{"id":6786,"date":"2018-07-10T07:13:40","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T23:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/student-shares-rock-solid-passion-geology-curtins-unipass-program\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:08:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:08:41","slug":"student-shares-rock-solid-passion-geology-curtins-unipass-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/student-shares-rock-solid-passion-geology-curtins-unipass-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Student shares his rock-solid passion for geology through Curtin\u2019s UniPASS program"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a child, Liam Olden liked to dig up animal bones on his family\u2019s farm in Tambellup, a small town 320km south east of Perth, and imagine they were dinosaur fossils.<\/p>\n

Olden is now a geology honours student examining real fossils, stromatolites to be exact, which are essentially layers of rock created by bacteria that existed up to 3.5 billion years ago and comprise the earliest evidence of life on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m researching stromatolites from 250 million years ago that flourished after an extinction event known as the Permian-Triassic extinction. This research aims to further our understanding of how life dealt with stressful ecological situations,\u201d says Olden.<\/p>\n

But researching ancient rocks is not the only interesting thing about Olden; he is sharing his knowledge and passion for all things sedimentary through his involvement in multiple extracurricular activities at Curtin.<\/p>\n

Olden is a UniPASS<\/a> facilitator, a new to Curtin mentor, a lab demonstrator, President of the Curtin University Geological Society<\/a>, a student representative for the Geological Society of Australia (GSA), an Open Day geology volunteer, and a Student Ambassador for the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences. He also plays hockey for Curtin and is helping to organise WA\u2019s first ever Earth Sciences Student Symposium for the GSA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a juggle to keep on top of everything!\u201d admits Olden. \u201cBut my passion for geology and seeing others get excited about it is what keeps me motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image
What looks like an ordinary rock is actually 250-million-year-old fossilised bacteria.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a UniPASS facilitator, Olden provides tutoring to fellow students on three geology units. The sessions enable students to review and consolidate their learning in informal groups and test their knowledge with a facilitator who has excelled in the degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always enjoyed helping others, especially with study, as geology can be a difficult subject,\u201d says Olden on why he joined UniPASS.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I see someone who doesn\u2019t understand a concept suddenly get that \u2018click\u2019 \u2013 you can tell that they\u2019ve got it \u2013 it\u2019s really heartwarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olden says that being a facilitator has strengthened his own learning and introduced him to new people.<\/p>\n

\u201cUniPASS is like a big family, which is great, especially being from a regional area where I don\u2019t have a lot of family close by or didn\u2019t know many people when I first came to Perth. It provided a lot of support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olden says the close-knit community of the geology department helped him to settle in to uni, and he returns the support in-kind by inspiring future students to study geology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI volunteered at Curtin Open Day last year and spoke with a person there who is now studying geology and comes to my UniPASS sessions. It\u2019s really good to hear that one of the reasons they came to Curtin was because they got to meet current students and could see how we\u2019re so keen and involved in geology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olden\u2019s passion to get others excited about rocks saw him awarded the Aniket Desai Prize in 2017 for his overall performance in his degree and his contribution to the Curtin geology community. The award is sponsored by the family of Aniket Desai, a former geology student who has sadly passed away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great honour to receive the award. I met Aniket during my first year at Curtin and he was a really big inspiration for everyone, so it was really touching to receive the award and know I am continuing in his footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olden is set to complete his honours project this year, but he hopes he can continue to teach geology in some form while pursuing a PhD on stromatolites.<\/p>\n

\n

Visit the UniPASS website<\/a> to see which Curtin undergraduate units offer group study sessions.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liam Olden has always loved rocks. He’s now sharing his passion for all things sedimentary through a peer-to-peer tutoring program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4182,"featured_media":6787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-6786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"Bachelor of Science (Geology)","qualification":"Bachelor of Science (Geology)","link":"http:\/\/courses.curtin.edu.au\/course_overview\/undergraduate\/geology","description":"","faculty":"Science and Engineering"}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/LiamOldenFeature.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Zoe","last_name":"Taylor","display_name":"Zoe Taylor"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 09:26:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6786"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=6786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}