The Early Career Chemistry Education Scholars (ECCES) are a committee dedicated to the recruitment and networking of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early faculty members (pre-tenure if on tenure track) in chemistry education research. This population is vital to the long-term goals of chemistry education research, and we hope will be the future leaders and contributors to DivCHED.
Since our last report, our committee met in November 2024. At this meeting:
- We reflected on our successful BCCE events and offerings. We held a successful BoaF event, hosted the Graduate Student Research symposia, and an evening social event.
- We planned our activities for Spring 2025 National meeting. For this meeting, we are hosting the Graduate Student Research Symposia hosting 13 graduate students and 5 undergraduate presenters, and 3 first time presiders. We are also organizing a networking social for early career folks that will contribute to G1S2 of the CHED strategic plan. We have applied for and been awarded special funds to send committee member Mellissa Collini to facilitate the social event and oversee the symposia. Mellissa will also be present at the CHED social on Sunday evening.
- Our committee finalized our chair succession plan and have implemented that. We elected a co-chair.
- We discussed our budget request needs for 2025 and 2026. We did not request travel funds for committee members to facilitate socials and symposia in 2025 but we will begin doing so starting in 2026.
- We discussed integrating a grass-roots graduate student Discord channel that is currently being moderated by a member of our committee but is not officially affiliated with our committee. We would like to take this Discord channel under our committee's management as it aligns with our mission. We are discussing this with the Chair succession and the PR committee.
Our future agenda is focused on our presence at the next BCCE 2026. We are looking to expand our programing beyond networking socials and symposia offerings. We will be working with G2S1 champions Ryan Stowe and Scott Hawkins to organize professional development workshops at BCCE. Ideas for workshops will include:
- Job application support (applications, CV, interviewing, hiring process overall)
- Applying for grant support (finding opportunities, preparing proposal, serving as a reviewer)
- Collaborate with Board of Publications to put on a workshop for early career folks on publishing and peer review in JCE.
Given $300 for 2024. Spent and reported on Fall 2024 Consent agenda. We did not spend any money from our allowed budget in this reporting period (July 2024 to March 2025). We requested and were awarded Special Funds in Dec 2024 to send committee member Melissa Collini to Spring ACS to facilitate our committee's activities. This money has been granted but not yet spent.