Ashley Roy (BS Geology, 2022)

After graduating from CWU in June of 2022, I started working at Freestone Environmental Services as a project geologist.

My day-to-day responsibilities involve supporting various projects by either digitizing forms or running sieve analyses. I also hold the primary geologist position on well-site geology projects out at the Hanford Nuclear Site, which involves drilling, construction and development of wells that are used for groundwater monitoring of the contamination plumes from the nuclear reactors.

A typical day for me usually starts out at 5am when I leave my office building to drive out to the Hanford site to make my POD (plan of day) meeting, before I head out to my drilling site. Once I am on-site, I record everything that the drillers do and the people who visit the site, like RCTs (Radiological Control Technicians), who measure the amount of radioactivity there is on-site, and IHTs (Industrial Hygienist Technicians), who measure the amount of unsafe chemicals/compounds there are in the air around the site. When the well is still in the drilling phase, I log, collect and describe the geology as it comes out of the hole. Otherwise, the construction and development phases are spent placing the well into our borehole and running tests on how well the well works after it has been constructed.

After we finish a drilling project we then write up a report, called a BSR (borehole summary report), that gets published and sent out to our clients, and becomes public record.

I absolutely loved my time at Central and an extremely grateful to my professors and friends within the geology department! Good luck to all of the future students moving forward and remember to enjoy your time at CWU!