The first session is on Monday, Oct. 17 and runs from 1 to 4 PM in Room 207B of the Convention Center. The title is "CSI Critical Investigations - How Consulting Plays into Forensic Analysis". This session is actually a joint session between Consultants and Students of Agronomy, Soils, and Environmental Science (SASES), but is open to everyone!
The idea behind this session is to make it interactive with the students and the rest of the audience to get them engaged in the different cases that will be presented by consultants. Each consultant will have 30 minutes; the first 5 to 10 minutes will be used to introduce the "case", then they will ask the audience (which will be in smaller discussion groups) how they would have gone about solving the case (about 10 minutes), and then the last portion will be reserved for the consultant to tell us how they solved the case and answer any questions. There will also be a panel discussion at the end of the session that includes all of the speakers and is meant to provide additional time for questions. If you want a preview of the speakers and their talks you can go to our website to view the session at:
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2011am/webprogram/Session8422.html
The second session is on Tuesday afternoon and is set up as a roundtable discussion to discuss how to kick off a successful soils career. This session is from 1:30 to 3:30 in Ballroom C3 of the Convention Center. This again has a panel, but after they introduce themselves they will be joining the "roundtables" to help facilitate discussions with some directed questions for groups to consider. After the discussion, each panelist will come back to the podium and discuss their group’s conversation and find the “take away” points that need further consideration. This session will be considering questions that provide information for everyone on what we are doing right in getting students and early career members ready for and successful within their careers and those things that may need some attention or more thought. Therefore, it is important that we have a cross-section of people attend this session to promote good discussion across industry sectors as well as time in the career. This will be another great networking opportunity and please come share your thoughts and ideas!
As part of this session we have been fortunate to bring in Chris Mooney to talk about how to communicate science. (If you don’t know who Chris Mooney is, he is our SSSA Plenary speaker this year and author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, The Republican War on Science and many articles/blogs. He is an interesting person and currently speaks on nationwide basis on science and communication. He will speak for about 20 minutes at which time we will open it up for questions/discussion. This will be an excellent opportunity to ask questions and interact with Chris Mooney in a smaller session rather than the larger Plenary Session.
This session is titled "Roundtable Discussion on Perspectives in Kicking off a Successful Soils Career". The session information can be found here:
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2011am/webprogram/Session9119.html
Let me also introduce you to the panelists:
Rob Michitsch – Assistant Professor at the Univ. of WI – Stevens Point
Ester Sztein – National Academy of Sciences
Cory Owens – USDA-NRCS in Oregon
Leila Gonzales – American Geosciences Institute
Larry Baldwin – Soils Consultant in North Carolina
I hope to see you at these sessions. If you have any questions, please email me - I will be on email while in San Antonio! dferris@sciencesocieties.org
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