AGU Education Section News

Want to make a direct impact on future AGU Fall Meeting programs?

By Stacie Bender posted 10-26-2020 19:01

  
Are you interested in making a direct impact on future AGU Fall Meeting programs? Do you want to learn how sessions are accepted and scheduled? Do you want to serve our Education community in a tangible way? 

AGU Poster Hall 2018 (Photo Credit: AGU)


If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you can do so by serving as an AGU Fall Meeting Program Committee Member for the Education Section!  The Education Section is actively seeking an additional volunteer to join the current Fall Meeting Program Committee Representatives for the Education Section.

The AGU Fall Meeting Program Committee is responsible for scheduling oral, poster, eLightning, and panel sessions for Fall Meeting. The AGU Education Section has two representatives who each serve 3-year terms on the committee and serve as part of the Education Section leadership team. We are looking for an interested individual to learn how Fall Meeting scheduling works from behind the scenes during 2021, with the goal of serving as an active Education representative to the Fall Meeting Program Committee starting in 2022.

iPoster presentation at 2017 AGU Fall Meeting (Photo Credit: AGU)

  

AGU Fall Meeting Poster Presentation (Photo Credit: AGU)



The main time periods of significant work are January (for one phone/online meeting lasting about an hour), April and May (for session acceptance effort) and late July, August, and early-to-mid September (for abstract acceptance and session scheduling effort). An interested individual will need to be available online/via email during these time periods.

A successful AGU Fall Meeting relies heavily on hard-working members sharing their time and making efforts through roles on many committees. The Fall Meeting Program Committee includes representatives from all AGU Sections, including Education!  Michelle Nichols and Sanlyn Buxner are the current Education Section's representatives on the Fall Meeting Program Committee. They share about their positive experiences on the Fall Meeting Program Committee below. Please consider supporting one of AGU's many committees, as Michelle and Sanlyn have done through their work on the Fall Meeting Program Committee. AGU wouldn't be the great organization it is, without volunteers like Michelle, Sanlyn, and hundreds of others!

The AGU Fall Meeting Program Committee experience, from the perspectives of Sanlyn Buxner and Michelle Nichols:

Working on the Fall Meeting Program Committee has been a real treat for us. We are detail-oriented people, so we thoroughly enjoy all the pieces and parts involved - getting the sessions approved, communicating with the conveners, assigning time slots, moving sessions around to accommodate various needs, ticking everything off our "to do" list. It's like a huge game of Tetris. When we do the scheduling work in person, seeing more than 1,000 sessions splayed across more than a dozen pushpin boards, and more than 50 of us reps in a room trying to get orals, and posters, and lectures, and eLightnings, and panels figured out in 3 days or less... it's dizzying, but our "detail selves" love it.

We also really enjoy working with and communicating with the reps from other sections, who we probably would not otherwise get a chance to talk to if it were not for the Program Committee. And we have just the utmost respect for the work and organization of the Hydrology section...wow. 3,000+ abstracts. Having to work with Education's 600 or 700 abstracts seems like a breeze compared to what they have to do!

Our term on the committee has also coincided with the approval and rollout of the Education Section at AGU, so it has been really gratifying to see how we've been able to work with Education section members and AGU members from other sections to start to craft a robust set of sessions. And the array of Education sessions is only going to get better as the section matures and our communication pathways mature. We're already looking forward to working on Fall Meeting 2021!

To volunteer and/or to learn more, please contact Michelle Nichols (mnichols {at} adlerplanetarium {dot} org) and Sanlyn Buxner (buxner {at} psi {dot} edu).

S. Buxner
Sanlyn Buxner
AGU Fall Program
Committee Member
Education Section
M. Nichols
Michelle Nichols
AGU Fall Program
Committee Member
Education Section
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