A team consisted of Geology Engineering students of UGM have been crowned as the general champion at the Geology Student Competition (GSC) 2008 in ITB Bandung, from 27 October to 1 November 2008. There are six other participants came from various universities such as ITB, Undip, Unpad, STTNAS, Akprind, and Natural Oil Geologic Academy (AGP) Bandung.
The Geology Team of UGM was consisted of Suryatno (2005), Firman Bumulo (2004), Rani Evelin (2005), Rahmadi Hidayat (2004), and M Syahdan (2005). For five days the team was competing with other teams in the competition that was held by the Indonesian Geologists Association (IAGI). Participants followed indoor tests such as theoretical test, petrology, and paleontology and core analysis practicum for four days and in the last day they have to do field practicing and Measures Section (MS) from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The team coordinator Suryatno said that he was surprised that UGM team can won the competition. ITB was the general champion in the same competition last year, but unfortunately this year they only managed to get the fourth position. Meanwhile, 2nd position was taken by Unpad and the 3rd position was taken by Undip.
Suryatno admitted on Thursday (21/11) at Fortakgama room that the problem given in the competition is very hard, however UGM team have prepared for it. Rani Evelin agreed with Suryatno and added that the last day of the competition was pretty hard. They had to observe and analyze the geologic history of a river.
“We were in that river for hours to get the geologic data," said Rani.
They had to collect stones samples, and sometimes they also have to dive into the river just to get stones samples needed for the analysis. And what’s amazing was that the team managed to find a 15 million years fossil of star sea (Echinoderm) on a rock.
However, the finding of the fossil was not the main reason why they won. Firman said that the solid teamwork in the report construction, analysis and presentation of the result have led them to the victory.
(Public Relations of UGM/Gusti Grehenson)