Hello APECS Canada!
To all of you who were at the IPY meeting Montreal I hope that you made it home safe and sound. To all of you who were unable to come, we had a great APECS Canada meeting, and the consensus is that there are lots of people who want this National Committee to move forward. And here is the game plan.......
1. At the APECS Canada meeting we identified 3 areas that members were interested in or felt there was a need for.
A) A series of webinars/virtual poster sessions that addressed the needs of early career researchers in Canada. The idea is to plan 4-6 webinars for next winter that will use the APECS
system and be hosted and advertised by APECS Canada. So far we have:
i) Community consultations, where to start - Morgan Ip
ii) Small engines, where to start - Ciara Sebastian
iii) Handling high stress situation in the field - Stacey Elmore
iv) Framing your photographs for science papers and presentations - Piotr Angiel
If you are interested in helping out with one of the above suggestions, or have some more ideas that you would like to take the lead on please contact Louise Chavarie at
chavarie@ualberta.ca, as Louise as kindly stepped up to help organize and coordinate this coming years APECS Canada webinar series.
B) Sharing of information on research sites in Canada. Many of us work in the same areas, out of the same communities. A group got together to discuss how efforts could be
coordinated and information on communities shared.
If you are interested in helping move this forward and contributing please contact ? (To be determined).
C) There are many meetings in Canada that aren't necessarily polar, but can be used as platforms to have more APECS events including mentor panels, or even pub nights. We are
looking for a team of people that could work together to putting together a list of meetings, and people going to them so that we can encourage people to organize local events that
coincide with other meetings.
If you are interested in helping with this contact ? (To be determined).
2. Compared to a number of other national committees we are highly supported by a number of groups and organizations, even at really high levels. So we want to build on the momentum from the IPY meeting, and get APECS Canada moving forward. So what we need now are a few people that can take on some leadership tasks and get this projects going. The goal here is to get a group of people that can work together and share a few responsibilities as we carry out a few of these concrete plans, and build on our successes.
If you are interested in helping shape APECS Canada, working with other Canadian polar groups and learn some invaluable leadership skills, no matter on where you are in your early career please let me know, and I will connect everyone, forming the first leadership committee for the new Canadian National Committee for APECS! (ok, I know that last line is chessy, but I really am excited about this and want to harness some of the amazing energy that I have felt through both in person meetings sand emails that I have had with many of you!). Louise has already stepped up, who else is game?
Jennifer Provencher
APECS Vice-President
