2019 ESA Annual Meeting – Student Section

Button with the text "conference schedule".

Button with the text "discussion forum".

Student Section Sponsored Workshops/Events

Monday – Thursday August 6-10, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Exhibit Hall:

ESA Career Fair: What can you do with your Ecology degree? Join us for the very first Career Fair at the ESA Annual Meeting!
The very first ESA Career Fair will offer a wealth of information for enterprising graduate students or early career professionals seeking a job or career advancement in ecology. What types of jobs value ecology research skills? How can I build an effective resumé that opens the door to careers? What else do I need to know before I graduate? Bring these questions and more to the ESA Career Fair.

Sunday, August 5, 12-5pm, Convention Center – 354:

Story-tell your Science with ComSciCon – The communicating science workshop for graduate students: This workshop aims to improve graduate student’s abilities to tell their science as a descriptive story to both scientists outside their field and to non-scientists featuring multiple panel discussions.

Monday, August 6, 10:15-11:30am, Convention Center – 338:

Maximize your 2018 Meeting Experience – Orientation for Student Attendees: This session aims to help all students maximize their ESA Annual Meeting experience and to ensure students leave ESA 2018 with a few new friends and feeling exhilarated and excited about ecology.

Monday, August 6, 11:30am-1:15pm, Convention Center – 339:

Student Networking Workshop – Tips on How to Build and Maintain Productive Relationships: The purpose of this workshop is to provide students with networking tips and tricks to help start conversations with current and potential colleagues as well as to help foster future collaborations.

Tuesday, August 7, 11:30am-1:15pm, Convention Center – 339:

The Lefts, Rights, Ups, and Downs That Created a Successful Career in Ecology: Come listen to established scientists tell their story. You may be surprised by some of the funny hiccups they experienced along the way to their prestigious careers as professional ecologists.

Tuesday, August 7, 6:30-8:00pm, Barcadia Arcade:

Student Mixer: This year it will be held at Barcadia, a venue within walking distance to the French Quarter PLUS it features a full arcade! This is always a great time to network with your peers and make new friends, and for the more senior students, catch up with old ones!
MUST PURCHASE TICKETS BEFORE EVENT! Registration for this event includes dinner (vegetarian options included), one drink ticket, and free play for all arcade games.

Wednesday, August 8, 6:30-8:00pm, Convention Center – 338:

Student Section Business Meeting: Open to all students. Come learn how to become involved all year and enjoy dinner proved by the student section.

Thursday, August 9, 11:30am-1:15pm, Convention Center – 333-334:

Confessions From Graduate Students – Advice from graduate students about navigating and surviving graduate school: The purpose of this workshop is to provide a place for young ecology students to meet one another, learn about the graduate application process, and obtain advice from current graduate students through a presentation of tips for success and a graduate student panel discussion about personal experiences.

Places to go in Louisville

How to get the most out of your ESA experience

This outline provides tips and suggestions from Student Section officers with years of experience attending ESA Annual Conferences. Below, you will find tips on navigating the wide breadth and number of science presentations, as well as tips for networking, and broaching the subject of your desire for a job or a graduate position with a faculty or research scientist.

ESA Student Section Services

Attend the Student Section events. There is a good variety of events, some are social, others are focused on networking and skill building…all are worth your while and a great way to meet other students and inspiring mentors!
Go to student events! Attend the Student Orientation, which will explain how students can get the most out of the conference and not get overwhelmed.
If you’re at ESA for the first time contact our officers we’ll be happy to invite you to join us for dinner/drinks/coffee!

Science Presentations and Burnout

Don’t burn out by over-programming yourself into too many sessions, which is easy to do at a big conference with so many cool people and research. Take breaks!
Go to the conference with a goal: meet 5 people, learn something new about a topic new to you.
Ask around to see who is an exceptionally good speaker and go to those talks, because they are sure to be good, even if the topic isn’t something you think about a lot–you might get inspired!
Ask good questions and know that there are no bad questions :-).
Ask your advisor to introduce you to people that they know and that you also want to meet. I have found this is the best and easiest way to get to know someone new.
Find a ‘talk buddy’…someone who you team up with so that if there are two talks going on at the same time, you can each go to one, and then report back to each other.
Go to organized symposia vs. contributed sessions…these often have better organization, more of a cohesive theme, which can sometimes make them more interesting.
My thought about conferences, particularly big conferences with concurrent sessions, is that it’s really easy to over-schedule yourself by trying to get to absolutely every talk you are interested in.
- I have found that it is often counter-productive because you spend more time thinking about where you need to be next than what you are listening to at the moment. You also invariably miss the first part of a talk, or skip the questions (often the most interesting part of a talk) as you are jumping rooms. I’ve learned to choose the really important talks that I want to see (hear?), but then to sacrifice some talks in order to stay in a particular session longer. I’ve gotten much more out of conferences this way. Something else I try to do is to occasionally go to sessions that I know nothing about. They often turn out to be my favorite sessions because I can just listen and learn.
Take advantage of workshops (often times there are super cool opportunities to develop skills that you can’t come by easily at your home institution).

Networking

Don’t just hang out with people you already know…!
Go out to dinner with cool people (how to get invited is the tricky bit…but you can invite people too!). This is honestly the best thing about conferences to me…informal time to just chat with other researchers about your ideas/their ideas/your life/their life.
Take advantage of any networking/happy hour/mixer events as these are arguably the most important aspect of the conference – networking!
Don’t be afraid to go up to a speaker you like, introduce yourself and tell them you liked their talk and converse with them.
Don’t forget to network both horizontally (with your peers, they might be your future colleagues) and vertically (with faculty etc.)
A good ice-breaker for meeting new people is to ask them what presentations/sessions they found interesting; ask them to summarize the talk for you.
If you meet someone who has similar interests, ask them who the good speakers or good mentors are. Looking for Jobs, Grad & Post-Doc Positions
Check out the job board (usually around the poster session area).
Network, network, network! (See above for tips)
If you are giving a poster, have professional looking business cards available or handouts with your contact information and highlights of your recent work (publications, presentations, research, etc.).