I know I’m late writing this blog post, but life is going at an incredible pace these days. Still, I wanted to share my amazing experiences with you all!
This year’s ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meeting was in Phoenix, AZ. I arrived 2.5 days before the conference started to attend the Graduate Student Leadership Conference. The leadership conference was a fantastic experience and I highly recommend it to all graduate students- apply! There were a little over 50 of us involved in the conference. The first day we had several ice breakers, a discussion on leadership ethics, and a session on how to communicate an executive presence. The information we gleaned from those sessions led us to the second day, which involved several sessions by Dr. Sherry Harsch-Porter on leadership personalities and how the results from our leadership personality tests could be used to better appreciate our own styles and understand how other personalities function. Sherry was an incredibly engaging speaker and I learned a great deal about myself and how to work with others from her sessions. Our final event as our large group was lunch with past and present society leadership, which was enlightening and informative.
Because I was enrolled in the leadership conference I also went to several graduate student-oriented sessions. These sessions were open to all graduate students, not just those of us in the leadership conference. I would recommend all graduate students attend at least one of these sessions in the future. These were a good way to think about more than just our science, to think about topics that are critical to our futures as scientists, but aren’t always taught to us in graduate school. I attended the networking session, science policy luncheon, the think tank on the future of agricultural research, and building active teaching and extension-based programs.
Another aspect of the conference that I greatly enjoyed was volunteering. I volunteered with the K-12 outreach booth supported by the three societies. Volunteering was a great way to meet people. I was also able to learn more about the K-12 committee and plan on volunteering with them in the future. It really is easy to find a committee you are passionate about and volunteer. I got to volunteer as a part of this committee because of my work with PlantingScience and our new Agronomy Feeds the World Module, which I also presented a poster on at the conference. As a side note, we need mentors!
Now, there is one final topic I would like to touch on about the conference. I try to live a positive life and hate to bring up negative things on my blog, but many of these things are important to talk about, we need to know and discuss the problems we are facing in this world so we may work towards solving them. On Tuesday afternoon I was working at the K-12 booth. I was enjoying some casual conversation with two of my colleagues (both male), when a gentleman came to our booth. He was interested in our education materials and I was excited to share! After I explained all of the activities we had, he walked over to my two colleagues and began expressing his displeasure over 75% of the ASA fellows this year being female. I spoke right up and said this is a good indicator of diversity in a traditionally male-dominated field. He mumbled a bit and walked away. A while later, one of my colleagues came over and apologized, indicating he hoped I was ok. It was very kind of him. I was ok, but aggravated at the sexist remarks. We live in a world where progress, diversity, and inclusion are the only ways forward, yet many people out there still things to be the way they always have been. Maybe their opinions differ on what that involves, but somehow they cannot picture a world any different from the one they once lived in. We may be in the US, but we are not isolated from the rest of the world. We need to work with and efficiently compete with the world, and focusing solely on oneself will not get us to where we need to be. With all that said, the way to combat these ideas, the way to work towards making progress, is to volunteer, donate money, call your representative in congress, get involved, don’t use social media as a crutch. Don’t get me wrong, social media can be great if used properly, but to make a real difference in your community you have to get out there.
What I will leave you on, besides a positive note about getting involved, are some pictures of my trip to the Grand Canyon after the conference was over and our PlantingScience Poster!
This year’s ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meeting was in Phoenix, AZ. I arrived 2.5 days before the conference started to attend the Graduate Student Leadership Conference. The leadership conference was a fantastic experience and I highly recommend it to all graduate students- apply! There were a little over 50 of us involved in the conference. The first day we had several ice breakers, a discussion on leadership ethics, and a session on how to communicate an executive presence. The information we gleaned from those sessions led us to the second day, which involved several sessions by Dr. Sherry Harsch-Porter on leadership personalities and how the results from our leadership personality tests could be used to better appreciate our own styles and understand how other personalities function. Sherry was an incredibly engaging speaker and I learned a great deal about myself and how to work with others from her sessions. Our final event as our large group was lunch with past and present society leadership, which was enlightening and informative.
Because I was enrolled in the leadership conference I also went to several graduate student-oriented sessions. These sessions were open to all graduate students, not just those of us in the leadership conference. I would recommend all graduate students attend at least one of these sessions in the future. These were a good way to think about more than just our science, to think about topics that are critical to our futures as scientists, but aren’t always taught to us in graduate school. I attended the networking session, science policy luncheon, the think tank on the future of agricultural research, and building active teaching and extension-based programs.
Another aspect of the conference that I greatly enjoyed was volunteering. I volunteered with the K-12 outreach booth supported by the three societies. Volunteering was a great way to meet people. I was also able to learn more about the K-12 committee and plan on volunteering with them in the future. It really is easy to find a committee you are passionate about and volunteer. I got to volunteer as a part of this committee because of my work with PlantingScience and our new Agronomy Feeds the World Module, which I also presented a poster on at the conference. As a side note, we need mentors!
Now, there is one final topic I would like to touch on about the conference. I try to live a positive life and hate to bring up negative things on my blog, but many of these things are important to talk about, we need to know and discuss the problems we are facing in this world so we may work towards solving them. On Tuesday afternoon I was working at the K-12 booth. I was enjoying some casual conversation with two of my colleagues (both male), when a gentleman came to our booth. He was interested in our education materials and I was excited to share! After I explained all of the activities we had, he walked over to my two colleagues and began expressing his displeasure over 75% of the ASA fellows this year being female. I spoke right up and said this is a good indicator of diversity in a traditionally male-dominated field. He mumbled a bit and walked away. A while later, one of my colleagues came over and apologized, indicating he hoped I was ok. It was very kind of him. I was ok, but aggravated at the sexist remarks. We live in a world where progress, diversity, and inclusion are the only ways forward, yet many people out there still things to be the way they always have been. Maybe their opinions differ on what that involves, but somehow they cannot picture a world any different from the one they once lived in. We may be in the US, but we are not isolated from the rest of the world. We need to work with and efficiently compete with the world, and focusing solely on oneself will not get us to where we need to be. With all that said, the way to combat these ideas, the way to work towards making progress, is to volunteer, donate money, call your representative in congress, get involved, don’t use social media as a crutch. Don’t get me wrong, social media can be great if used properly, but to make a real difference in your community you have to get out there.
What I will leave you on, besides a positive note about getting involved, are some pictures of my trip to the Grand Canyon after the conference was over and our PlantingScience Poster!