The Graduate Student Committee (GSC) spent the winter planning some exciting events for the coming season. Among the highlights:
- The GSC is sponsoring an Organized Oral Session at this year’s 97th Annual Ecological Society Meeting in Portland, OR, August 5-10, 2012. The session, entitled “Nutrient Additions Alter Community and Ecosystem Processes: Lessons Learned from the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network,” will be held the morning of Wednesday, August 8. The session will comprise a mix of graduate students and Principal Investigators from at least eight different LTER sites presenting on a wide variety of ecosystems. You won’t want to miss it, so mark your calendars now!
- The All Scientist Meeting (ASM) in Estes Park is scheduled for September 10-13, 2012, and the GSC is actively planning the 4th Graduate Student Symposium. This event will start on the evening of Saturday, September 8 with a student social and continue all day Sunday, September 9 (that is, the Student Symposium will take place before the ASM begins officially). This year’s Symposium theme is “Cross-discipline ecology: Integrating additional sciences into ecological research within the LTER network”. We are thrilled to have Dr. Nancy Grimm (CAP) as our keynote speaker. Nancy has a strong history of cross-discipline research, is currently helping to develop the next National Climate Assessment for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and will have just finished a two-year position as Program Director and Liaison for the Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO) and Geosciences (GEO) at the National Science Foundation. Other activities for the Graduate Student Symposium include several graduate student presentations on cross-discipline work and a panel discussion involving several scientists who collaborate across disciplines. Graduate student lead working groups will be held in the afternoon. We strongly encourage graduate students to attend the symposium and to consider writing a proposal for a working group at this meeting. Keep your eyes peeled for an email with the call for working group proposals in late March, with proposals due by July 1.
Looking forward, Sally will be graduating soon and rotating out of her position as GSC co-chair. Therefore, graduate students interested in becoming more involved in LTER leadership by taking on the GSC co-chair role are urged to contact Sally (skoerne@unm.edu) and Kim (kimberly.lapierre@yale.edu) for more information. Even if not interested in leadership, we encourage all graduate students to take an active interest in the GSC and to participate in the elections that will be held early this summer.