PSECCO turns three years old!
It's officially been three years since the Polar Science Early Career Community Office (PSECCO) was released into the world, and it's been an absolute pleasure to listen to input and direction from Arctic and Antarctic early career scientists around where they feel they most need support. With PSECCO turning three years old, there's a lot to celebrate - including first and foremostly the people who have engaged with the community office to collaborate or attend events and the people behind PSECCO who have all made PSECCO activities happen, including the wonderful PSECCO staff (past and present), the PSECCO Advisory Board (past and present) and the PSECCO Leadership Team who help determine PSECCO direction as led by the early career community on a weekly basis.
It's the engagement and efforts of all these people that have led to some pretty exciting engagement numbers for the community office. Since April 2022, PSECCO has hosted 50 community career development events, engaging over 4,400 people. At these events the office focused on skill-building, fostering community among polar early career researchers (ECRs), and listening to their needs. These listening sessions have been followed with working to fill gaps in support through additional community office programming. PSECCO has distributed over $42,295 in funding through travel, administrative and community support grants to the polar early career community. We connected with more than 30 polar early career and adjacent organizations doing incredible work aligned with the PSECCO mission and worked collaboratively toward advancing early career goals where synergies existed. Engagement with the office has been very high, with over 1200 subscribers to our monthly newsletter, over 650 ECRs on our PSECCO Community Slack, and more than 3700 subscribers on Bluesky. Just recently we also expanded our social media presence to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, recognizing that each platform connects with different pieces of the early career community. PSECCO is excited to continue to grow our community, support leadership development, and to share opportunities, funding, and resources with the polar community.
In celebration of three years of PSECCO, we asked some team members to share reflections on their favorite parts of being involved with the community office and PSECCO events that made a lasting impression on them. Here's what they said.
Favorite parts of being involved with PSECCO
Anne Gold, PI for PSECCO and Director of the Center for Education, Engagement and Evaluation, shared:
“I really enjoy the collaborative, creative and responsive nature of the team. PSECCO truly centers early career scientists' needs and interests and is working to make a positive impact to further careers, inspire people, support scientific excellence and build a welcoming community.”
Madison Payne, Student Research Experience Coordinator, reflected:
“I recently joined the PSECCO team in November, and my favorite part has definitely been meeting and connecting with the early career community through mentorship and partnership events! It's been great to see the different avenues PSECCO takes to incorporate early career voices.”
Mariama Dryák-Vallies, Director of PSECCO, similarly shared:
“Hands down my favorite thing has been working with so many marvelous people within and outside of PSECCO in the polar community. Building and maintaining collaborations to do impactful things with others is an opportunity for which I'm really grateful!”
Ethan Sanchez, PSECCO Undergraduate Student Assistant, expressed:
“Connecting with such wonderful people and seeing the different opportunities available for academic and non-academic career pathways—supporting others in their career journeys is amazing.”
Bradley Markle, co-PI for PSECCO, Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences, shared:
“I think we have accomplished a great deal and done a lot of good for the early career community. It’s been very satisfying to see effort pay off.”
Rose Leeger, PSECCO Social Media Strategist, said:
"I’ve really enjoyed meeting so many incredible new people and feeling like I belong in the polar sciences!"
Standout events folks have participated in
Ethan: “Polar Early Career World Summit [was an] awesome collaboration between organizations and an inclusive event with different nationalities. Gave lots of people a voice in regards to polar work/science.”
Mariama: “Oh my gosh - there's so much that's been fun! I think that running the Polar Early Career World Summit, the Polar Postdoc Leadership Workshop, and the US-Chile International Collaboration Workshop have been some standouts though. It's so fun, challenging and rewarding to partner with others (especially from different disciplines and cultural contexts) to put on in-person events that feel impactful and help capacity-build!”
Brad: “I really enjoyed the all the in-person events to meet the PSECCO community, whether socials at conferences, in Boulder, or the advisory board meetings. It is nice to actually connect with people.”
Madison: “The Polar Early Career World Summit stands out to me as one of the most welcoming and collaborative large-scale events I have been a part of. Everyone involved, including APECS and participants, came with open minds and a lot of motivation, which was so refreshing.”
Anne: “The Polar Postdoc Leadership Workshop was a fantastic event - meeting and engaging with the enthusiastic postdocs and seeing the energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity they brought to collaborating was inspiring. It is also rewarding to see how far these connections and impacts have rippled - when I now meet one of the participants a couple years later.”
Rose: "US APECS/ Chile ECR event at SCAR. Meeting so many new people at the start or a big conference was such a good way to get to know others!"
And with that, we just want to thank every single one of you in the polar community who has helped to make the past three years notable and incredibly rewarding for the PSECCO team. We've had a lot of fun working to help build meaningful connections, events, and opportunities, and we’re so excited to continue working with each other, our partners and the early career community to do this into the future!
Cheers to another year to come and navigating what's ahead!