SAEON Graduate Student Network to hold first workshop

Things are mo-o-oving on the SAEON Graduate Student Network front. The students have just launched their own website, linked to the SAEON website, to serve as the main platform for student interactions. Within the first week the network grew from 4 to 32 members. Their great website can be visited on http://www.saeon.ac.za/students.

Not to be outdone by their parent organisation’s plans for a national Summit, the students are planning to launch their first student workshop to coincide with the SAEON Summit at Leriba Lodge in March 2006.

First SAEON Student Workshop

The one-day workshop, which is scheduled to take place on 29 March 2006, is aimed at creating awareness and encouraging alignment of students’ research with SAEON programmes. It will also serve as a platform for students to get a broader understanding of ecological research with an expanded context in which to view their own research.

The workshop’s key objective will be to inform students about activities of the SAEON Graduate Student Network, such as the website, future workshops and symposiums, and to educate the students about how SAEON can help them in their current and future research projects.

The programme lists four presenters - two for the morning session and two for the afternoon session, to run 1 – 1¾ -hour workshops with emphasis on the above-mentioned issues. The workshops will be designed to be informative while at the same time encouraging student participation and discussion.

Students will be requested to complete a short questionnaire at the end of the workshop sessions identifying beneficial and non-beneficial issues and aspects of the workshops, so as to enable the Interim Committee to improve on the planning of future workshops.

A final programme detailing the date, times and names of presenters will be developed during the Graduate Student Network’s first physical Interim Committee Meeting in February 2006 and will be available for review and comments shortly thereafter.

SAEON has offered to sponsor 20 South African students to participate in the Summit , by paying for their registration fees, and contributing towards travel for those students outside of Gauteng . The selection of the 20 students to be sponsored will be based on scientific merit, as determined by their abstracts received prior to the event. Participation of other students will be encouraged, providing that they can provide their own funding.

SAEON Graduate Student Network

The Network is aimed at promoting interaction among graduate students and between students and senior scientists, within the realm of long-term environmental research (LTER). It provides a platform from where graduate students can feel comfortable to share ideas, collaborate with one another, and gain a broader understanding of environmental research.

The idea of the network was born when three graduate students, ambassadors of South Africa ’s LTER Programme – SAEON, attended the First International LTER Graduate Student Collaborative Research Symposium in Oregon , USA in April 2005. The symposium succeeded in bringing together and networking just over 60 graduate students from 34 different LTER sites across the globe, among them eight International Long-Term Environmental Research (ILTER) sites.

The students, Silvia Mecenero of the University of Cape Town, Saras Mundree of CSIR-Environmentek and Glynn Alard of South African National Parks, were highly impressed with the idea of the network, which is actively sustained through a special website created for graduate students. They became enthused by the idea of setting up a similar network for graduate students in South Africa, and approached SAEON for assistance.

SAEON approved the concept of a special website – linked to the SAEON website – to serve as the main platform for student interactions. The scope of the website will be similar to that of the graduate student LTER website set up for the graduate students in the USA .

The student website is updated regularly to keep students at the forefront of national SAEON and international LTER activities, including workshops, symposia and career opportunities.

The South African network is organised and monitored by a student committee. They are planning a series of training workshops, which will include presentations by scientists associated with SAEON and ELTOSA, and SAEON managers. The workshops will build on skills that are essential to graduate students in their development as LTER scientists, such as information and data management, and collaborative or interdisciplinary research.

“With SAEON as a platform we can do so much,” says Dr Silvia Mecenero, SAEON post-doctoral student in long-term environmental data sets and environmental information systems. “At the graduate student LTER symposium in the USA we truly felt the welcoming arms of international acceptance. It was no doubt an historic moment in South Africa when SAEON was established to keep in line with the international trend of doing Long-Term Ecological Research.

“As young graduate researchers, we would like to ensure that there is always an influx of LTER scientists into SAEON, generation after generation. We believe that setting up a South African Graduate Student Network will ensure that influx, and we hope to gain the support of all SA students concerned.

“The graduate students of today will no doubt become the LTER scientists of tomorrow”, Silvia says in conclusion, “and, by having their research integrated, aligned and coordinated, and their data captured by a central management body like SAEON, they can be secure in the knowledge that their efforts will pave the way to better management policies and protection of our environment for future generations.”

Graduate students interested in participating in the network and the workshop are welcome to contact one of the following members of the interim student committee:

Dr Silvia Mecenero , SAEON Post Doctoral Fellowship, Tel (021) 650-3648, E-mail smecener@adu.uct.ac.za

Ms Saras Mundree , CSIR-Environmentek ( KwaZulu-Natal ), Tel (031) 242-2364, E-mail smundree@csir.co.za

Mr Glynn Alard , Scientific Services, Skukuza, SANParks, Tel (013) 735-5487, E-mail GlynnA@sanparks.org

Mr Bernard Coetzee , Honours student, Dept Zoology and Entomology (UP), E-mail bwtcoetzee@zoology.up.ac.za