ECE Section Business Meeting Notes – August 2017

# Early Career Ecologist Section – 2017 Business Meeting Notes

This year, we held our meeting jointly with the Student Section. The Student Section presented first. Below are notes only pertaining to the ECE Section portion of the meeting.

• Rob introduces the ECES and our officers and positions
• • Defines “early career” – loosely, but highlights the approx. 8 years in your field guide
  • Provides a very broad overview of our priorities and goals
• Matt presents the change to the By Laws

• • Proposed amendment passed by a unanimous vote
• Matt presented the candidates for Secretary and Vice-Chair

• • Nate present and give his own blurb
  • Matt gave blurb for other two candidates
  • Matt facilitated handing out pieces of paper to only ECE members, which they noted their choices on (tallied later)
• Rob presented the activities we organized at 2017 and solicited ideas and events for this year

• • Discussion about wiki potential

• • • ecoevojobs.net was discussed
    • Postdoc lounge for next year’s ESA suggested
• Fiona went through an overview of the mentee-mentorship program

• • We didn’t provide financial support this year, and applications were just as high
  • With it becoming cheaper we can possibly expand the program
  • Mentorship appears to be the biggest draw for the applicants
• Tim Fullman discusses Diverse Pathways in Ecology

• • Mentioned Sunday’s alt-careers workshop organized by Josh
  • Mentioned joint ESA-SCB program on next generation careers as somewhere we should reach out to and connect with
• Rob introduced Jon Chase to Introduce the Ecology Letters award

• • Jon discussed the role of Ecology Letters in Early Careers
  • Jon presents the award to Julie Messier (in absentia)
• Rob discussed the INTECOL and Future Earth webinar series where the runner ups will be presenting
• Matt briefly discusses priorities for next year

• • Collaboration
  • Naupaka – peer-review mentoring program
  • Sustainability of mentorship program
  • Advocating for increase in affordability of meeting for early career folks