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As an undergraduate at Texas A & M University, Chad Broyles had an on-campus job that did more than help him pay for college. Working at the Gulf Coast Repository led him directly to his science career sailing around the world on a research vessel. The repository is one of the locations where the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) stores the columns of rock and mud--cores--that its drill ship, the JOIDES Resolution, pulls up from the depths of the sea floor. The cores are used by scientists around the world for many types of studies, including climate change. Schools.com sent our reporter to the JOIDES Resolution to speak with Broyles in June, as the ship traversed the Panama Canal.

The drill ship operates with multiple crews: one is responsible for the ship's operations (including everything from navigation to power generation to drilling to toilets); one handles food and housekeeping; and the technical crew manages the scientific laboratories. During an expedition, a party of research scientists interested in the expedition's specific location comes on board and the technical crew helps them get the data they need from the cores that come up. Broyles is the core curator.

"I'm responsible, when the core comes up on deck," he says, for "splitting it and labeling it and entering it in the database."

He and the other crew members work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week for about two months. An expedition usually involves sailing to one or more sites in the ocean and then drilling at the sites for several days or weeks. On some expeditions, cores come up frequently and the scientists and technical crew work feverishly. On other trips, there are fewer cores to handle. Once Broyles has cataloged the cores, they begin an indoor journey through a series of laboratories. The ship is equipped with high-tech systems for various types of analysis, such as precise measurements of volume, density and porosity and more complicated studies that explore how well the core material conducts sound and heat. The cores are also photographed and then some of the scientists physically examine the cores and make careful descriptions of what they see. There's an x-ray lab, a chemistry lab and when the focus of the cruise is on microbial life under the sea floor, the ship can set up a special cold lab. Scientists disembark with a vast amount of basic data and then spend years teasing out meaningful information from it. Long after the cruise, if additional scientists are interested in the cores that were pulled up, those researchers can make requests to sample a core from the repository. (In addition to the Gulf Coast one, IODP has core repositories in Bremen, Germany and Kochi, Japan.)

When Broyles is not on shift, the assistant lab officer takes over his duties--work goes on around the clock. In such a close and closed work environment, everyone has to be flexible and able to work at tasks outside their official job description. Still, Broyles and his colleagues on the technical crew generally agree they have very cool jobs.

"I really like the teamwork aspect of it. You really become close to your co-workers, I think closer than in a normal work environment," Broyles says. "And then also I get to meet a wide variety of different kinds of scientists and learn about different types of science that I would have never known about before."

The science party draws from IODP's 24 member countries in North America, the European Union and Asia. Though the shipboard language is English, there's a global community. On a recent cruise, Broyles worked with technical crew colleagues from Germany, Russia, Canada, Taiwan and Switzerland. Many of the ship's crew and galley (food and housekeeping) crew come from the Philippines.

It can be isolating to be at sea for so long and Broyles says dealing with that can be stressful--and it's certainly not for everyone.

"After about six weeks of being out at sea, tensions can get a little high, people can be on edge a bit. I describe it as life exponentiated," he says, meaning that something small that might not bother a person in normal life will become a big deal. "It's almost sometimes like a pressure cooker. So you have to really learn people and boundaries and where not to cross."

Working long hours under unique conditions does have its rewards.

"I really like seeing the types of material that we retrieve from beneath the sea floor. When we were in Antarctica we saw some pretty amazing things. We were right off the coast about thirty miles and we drilled into a site that went 10,000 years into the past," he says. The scientists could "read" the different layers of the sediment in the core and that's one of the ways they gather data on climate change. "Another thing that I like is the sea life. That's really cool. Usually when you're going into port you see porpoises and maybe whales."

And when they do get off the ship, they're in a new and interesting place and their employer pays for their trip back home.

"The company's really nice in that they let me go as early as I want and stay as late as I want, usually, so I get to actually vacation in the places that I go to."

Broyles says his base salary is about $37,000 per year, but he gets an additional 80% on top of that for the time he is at sea. Plus, he accrues comp time and additional vacation days. In a year that he spends six months at sea, he can earn up to $48,000, with plenty of time off. When he's not at sea, he works for IODP back in College Station on the Texas A & M campus, getting ready for his next expedition.

While a student, Broyles, a 1999 graduate, majored in geophysics and had an interest in ocean research and in the cores he was learning about at the repository. He says someone interested in a career like his should consider majoring in any of the earth sciences, such as geology, geophysics or oceanography.

"And also now microbiology is an up-and-coming [field] that we have entire cruises devoted to," he says.

Broyles has been sailing since January 2009--after a stint in graduate school and more land-based work for IODP. Many of the technical crew have master's degrees or even doctorates in the geosciences.

The JOIDES Resolution let a science party off in Balboa, Panama in June and then transited through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean. Without a science party on board and with the spectacular feat of the canal before them, Broyles and many of his colleagues spent a day up on deck enjoying the tropical sun--a rare luxury on a working drill rig.

In the spirit of James Lipton, Bernard Pivot, and Marcel Proust, Schools.com ends each Cool jobs interview with the following questions:

1.) What did you have for breakfast? A mixture of Cheerios and Raisin Bran

2.) What is your favorite day of the week? Out here all the days of the week are exactly the same

3.) What is your least favorite day of the week? That would be the same answer.

4.) What was your first job? This would be my first regular job. I guess my first job was I worked at a barbecue stand for my dad.

5.) What makes you angry? When people don't understand what you're saying and they get a little irritated with it.

6.) What makes you joyful? Traveling

7.) If you could have any job, other than your own, what would it be? Seismic data processor

8.) If you had the time and the money to study anything at all, what would it be? Archeology

9.) What did you want to be when you grew up? A scientist

10.) Can money bring you happiness? I used to think that was true, but the older I get I think that less. You create your own happiness.

For related news and other information from Schools.com, see:

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• Amgen announces awards for excellence in teaching science
• 7 money mistakes recent grads should avoid