We, the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy
(NWSSMM) in collaboration with Leslie Cornick, the Student Member-At-Large,
are in the process of planning and organizing the student program for the
14th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals here in
Vancouver, BC. As the success of this program is largely dependent on the
input and contributions of the entire student body, we would like to
provide you with an outline of planned events, asking for your feedback and
participation in order to make the student program a rewarding and
satisfying experience for all of us. We will try our best to incorporate
all comments and contributions that we receive from you.
Regular updates and information about the student program, registration for
events and other items will be available on a website set up specifically
for the student workshop: http://www.fish.washington.edu/smm_student/. If
you have any suggestions, questions, concerns or would like to contribute
in any way etc, please contact us at: smm_student_workshop@hotmail.com.
Outline of student program
The format and content of the student program as presented here, was
largely developed based on the results of last year's SMM Student Survey
addressing these issues. During past biennial meetings the student workshop
has been a single meeting that tried to meet the needs of both graduate and
undergraduate students. Based on the input provided by students through
last year's survey, we concluded that the needs of all students could be
better met by organizing two separate events. Although, of course, open to
all interested students the main student workshop at this year's meeting
will be tailored to address issues that primarily concern graduate
students. In addition, we have planned to introduce an undergraduate
program specifically catering to students in the early stages of their
postgraduate career. The format and content of both events are described in
more detail below. Registration forms for student events are available
online on our website.
Student Workshop
The graduate-level workshop will be in the evening of the second full
conference day (30/11/01). The overall format of this event will be similar
to previous workshops, i.e. there will be an informal dinner, three invited
keynote speakers and small group discussion with leading international
professionals in various fields. However, as indicated above, we will try
to get speakers and discussion leaders to specifically address topics that
are of interest and concern for advanced students.
Undergraduate luncheon and mentor program
The focus of the undergraduate program will be the implementation of a
conference-long, graduate-student led 'mentor program' that we hope will
provide helpful insight for the large number of undergraduates that attend
the conference. The mentorship program will be introduced and launched
during an undergraduate luncheon, which will take place during the lunch
hour of the first full conference day (29/11/01).
The idea of this program is to set up a networking system in which willing
graduate students may act as mentors for interested undergrads, providing
advice, guidance and support, answering questions, possibly facilitating
meetings with useful contacts, etc.; - in short introducing them to the
"ways of the marine mammal science world" throughout the course of the
conference.
Recruitment of mentors
We are currently looking for mentors, i.e. students who feel that they are
in a position to provide useful advice to others and would like to
participate in the program. If you are interested in becoming a mentor,
please refer to our web page for more information and to fill out the
registration form posted there. If you have already contacted Leslie or the
Northwest Student Chapter at an earlier stage, indicating your interest in
becoming a mentor, but have not yet filled out the on-line mentor
registration form, we would ask you to please register again on the webpage
in order to provide us with all the necessary information requested in the
form.
Student chapter participation
The marine mammal student community is constantly growing and quite a large
number of SMM student chapters have been set up by now. Since we think that
all of us would benefit from getting to know each other a bit better, we
would like to help to improve communications, networking and the informal
exchange of ideas amongst chapters. We would therefore like to invite all
chapters to put together a poster which could provide an introduction to
their student chapter activities and organization. These posters will be
displayed at both student events and throughout the conference. Chapters
will be receiving more detailed information about the format and content of
these posters shortly.
So, to summarize we would like to ask you to please:
- check the website regularly for updates
(http://www.fish.washington.edu/smm_student/)
- register on-line for the student events
(http://www.fish.washington.edu/smm_student/)
- participate in the mentorship program
(http://www.fish.washington.edu/smm_student/)
- let us know what you think about all of this
(smm_student_workshop@hotmail.com)
Please help us to make this a great conference for students!
Amanda Bradford, Carlos Alvarez, Kristin Kaschner, Alison Keple, Josh
London, Alexander Zerbini (Northwest student chapter SMM 2001 student
workshop organization committee)
& Leslie Cornick (your Student Member-at-Large (<cornickl@tamug.tamu.edu>)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Sep 20 2001 - 17:46:20 EDT