by Melissa Hart
At the time of writing, four of our five nodes are in lockdown (live feely for us all, UTAS!). My thoughts are with you all out there during this challenging time. Please be kind to yourselves, and know that there is support available if you need it.
I have recently refreshed our Researcher Development Program model for our strategic plan. For those familiar with our previous model, you may note that the key components have not changed, instead, there has been a reframing to make clear our overall goal and desired outcome of the program. We will be offering multiple opportunities for formal feedback on the program in the coming months, but in the meantime, if you do have any suggestions, comments, feedback, please do feel free to get in contact with me.
Plan delta has resulted in once again a postponement of our in-person Atmosphere and Ocean Dynamics Winter School. This winter school will make use of the fantastic GFD lab at the ANU, so we will hold off on running this school until we can run it in person (with, as planned, streamed lectures for those offshore). One benefit of being a cross-institutional centre is that we came into this pandemic already well versed in the effective use of Zoom. As such, we continue our program of online development and training until we can once again meet in person.
Preparation for diverse career paths is a key outcome of the researcher development program. As such we have added a session purely for ECRs after our CLEX seminars, where they can have informal conversations with our speakers, and ask questions about their career paths. Thank you to Nathan Eizenberg for his leadership in organising these sessions.
We also continue our practice of continued engagement with CLEX alumni by inviting them back to speak at our alumni sessions. Recently we heard from Esteban Abellán, who is now a meteorologist at Weatherzone, and Earl Duran, who is now an energy consultant at Global Sustainable Energy Solutions.
Keep an eye out for development sessions that will include some science masterclass lectures that will provide important science fundamentals training, and the Turbo Charge your Writing workshop. Registrations are open now.
In the last newsletter, I talked about the success of our undergraduate scholar program. In this newsletter, you can read direct accounts of the program from two of our undergraduate scholars. Julia Potgieter has a first-authored paper resulting from her undergraduate project, which is *this close* to acceptance. Meanwhile, Steven Thomas, presented his undergraduate project at AMOS this year.