskatoon, SK so I knew about Cameco Corporation, the uranium producer centered in Saskatchewan. I was excited to have an interview with them. Even during the interview, being able to talk about structurally driven deposits was thrilling. I felt good after the interview, and therefore, was disappointed when I later received a call that hiring had been frozen due to unknown circumstances. Lucky for Cameco, I was so picky during my job search that I had only applied to one other company at the time. In January 2008, I received a call asking if I was still interested and if I could start next week. I didn’t even own a pair of steel toe boots yet, so I couldn’t start the following week, but I was thrilled that I did not have to endure a second round of interviews. The first time I flew into Rabbit Lake operation, which is situated at the edge of the Athabasca Basin in Northern Saskatchewan, I felt what I would describe as contained excitement. Contained because I didn’t want to make it obvious how “green” I really was. In other words, I did not want to stand out or get noticed. Which is very hard to do when you are a woman in a male-dominated industry, and in particular, a young woman in a male-dominated industry. I stuck out like a sore thumb, despite my cargo pants and winter coat. I was fresh meat, and everyone wanted to get to know the new girl. Throughout my career, I have heard stories of women who feel like they made the wrong career choice and have left the industry. When I hear this, I reflect back to those first few days at Cameco. My first room at camp was not my permanent room and there was a nasty draft from the window blowing over my head. I remember wearing my toque and not being able to fall asleep, wondering what I had gotten myself into. After a few days, I moved rooms and, luckily, there was no draft in the second room. I remember sitting around the lunch table with the geologists and engineers and hearing the story about why my hiring was delayed. There was an open historical drilled lake hole that intersected a stope (a stope is a term in mining for dugout space that contains your ore that is to be mined). It was marked as cemented, but after the blast, water started pouring into the mine – a sign you never want to see underground. But the tale was dramatic and heroic, and through teamwork the workers were able to control the situation and mitigate the water. The epic conclusion of the story involved a geologist shoving a piece of PVC pipe into the hole on the shallow lake bottom. I know we all exaggerate our stories, but at that point, I knew this was my crew and this was where I belonged. This was 2008 and when the financial crisis hit hard I was fortunate to be at Cameco. Many of my colleagues from school found themselves without work whereas Cameco sold its product with contracts with locked-in pricing, which meant that Cameco was stable. And so was my career. That geologist who starred in the epic conclusion of the story with the PVC pipe was Dennis Merber, who was also my first mentor in the industry. Once he became the Chief Geologist at Cameco, I learned a lot from him. He gave us the flexibility to make the position our own. He recognized that you need to incorporate fun at work if you want to improve efficiency. He also encouraged sharing of job tasks, which is the primary reason why I was not just exclusively logging core at the start my career. His job as a leader was to take care of the wellbeing of his people and sometimes that was as simple as a break with a little bit of fun. His leadership tactic stayed with me my entire career and I have used it many times, even sometimes when I had to defend my decision to add fun to the work cycle. I stayed with Cameco for 8 years because of the people. I built many great relationships over that time, relationships that I keep to this day.

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