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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.
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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.
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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
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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.