PSECCO celebrates its first anniversary!

The Polar Science Early Career Community Office (PSECCO) was officially launched one year ago today, and we at PSECCO are SO excited to have you as part of our community! 

Since April 2022, PSECCO has been designing programming and funding programs to empower, elevate and give agency to the early career polar scientists who are leading the charge to make the polar sciences more welcoming, inclusive and diverse. PSECCO has hosted 16 community events and nine socials over the past year, directly engaging with over 800 individuals in attendance. At these events the office has focused on fostering community among polar early career researchers (ECRs), listening to their needs, and then working to fill gaps in support for these individuals where they currently exist. PSECCO has distributed a total of $17,670 to the polar early career community and has been working to build partnerships with 10+ polar early career and adjacent organizations doing incredible work aligned with the PSECCO mission. Engagement with the office has been fantastic, with 477 subscribers to our monthly newsletter, 310 ECRs on our PSECCO Community Slack, 1,028 subscribers on Twitter, and over 7,000 individual website users. 

Perhaps most exciting, is hearing about how we’ve supported ECRs anecdotally, from BAJEDI micro-grants having helped support direct outreach efforts between early career biologists working in Antarctica and kids in a low-income school in Virginia, to supporting the establishment of a gear locker to make fieldwork more accessible at Toolik Field Station in the Arctic. PSECCO is excited to continue to share opportunities, resources and support leadership development, while working together towards a more just, inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible polar science environment in years to come—and we welcome you to join us.  

We are in awe about how many people have engaged in critical conversations about how to make polar science spaces more welcoming and inclusive, and energized about initiatives that have come out of these conversations at PSECCO events over the past year. We are ecstatic to keep these conversations and actions going into the future, and to continue to learn from the early career polar community about what gaps exist in support for folks of all backgrounds that we can address together. Last, but certainly not least, we are incredibly excited about the relationships and partnerships we've been working to build with early career individuals and other polar early career organizations. We're also excited to bring even more people into these conversations into the future, and invite you to help us in doing that.

Thanks for continuing to show up to create positive change through education and action. Thanks again for being apart of the PSECCO Community, and here's to another fantastic year!

Warmly, 

Mariama and the PSECCO Team