Meeting Notes

The 2019-2020 council held its first call on 5 November 2019. During this call new and returning council members have been welcomed and the new ExCom was introduced. New updated of the project groups, national committees and the directorate have been given. Detailed minutes you can find here.

During this meeting the project groups of the term 2019-2020 were introduced and updates were given. Read here the detailed minutes.

 See here the new updates of the ExCom, Project Groups, National Committees, Directorate and the activities of the Council. 

 See here the new updates of the ExCom, Project Groups, National Committees, Directorate and the activities of the Council. 

 See here the new updates of the ExCom, Project Groups, National Committees, Directorate and the activities of the Council. 

The 2018-19 term continued in the second half of the term with a large and active Council engaged in a wide range of activities. National Committees have also been very active. The following summary of Council activities between February - July 2019 is based on reports submitted by 39 Individual Council Members (including Individual + NC Rep Members).

The 2018-2019 council held its first call on 26 November 2018. During this call new council members have been welcomed, updates from the ExCom have been presented, feedbacks on the project groups updates and NC updates have been given. Detailed minutes you can find here.

The 2018-19 term got off to a great start, with a large and active Council engaged in a wide range of activities. National Committees have also been very active. This document summarizes Council activities between October 2018 - February 2019.

The 2017-2018 council held its first call on 10 October 2017. This call served as an introduction to the ExCom, Secretariat, Council Project Groups, Council Reports and the new member Orientation webinars. Candidates for leadership positions (Co-Chairs and National Committee Coordinators) were given an opportunity to introduce themselves ahead of voting. Read the full meeting minutes here.

34 members were present a the second 2017-2018 council meeting. The new Council Co-Chairs (Jenn Cooper and Clare Eayrs), NC coordinators (José Seco, Alevtina Evgrafova and Neelu Singh) and new members introduced themselves. Project leaders provided updates on the 18 Council Projects There was a call for all members to start planning activities for Polar Week (March 2018) and a reminder on the deadline to register for the 2018 APECS World Summit (16 February 2018 for APECS Leadership and APECS National Committee leadership reps who want to attend both days of the summit (or only Day 1); 31 March 2018 for APECS members and other interested early career researchers wanting to attend just Day 2 of the summit). Clare and Jenn provided further information on the 1st Council Report, due 31 January, 2018. Read the full meeting minutes here.

This meeting had a very full agenda! After new council member introductions, we were informed about the APECS Code of Conduct for NCs and the Council currently being developed by ExCom. This Code of Conduct will circulated to the Council for feedback. Gerlis Fugmann updated Council members on the 4 new, exciting partnerships with EU Horizon-2020 projects (INTERACT, APPLICATE, Nunataryuk, and ARICE). There will be plenty of opportunities for ECRs to get involved with these new projects. We have switched to Zoom for meetings and webinars and the new booking system and calendar is on the website. Jenn and Clare provided feedback from the January Council reports (a summary is available here). A major discussion point at this meeting was how to better plan Council Meetings so that a greater number of members can attend (the biggest difficulty is the wide range of time zones). A new structure will be trialled at the next Council Meeting. Read the full meeting minutes, including project group and NC updates here.

In order to try to accommodate as many members as possible, we ran 2 council meetings with identical agendas, one during GMT morning and the other during GMT afternoon. It was impossible to find times that worked for all council members, but as this structure provides a better opportunity for members in minority time zones we will run the next Council Meeting in a similar fashion. 16 members attended the first meeting and 22 attended the second. The Code of Conduct draft is being finalised and will be circulated to members before POLAR 2018. Council projects groups and NCs have been incredibly busy and a large portion of the meeting was dedicated to updates on their activities. ExCom thanked all members who have worked so hard to make these projects possible. The full minutes (here) are combined from both meetings.

The 2017-2018 got off to a great start and APECS Council members have been involved in a diverse range of activities over the first few months of the new term. Some projects are still looking for leads and Council members are encouraged to sign up for the opportunity to lead a project on the project database in the Council folder. You can find a summary of the APECS Council activities from September 2017 - January 2018 here.

Council members have been involved in a wide range of projects and other activities over the last 4 months. Well done everybody! Please find a summary of Council activities from February - May 2018 here.

Once again we ran 2 council meetings with identical agendas and this format seems to be working quite well. This is a quiet period for the Council, with many members away on fieldwork. Project group and NC updates were circulated round the council before the meeting (see the updates here) and discussion was focused around the Code of Conduct, which due to be finalised by the end of September, and on how to identify how project groups can help each other out a bit more by combining activities or sharing experience. Read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

You can read the full meeting minutes here.

APECS Council members have been involved in a diverse range of activities over the past 4 months. Read the summary of the APECS Council activities from September 2014 - February 2015

The incoming APECS council met on Monday 14 October 2014 for the first time. With 19 members present, we had a good turnout. Gerlis Fugmann gave a welcome and introduction to each of the subcommittees, before chairs were voted in for the coming year. Council calls will be held every 2 months to keep everyone updated on the activities of each committee. Upcoming projects for the 2014/15 year include coordinating the APECS social media accounts, conducting an organizational review and preparing a strategic plan. To read the full minutes, please click here. We look forward to a productive year ahead.

The APECS Council had its first call for 2015 on 24 February. On the agenda were the following points:
● Summary of activities from committee chairs (RAC, MIC, EOC)
● Upcoming APECS events (Polar Week)
● Website posting and contributions
● Organising APECS events at upcoming conferences.
● Social Media strategy (Hanne and Jennifer)
● Other ways to engage members
● General Business
Read the full minutes.

On Thursday October 24th, 2013, the new 2013-2014 Council had their first online call. There were many peple on the call, including members of the executive committee and several ex-officio members. To start the meeting, all attendees introduced themselves. This was followed by a general overview of the responsabilites of the APECS Council given by Christie Logvinova (APECS President). Then elections were held for the APECS Council chairs and the APECS subcommittee chairs. You can find the results of this election here. To find out more about this call, you can read the meeting minutes.

The Council met on Monday March 24, 2014 as their first call in the new year. We had a good turn out for the call with 20 members, including members from the committee and several ex-officio members. We used the time to update each other on the current and upcoming activities across the diverse set of APECS projects. We heard from the RAC, MIC, EOC, the Polar Educators International (PEI), website working group, and from the Excomm. Several different opportunities came up during the call, from helping with upcoming Research Features, revamping APECS promotional material, and the MIC is still looking for a new co-chair! To find out more about the call, you can read the meeting minutes.

The council met again on May 28th, 2014 to discuss the several internal policy items. To start Christie Logvinova, our APECS president, opened discussion regarding APECS' Strategic Plan. Over the last year the Excom has been diligently drafting a document to outline the direction of APECS for say the next 5 years. This strategic plan will outline where APECS motivation and energy should be focused. For instance during the call we asked feedback from the council on 3 important areas:
- Partnerships- who APECS should strive to form a partnership with in the future?
- Resources- what are useful, not worth continuing, and others we should provide?
- Activities & Events- in-person, online, social media
In addition to this, we are currently drafting new National Committee guidelines. APECS has seen an enormous expansion of new National Committees over the last 2 years, so there has been a need to outline a set of responsibilities and define what the relationship is between APECS International and National Committees are. So together, a team has drafted National committee guidelines, which is currently being reviewed by all national committees for feedback before the Council will vote it into policy. The whole meeting minutes can be found here

Between January to June 2014 the Council has kept a number of its key activities rolling, which have included updating the mentorship databases, arranging monthly webinars and publishing research features, as well as organizing many exciting events for APECS members to network and develop their Polar research potential. Alongside these key areas many new developments are happening, such as a cool 'Where are they now' project (MIC), the website working group (RAC) and the Antarctica Day celebration (E+O) taking place this winter in cooperation with Polar Educators International (PEI) and Our Spaces.
National Committee are also very active: the Czech Republic will host the Polar Ecology Conference this September, in Europe; Brazil launches an APECS workshop titled 'Pole-to-Pole' in September; North Americans will host the 12th International Polar Week in San Francisco; and the Indian Polar Research Network (IPRN) participates in strengthening Oceans Acidification research in Southern Asia by organizing a career panel during the second successive International Workshop on Oceans Acidification (IWOA).
As we now approach the final leg of this council term, we appreciate the effort from Council for successfully strengthening international ties, working group, and national committees. Now that summertime is upon us, it means Council communication is put on pause as many of us are in the field, or on vacation, or moving positions. We will reconvene again in September for an important Council call. For all those who are thinking of applying or renewing their Council roles next year the deadline for this is the 7th September 2014. Do not miss YOUR opportunity to be part of next year's successful Council!
Great work everyone! Click for the full council term report summary.

Council members: Emily Choy – Canada, Eleanor Darlington – United Kingdom, Pedro Echeveste – Spain, Russell Fielding – United States, Jolie Gareis – Canada, Maeva Gauthier – Canada, Kristen Gorman – Canada, Molly ZhognanJia – Australia, Alia Khan – United States, MajaLisowska – Poland, Sylvia Lourenço – Portugal, Sylvia Lourenço – Portugal, Heather Mariash - Canada/Finland, Dagmar Obbels – Belgium, Jean-Sébastien Moore – Canada, Julia Schmale – Germany, Anton Van de Putte – Belgium, Tristy Vick-Majors – United States, Mariëtte Wheeler – South Africa

Council calls, RAC calls, MIC calls
Ingress of 1 new council member
Posted jobs from various listservers, posting news
Posted opportunities for graduate studies
Posted news articles to the APECS Polar News site
Updated website with information about conferences
Worked on fixing broken links and testing the new structure on the webpage
Posted the "Polar Rock Repository" on the Polar Who's Who page on the APECS site
Updated APECS internal mailing lists
Updated funding database
Started the process of transferring frostbytes to APECS website
Developed Research highlights
Started video editing team (WG)
Started traditional knowledge working group (WG)
Svalbard FrostByte – inventory on the webpage
Planning and organizing Arctic Science Summit Week APECS workshop 2013
Helped out with the Norden application
Recruited new members and mentors
MIC activities

RAC activities
Updated the webpage (new members, new info...)
Monthly updates on the Monthly Research Feature
Adding new posters on the Virtual Poster Session
Looking for raw material from VPS from November 2011 onwards

E&O Activities
International Polar Week September 2012
A class room activity for schools: Flakes, Blobs, Bubbles: An Ice Core Art Project, an activity translated into several languages by APECS members
Webinars
Connect to the Poles webinars for teachers and schools
Ask-a-scientist forum: APECS members and mentors answering the questions from schools
Virtual Balloon launch
Local activities by national committees

Antarctica Day 2012 December 1st
A class room activity: Antarctica Day Flag Design - an activity for schools translated into several languages by APECS members
Webinar for classrooms from McMurdo Station
Virtual Balloon launch

Participation in past conferences and organization of APECS events / workshops
Polar Ecology Conference, Czech Republic – advertising APECS at the poster session
Polar Ecology Conference, Czech Republic –APECS Panel session
4th Portuguese Polar Conference – APECS presentation
APECS Portugal career development workshop
CCAMBIO workshop in Belgium - APECS BeNeLux poster
APECS BeNeLux symposium in Ghent, Belgium
IES JaumeBalmes College in Spain – Antartic Day Flagship
ArcticNet conference, Canada
Future of Polar Research in Finland – APECS Finland seminar and career development workshop
ART-APECS workshop in Sopot, Poland

Arctic Science Summit Week 2013 - APECS workshop
Annual APECS Portugal career development workshop
Polar and Alpine Microbiology (PAM) in Montana – APECS event
ATCM meeting – APECS Belgium science fair
SCAR Biology Symposium, Spain – APECS workshop
Alaska Marine Science Symposium, January 2013 in Anchorage, Alaska
Ecological Society of America, Minneapolis, MN in Aug 2013
ASLO in New Orleans, LA in February 2013 – informal APECS event

Our first council call of this new term was full of energy and enthusiasm from council members new and more experienced. We were all very excited to have 28 people on the call, and although it made it a challenge for everyone to speak we had a great time as everyone introduced themselves (briefly), and then we got down to business. New co-chairs were appointed, committees and working groups reviewed and the council jumped into action while still on the call with listserve duties already being claimed on shared online documents as we were still on the line chatting about roles and responsibilities.
To listen to the call recording, click here. To read the minutes of the call click here.

Council co-chairs: Tosca Ballerini - USA/Italy and Penelope Wagner-USA;
Council members: Alexandre Bevington - Canada, Punyasloke Bhadury - India, Erli Costa - Brazil, Eleanor Darlington - United Kingdom, Pedro Echeveste - Spain, Nadezhda Filimonova - Russia / Sweden, Jenny Fisher - United States, Gerlis Fugmann - Germany / Canada, Jolie Gareis - Canada, Meagan Grabowski - Canada, Rebeca Zapata Guardiola - Spain, Tiphaine Jeanniard-du-Dot - Canada / France, Silje-Kristin Jensen - UK / Norway, Antony Jinman - United Kingdom, Daleen Koch - South Africa, Lisa-Marie Leclerc - Norway / Canada, Maja Lisowska - Poland, Sílvia Lourenço - Portugal, Candice Lys - Canada, Heather Maraish - Finland / Canada, Sanna Markkula - Finland / Norway, Oliver Marsh - New Zealand / UK, Claudia Maturana - Chile, Inga May - Germany / Canada, Benjamin Merkel - Norway / Germany, Pablo Nicolás Núñez Pölcher - Argentina, Ana Salomé - Portugal, Julia Schmale - Germany, Nikolas Sellheim - Finland / Germany, Philipp Semenchuck - Norway / Germany, Paloma Serrano - Germany / Spain, Rosa Rut Thorisdottir - France / Iceland, Tristy Vick-Majors - United States, Mariette Wheeler - South Africa, Christie Wood - United States

Organization
- Council calls, RAC calls, MIC calls
- Ingress of 2 new council members
- Skype call with Spanish / Portuguese speaking APECS members
- Soliciting contributions from the atmospheric sciences to Antarctica month;
- Posting jobs from various listservers, posting news
- Posting news articles to the APECS Polar News site;
- Update website with info to the confereces where
- organizing IPY Montreal workshop
- updated the Travel Award website
- working on moving our APECS files from Dropbox to google docs
- working Barents 2020 application and sent it to Jenny
- working on Fram Report
- drafted a timeline for the Hiring process of the new director; updated the job description
- FrostBytes stuff ... Jenny and I had a call for volunteers and now seem to have a good group added various stuff to the publication database (still need to update a few things in there)
- finalizing the draft for the workshop paper (with Inga)
- Updating the "Who's Who in Polar Science" online database as required.
- APECS funding workshop being held as part of the Arctic Frontiers Conferene in Tromsø January 2012.
- Updated APECS internal mailing lists
- Training GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting web-conferencing systems
- Working on Barents 2020 application
- Drafting Strategic Plan
- Negotiations with Northern (Arctic) Federal University about joint summer field school around Russian Polar and Subpolar unique territories (budget, programme, potential partners)
- Standing in the Programme Committee (represent APECS there) of the conference for young scientists that will be held in Russia, Arkhangelsk, June. Collaborative work with Arkhangelsk Scientific Centre of RAS and NarFU
- Negotiations with EGEA as potential partner to organize joint event (e-lecture/webinar)
- Drafted several APECS contributions to different partners' newsletters

MIC activities
- Setting up of the Facebook and Twitter account for APECS-India National Committee. The response has been good. APECS-India related activities are being posted through Facebook. Initiated discussion to hold the APECS-India Workshop in 2012.
- creating APECS-Spain in an officially sense, with full legal background here in Spain, to try in the future to get funds and all those stuffs to organize events, seminars, etc.
- Working on a new picture for the chain letter member reactions
- Sending the Welcome letter and membership card to 24 new members each week
- Working on a strategie to recrute member to give the presentation to their university to bost up the number of bachelor student (email by country/universities.... working on a list???? )
- developing of outlines for APECS Sweden members enlargement. I met with a representative of APECS Sweden and we arranged to organize a seminar in Sweden in the year 2012 to attract new members and to share idea and experience on the Arctic and Antarctic research in various fields.
- -organize a meeting/brainstorm of local ideas of current/potential APECS members in Whitehorse Yukon, Canada
- Working on establishing of an Northeast US regional chapter of APECS regional group.
- Working with proposers of APECS Canada chapter
- APECS Portugal, informing both groups about the upcoming activities. We have been carrying out a process of attract new members and presently counting 13 members. We are now starting to organize the APECS PT annual workshop.
- developing a APECS Finland national commitee
- Updating APECS Poland website
- Correspondence with APECS members in South America on potential VPS or webinars held in Spanish/Portuguese

RAC activities
- Updated the RAC webpage to present all new members
- APECS Microbial Ecology VPS held on 29th November, 2011.
- DOMs: October – Permafrost (helped initially to set up the VPS), November – Microbial Ecology (minimal input from my side), December – Antarctica (see following point), January – Limnology (motivated people to start organizing). The plan for February is to do a Contaminants session and in March to have an interdisciplinary DOM on the Siberian Arctic.
- December Antarctica Day webinar: initiation and organization by APECS council member together with Jenny B., chairing of the session, during the webinar 64 people participated altogether; participation in the webinar as one of the speakers of one APECS council member; correspondence to Julie Berkman from Our Spaces to make a worldwide Antarctica Day resume
- Planning and co-organization of the January Discipline of the Month on Limnology, We will also co-ordinate a Limnology Virtual Poster Session, to take place during the last week of January.
- working group to redefine the structure of the APECS research fields and sub-fields;

Participation to past conferences and organization of APECS events / workshops
- Assisted in arranging the virtual workshop on Climate Justice in preparation for COP17 with York University on 26 October 2011.
- Attended COP17 in Durban, South Africa, as APECS representative.
- APECS Representation and Presentation at 2nd UArctic Student Forum, Inari, Finland and Kautokeino, Norway, March 19-25, 2011;
- APECS Representation and Presentation at ARKTIS Graduate School Annual Seminar, Rovaniemi, Finland, April 4 and 5, 2011
- Informal APECS representation at UArctic 14th Council Meeting and 10th Anniversary, Tornio and Rovaniemi, Finland, June 6-11, 2011(I tried to do it officially, but official APECS representation by myself was declined)
- APECS workshop at the AWI
- Organized and moderated the APECS Mentor Panel Discussion: Careers in polar extremophiles- research and opportunities at the CAREX Life in Extreme Environments Conference held in Dublin from 18th-20th October, 2011.
- Preparing APECS activity at AGU San Francisco 2011

Planning of APECS events/ workshops at meetings and conferences in 2012 and contributions with poster / presentations related to APECS activities
- Many APECS council members are involved as co-conveners in sessions of the Montreal IPY 2012 and participated to the review process of submitted abstracts
- Arctic Frontiers 2012 (poster)
- APECS Tromso Funding Seminar (presentation)
- International Symposium on Seasonal Snow and Ice (Lahti, Finland, May 28 – June 1, 2012) (APECS Panel)
- APECS Representation and Presentation at Jokkmokk Winterconference, Jokkmokk, Sweden, January 31 – February 3; (included an unofficial and informal 'presentation' of APECS to the Swedish Crown Princess)
- potentially set-up an APECS panel during the SETAC meeting in May in Berlin.
- Participated in two conference calls on the ASSW 2013 Symposium in Poland as APECS representative. For each session there will be one ECR selected by APECS. The set-up of a webpage is under way.
- The Arctic Council: Its Place in the Future of Arctic Governance, Toronto, Canada, January 17 and 18, 2012
- Jokkmokk Winterconference, Jokkmokk, Sweden, January 30 – February 3, 2012, (APECS presentation)
- 6th Pan-European Conference European Consortium for Political Research, Tampere, Finland, September 13-15, 2012 (possible APECS representation)
- Oceans of Changes, 24-27 April 2012, Majorca Island (Spain) (APECS event)
- In March 2012 a Polar Secretariat will hold a workshop with the participation of APECS Sweden members
- Submitted 1 poster about APECS at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2012
- APECS Panel "International Collaborations in "Cool" Sciences"
- in physics conference
- NZ annual branch meeting of the International Glaciological Society, February 2012
- Ocean Sciences Meeting, Salt Lake City 2012,
- IPY Montreal 2012,
- SCAR Portland 2012,
- IASC Glaciology Workshop in January
IGS Symposium, June 2012, Fairbanks, Alaska
- AGU Fall Meeting 2012, San Francisco – parterning with Cryosphere division to have a mentor panel, publicize opportunities to be more involved & get funding, and we can recruit a whole bunch of new members

Chair: Penelope Wagner
Attendees: Mariette Wheeler, Nikolas Sellheim, Jenny Baeseman, Yulia Zaika, Rosa Thorisdottir, Silje-Kristin Jensen, Maja Lisowska, Silvia Lourenco, Alexey Pavlov, Ana David, Benjamin Beall, Benjamin Merkel, Christie Wood, Heather Mariash, Jenny Fisher, Julia Schmale, Lisa Leclerc, Gerlis Fugmann, Tosca Ballerini
Note taker: Nikolas Sellheim

Agenda:(br />1. Introduction
2. APECS newsletter survey - Ben
3. APECS Director transition - Yulia
4. Google Docs information - Penny
5. Upcoming events, plans, responsibilities
6. Other

Introduction: Penny Wagner
Welcomes the Council to its first call in 2012. There are many changes going to take place this year and she therefore reminds the Council of its duties as set out in the APECS Council Charter. She encourages the Council to subscribe to mailing lists, so that active participation in the website in terms of news, jobs, etc. is ensured. Updates the Council on new council members (Emily Choy) and those who have stepped down (Laura Weir). Reminds the Council of the Council report. Nikolas S. to draft a template for term report in February together with Penny and Tosca.

Newsletter survey: Ben Beall
Presents the results of the survey regarding the newsletter. 80% of the respondents read the last issue while only 50% have read the last 10 issues. This increase may be related to the change in the format, which was changed and streamlined so that it becomes more attractive. The APECS news section is the most popular, followed by partner news and jobs. The virtual poster session is the least popular section. All in all, the goals are met, while the general layout and design are popular. Yet, 'survey people' suggest and increase in the readability of the newsletter. White space should be increased while text should be reduced. There are two suggestions for the news section: A section for National Committees updates and polar resources. Despite the theoretical interest in the Virtual Poster Sessions, it is unpopular. The VPS format should be changed and the visibility should be increased.

APECS Director transition: Jenny Baeseman, Yulia Zaika
Jenny B. has resigned from her Director's position and is now phasing out her duties. Angelika Renner and Jenny B. have turned in the job description to the human resources department of the University of Tromsø and the job will hopefully be announced next week. Jenny B. encourages all Council members who are interested to apply: "the more applications the better." The job will be announced until the end of February (IS THIS CORRECT?). The initial appointment will be for 9 months as a testing period, after that the contract can be renewed for 3 more years. Until a new Director is found, Jenny B.'s current tasks will be delegated to ExCom and Council.

President Yulia Zaika thanks Council for enthusiasm and hard work and Jenny B. for a great job as a founder and Director of APECS. Yulia hopes that Jenny stays with APECS as an advisor. But now, the Council needs to be very active and needs to take over more responsibilities and the leadership needs to step up more. It is also a great opportunity for those interested to gain experience in running an international organization.

Google Docs Information: Penny Wagner
Penny wonders whether the amount of APECS emails may be too high and therefore in which way future communication between the Membership and Involvement Committee (MIC) and the Research Activities Committee (RAC) should take place. The Council does not see the number of APECS-emails as too high and that Google Docs can serve as a good tool to share documents and information.

Upcoming Events: Penny Wagner
Asks the Council members to enter their information concerning upcoming activities into the provided form.

Others
Silvia Lourenco is involved in organizing an APECS workshop in Lisbon in May, possible topics Education and Outreach and /or funding resources.

Julia Schmale encourages having a test call with GoToWebinar before the next Virtual Poster Session. Several people are interested in joining this call.

The APECS council had a productive call on the 2nd of November. Please read more about the call and get all the updates from the council here.

In February the Council met for a meeting. The meetings will occur evey second month. To read about the call click here.

The APECS Council Term Report was full of exciting news. International collaborations amongst APECS members and mentors are spanning the globe in multiple directions, and there are many tangible outcomes of these cooperative interactions. To name a few activities: Virtual Poster Sessions were organized, posters were added, jobs were added to the website, and new members and new mentors joined APECS, and there have been numerous APECS Workshops, panels and other events. National APECS websites are under development, webinars are drawing presenters and participants and being shown to broader audiences. Workshops for APECS members as well as for Arctic teachers have broadened the interactions of each side, and the APECS Facebook, Google Groups and Twitter pages have been actively used. Listservs have been created for various disciplines, and they have proven to be a great venue for discussions and announcements. As these developments have taken place, ways to streamline and improve APECS activities and operations have come to light. The RAC Charter and the Council Charter updates have been accompanied by stimulating discussion and contributions from a number of APECS members, and some very productive meetings were held for both the RAC and the Council. Additionally, there is discussion about merging the Sea Ice and Geophysics Discipline Coordinator positions to better work together in benefitting the sea ice focus.

There has been APECS representation and participation by Council members at numerous international conferences and symposia, including:

The International Whale Watching Conference in Tokyo, Japan (APECS Presentation)
Research Funding Workshop in Tromsø
The IV International Workshop on Micropollutants in the Environment at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (presented poster on APECS)
The XIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Paleobotânica e Palinogia (presented poster on APECS)
The 3rd Annual Polar Law Symposium (APECS Workshop and Mentor Panel)
II International Symposium on "Reconstructing Climate Variations in South American and the Antarctic Peninsula Over the Last 2000 Years" (APECS Mentor Panel)
LIII Annual Meeting of Chilean Biology Society IV Chilean Annueal Meeting of Evolution (presented poster on APECS)
International Glaciological Conference Ice and Climate Change: A View from the South (Mentor Panel)

Some of the highlights from various countries and discipline groups include:

An APECS Norway trainee program is in development with the Career Center at the University of Tromsø.
APECS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Artic Council Working Group, Conservation of Flora and Fauna (CAFF) and preparations are under way to facilitate APECS involvement in the new CAFF project, Arctic Sea Ice.
APECS Chile is working to establish formal relations between APECS and the Chilean Antarctic Research Council.
The first APECS Brazil Workshop was organized, and APECS Brazil and APECS Portugal have been cooperating to facilitate phenomenal workshops.
APECS Portugal is working with the Organizational Committee of Portugal Polar Science (Structure and Logistics), and is working to increase communication and interaction with the Minister of Science and Technology. APECS Portugal has also been busy with an E&O project, "Researchers Night".
The APECS brochure and the APECS Mentor Form have been translated into Russian, greatly extending the reach of these documents. On a similar note, APECS Italy and the Climate Change Answer Working Group is working to translate materials into Italian.
APECS Russia is working to establish a connection with the Russian Union of Young Scientists and has initiated work on the Funding Bodies Data Base Working Group.
APECS USA organized a mentor panel for "Alternative Careers in Polar Science" and has helped to arrange the Gordon Research Seminar and the accompanying APECS Workshop. Additionally, APECS USA is developing the agenda for a proposed IMPETUS Sea Ice Workshop. Additionally there is an initiative to establish a relationship with the AMS Committee on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography.
APECS Poland organized an APECS Discussion Panel at the XXXIII International Polar Symposium, organized promotional events at the 5th SEDIBUD Workshop the Lublin Geopolitical Conference, and a special conference on "Global Climate Change and its Implications on Polish Landscape Transition" organized by the Committee of Geographical Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Science and National global Change Committee. One of the outcomes of this activity has been the creation of the new APECS Working Group of Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments.
APECS India has established an outreach program on polar science that involves the participation of students from forty (yes – 40!) schools. Plans are under development to provide opportunities for some of the students who have expressed interest in polar research can participate in research activities in polar biology. Outreach activities have also been undertaken at various universities, and there is now the possibility for a polar workshop in India, along with an APECS India webpage.

Upcoming activities include:

APECS representative for the University Antarctic Expedition of Students on Ice.
The Arctic Law Thematic Network is being developed, and APECS participation is welcomed.
There will be an APECS Workshop in conjunction with the International Congress of Arctic Social Scientists (ICASS) in Akureyri, Iceland in June.
Francisco will attend the AGCS meeting as the APECS representative during the IUGG Conference in Melbourne.
APECS Portugal meeting will be in March/April.
APECS presentation at the PPS Arctic Meeting, the "Present day processes, Past changes, and Spatiotemporal variability of biotic, abiotic, and socio-environmental conditions and resource components along and across the Arctic delimitation zone"
APECS presentation at the Avalanches & Related Subjects – IV International Conference
APECS presentations at Kola Science Center of Russian Academy of Sciences and Polar Geophysical Institute
APECS Career Development Workshop, presentation, and convenor at Arctic Science Summit Week
Gordon Research Seminar – APECS Workshop
APECS Panel at the 10th AMS Conference on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography
APECS Funding Workshop with Saint Petersburg State University of Service and Economics
Career Development Symposium at the Baltic Sea Conference
Click here to read the full Council term report

Do you want to know what our current Council members are doing?
The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists Council met for a Council meeting in April. The Council members are involved in many activities. To read about the call please click here. Next Council meeting will be in June 2011.

Council Minutes 22 June 2011

In June the Council met for yet another Council call. To read the notes from the call download it by clicking here.