APECS AGU Panel2012APECS held a career development mentor panel and pub night at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco in collaboration with the AGU Cryosphere Focus Group. Discussion with the audience of 35-40 people ranged from the benefits and drawbacks of PhDs and postdocs in the USA as opposed to Europe and the importance of publication record in postdoc applications to the importance of flexibility and coherence in how you sell yourself and the need to find the right challenge that you are passionate about. Panelists spoke about  the importance of recognizing and cultivating the skills that a masters or PhD gives you besides research (for non-academic jobs) as well as advocating  how helpful it can be to develop a career plan, with achievable goals along the way, to set up your career in the direction you would like to see it go. The audience was both amused and encouraged to hear that many of these very successful panelists had made professional choices for personal reasons – and the glaciology-heavy crowd was relieved to hear that glaciology funding and research in the US doesn’t appear to be a bubble market.

Organizers Christine Dow and Allen Pope would like to thanks the panelists for their insights and their time during such a busy conference. The panelists were:

Plans are already in the works for an APECS / AGU Cryosphere mentor panel for next year. See you in San Francisco in 2013!