V. Tong, AGU Education Section Secretary, 2018-present
Working with students and international partners to advance Earth and Space Science Education together
Happy New Year to you all!
It has been my honor to serve the AGU community and beyond as the Secretary of the Education Section since its launch in late 2018. It has been a great pleasure to work with everyone in the Section Executive Committee, and I would like to thank Mark Moldwin and Tanya Furman for their leadership of the Section. I am particularly indebted to Stacie Bender, Pranoti Asher, Shahab Karimifard and Kaleb Clover for their unyielding support.
As part of our effort to develop the new Section, I was tasked with looking after communication with our members, as well as organizing special conference sessions. I am pleased to report that we have developed
- the Perspectives on Earth and Space Sciences Educational Research (PESSER) – a series of opinion pieces introducing recently published research and documents to both educators and education researchers;
- a conference session series on contemporary issues in education facing our communities; and
- an online newsletter that has a streamlined format.
Our newsletter, PESSER and conference session series now provide us with a platform to
- engage with international communities and professional bodies;
- work with students as partners, and educators with diverse interests in teaching, research and outreach; and
- promote diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability.
In 2020, we have worked in partnership with the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) to deliver a Union Session in the joint JpGU-AGU conference in July and an Education Session in the AGU Fall Meeting (co-sponsored by JpGU) in December. It was wonderful to work with both undergraduate and graduate students as conveners, chairs and presenters from different countries in the recent session – to explore a timely topic of remote learning and research from the students’ perspectives. The PowerPoint slides of the live oral session can be found here. If you are a registered participant of the Fall Meeting, you can access the video of the oral session here until 15 February 2021. We will continue to develop collaborations with our partner learned societies around the world in 2021 and beyond.
We would like to continue to reach out to our diverse communities by making educational research relevant to you all. The PESSER series is written by and for students, educators and researchers who may or may not have a background in educational research. We would love to feature your views on all aspects of Earth and Space Science Education, including topics on diversity and sustainability. Maybe you have a project and idea you would like to share? Please do not hesitate to drop me a line at vincent.tong {at} northumbria {dot} ac {dot} uk or vincent.tong {at} ucl {dot} ac {dot} uk. We look forward to hearing from and working with you.
Vincent Tong
Secretary, AGU Education Section