San Antonio - here we come!

The SSSA's 75th Anniversary celebration in San Antonio is coming up fast!  The annual meeting starts this coming Sunday and I hope to see a lot of people I know and I hope some of you reading this blog will come up and introduce yourselves.  I always like to meet new people so please come and say Hi!  In fact I can help you do that by telling you about two sessions that I would love to have a lot of people at because they are based on discussion and both are great networking opportunities whether you are early, mid or a bit more established in your career. (Also just a note - if you want to hear more from Chris Mooney in addition to the SSSA Plenary Session, see the information on second session below!)

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

Looking for stories! What is yours?

I write a column for our Crops and Soils publication called Tales from the Pits. The column has highlighted different "tales" of working in the soil science field - most carry a message because we all have our weird little stories or tales to tell from time spent in the field.  My vision for the column has been to highlight those tales as a way to share experiences as soil scientists. It is meant to be a light-hearted column to illustrate the work we do, the successes we have and the mistakes we make. Sometimes you just need to laugh at yourself and realize that a valuable lesson has been learned. I maintain that we are a very creative and outgoing bunch that has a great time doing field work. The column has been running for about a year now and I have had a lot of good feedback.  I have also had some guest writers who have been fantastic in sharing their experiences.  I am always looking for more - so if you have been a fan, please consider sending me a tale - you have the option of being recognized as the author or remaining anonymous.

The most recent article is a bit different and is called "A Tale of Beginnings" in which I talk about how I became hooked on soils.  The idea for the article started late last year when I was talking with some colleagues, including our current SSSA President, Chuck Rice, about how we got into soils in the first place.  Since then I have asked others about how they "found" soil science and the stories are all different and unique. This could be a great way to show students of all ages that soil science just might be something of interest.  I would like to highlight these stories both here and in a future Tales from the Pits article.  So... I started with my story and am hopeful that people reading the article will send me their stories.  The link to "A Tale of Beginnings" is http://bit.ly/njsKsw.  Please consider sending me your story - it doesn't have to be long, just a paragraph will do.  The point is to show that while we may all come from different backgrounds and interests, we all have soil as a common ground.