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The new face of SAEON’s Graduate Student Network Committee
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The new committee of SAEON’s Graduate Student Network (GSN) held its first meeting in the beautiful headquarters of SAEON’s Fynbos Node at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town.
The committee has three new faces in Ander M. de Lecea, Rachel Cooper and Dirk Snyman, while the author and Brian Mubiwa will be staying on until the end of the year.
Ander is originally from Spain, but has travelled widely. He studied in Scotland and lived in four different countries in the last nine years. He is doing his PhD on trophic linkages in the KwaZulu-Natal Bight using stable isotopes through the Africa Coelacanth Ecosystem Program II. This versatile new committee member is associated with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Oceanographical Research Institute, the University of Cape Town and the Department of Environmental Affairs. Ander will take charge of the GSN website.
Rachel, an MSc student at the University of Cape Town, is investigating the interactive effect of bioturbation by Callianassa kraussi and nutrients on the biodiversity and structuring of benthic communities. She will be in charge of memberships and the mailing list and keeping everyone updated with GSN news.
Dirk, from the University of Stellenbosch, is a familiar face in the GSN and was a committee member in 2007/8. He is the new events coordinator.
Brian has moved from internal communications to public relations and marketing of the GSN. The author will handle internal communications between SAEON and the GSN.
Victoria Goodall from the Fynbos Node kindly joined us for the meeting and helped get the new committee members up to speed on the workings of SAEON. Hadley Lyners also participated in the meeting, outlining SAEON’s Education Outreach Programme. The GSN is very excited to be involved with this programme and we look forward to hearing from all the nodes and working with them as far as possible.
GSN Day at the SAEON Summit
The committee discussed the way forward for the GSN for the rest of 2010 and beyond. We are very excited to be jumping straight in with the organisation of the GSN Day at the SAEON Summit to be held in Cape Town in October.
The priority of the new committee is to make sure that everyone involved in long-term environmental research in South Africa is aware of the GSN. We are going to be aggressively marketing ourselves, starting with a new website design and increasing our profile on social networking sites such as Facebook.
We are also hoping to reach a wide audience with presentations on the GSN at various tertiary institutions around the country in a “GSN Roadshow”. This kicks off in Johannesburg in September. We hope to establish new GSN representatives at the institutions we visit to make sure that the GSN is represented throughout South Africa. There will also be a central email address that is easy to remember and can be accessed by all committee members, to make communications with the GSN as simple and consistent as possible.
We left the meeting feeling very optimistic about things to come for the GSN. The new committee is enthusiastic and organised and looks forward to the many activities we have planned.
