Professional Development Committee
IASNR is committed to help both professionals and students succeed by building on strengths and overcoming weaknesses.
The Professional Development Committee is responsible for the facilitation of opportunities for IASNR members to develop and expand useful skills required for various career paths. The Committee plans and implements activities that provide resources for professional development at the IASNR Conference and in other contexts throughout the year, including mentorship activities. The Executive Officers appoint the Professional Development Committee.
Committee Members
Chair: Mysha Clarke
Milton Newberry III
Mark Rouleau
Haley Smith
Casey Taylor
Jill Weiss
Executive Team Liaison: William (Bill) Stewart
Webinar Series – IASNR offers occasional webinars to members. Contact [email protected] if you have an idea for a webinar topic or would like to get involved in developing this content.
- Finding non-academic jobs: A conversation with Natural Resources Social Scientists
- Networking as a Professional Skillset
- Ecological Grief & Community Responses to Environmental Loss in the Anthropocene
- Community-Engaged Research: Innovations for Moving from a Science Delivery to a Deliberative Science Approach
- Building Global Networks for Natural Resource Social Sciences
- To Academia and Beyond! Career pathways after graduate school (USA)
- Survey Design Overview Webinar
- Society & Natural Resources Webinar
- AESS-IASNR-SCB SSWG Methods I Webinar
The Professional Development Committee has been working to gather teaching materials that would be shared among IASNR members. So far, we have gathered several syllabi from natural resource courses and social science research methods courses, a few classroom activities, and notes from a panel on involving undergraduate in research held at the ISSRM 2015 meeting.
We hope you enjoy the resources and that they are helpful, and request that you please offer some sort of recognition of the contributor if you choose to incorporate them into your teaching materials!
Syllabi
- Advanced Survey Research Techniques
- Natural Resources and Social Development
- Community and the Environment
- Environment and Society
- Environmental Sociology
- Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management
Activities
Discussion
Academic conferences: A primer (Bill Carbonaro, University of Notre Dame, Sociology)
A great starting point for students who are unfamiliar with conferences, sessions and presentations.
How to Give an Academic Talk (Paul Edwards, University of Michigan)
A very good essay on the principles of effective talks including Preparation, Vocal techniques, Software, timing, Handling questions, and Planning for disasters.
Getting your Point Across. An Academic Guide to Giving Presentations (University of Southampton)
An excellent comprehensive guidebook with checklists that cover: Why give a talk?, Planning a talk, Delivering the talk, and Reflecting on and learning from your experience.
How To Improve The Presentation Skills Of PhD Students (Susanne Ulm)
An informal, informative, and yet comprehensive 4-point article written for graduate students encountering their first conference presentation.
How to Give a Presentation that Bores your Audience, Giving a Rubbish Impression of You and your Research (Nick Hopwood)
A tongue-in-cheek (alternative) approach to engaging the reader to consider how presentations fail in content, process, and preparation.
– See also, by the same author: An Example of an Awful PPT Presentation (with annotations)
The Six Best Conference Questions: Or, How Not to Paper-Bomb at a Conference (Lorna M. Campbell)
An article about ideal conference questions, which originates in a Times Higher Education story about the kinds of dreaded questions asked in sessions. This article is based on a short survey on Twitter asking academics what kind of questions they had benefited from after delivering conference papers.
Designing conference posters (Colin Purrington)
A comprehensive website that provides technical guidance, ‘Do’s and Don’ts’, poster examples, and even templates for developing academic posters.
Tips on Poster Presentations at Professional Conference (Scott Plunkett)
A very concise bullet point list of general considerations and specific construction details for poster presentations
Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation (PLoS Computational Biology, 2007)
A great starting point for considering your poster construction and presentation.
The Scientist’s Guide To Poster Design (Kathryn M. Everson)
An instructive guide to academic poster development with a table of contents that includes Pros and Cons of Poster Presentations, Organization, Software Options, Design and Layout, and Printing/Presentation.
– See also by the same author: Seduction in the Poster Session
Giving an Effective Poster Presentation (Written by and narrated by George Hess)
A dramatized YouTube video of ways to correct improper poster presentations and styles.