COLLABORATIVE WEBINAR EFFORTS BY AGU AND AGI SUPPORT GEOSCIENCE DEPARTMENTS AND PROGRAMS

Professional organizations exist to support the profession and its community. One critical nexus of the geoscience community is the academic department, where active research, teaching, and the next generation of geoscientists are developed.

Since 2012, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) have partnered to host monthly webinars on topics that speak to the success of departments. Department heads and chairs as well as faculty have had the opportunity to learn more about legal issues related to field trips, recruiting and retaining diverse students, and mentoring and nurturing junior faculty among other critical topics. More recent webinar topics have covered many discussions on sexual harassment, workplace climate, and personnel management. The webinars are held for an hour, include some comments or presentations by panelists followed by a substantial discussion session. While the webinars have anywhere from 20 to 100 live attendees, the post-webinar recordings have exponentially more views. AGI continues to also play a supporting role in the AGU’s Heads and Chairs Workshop held at the AGU annual meeting by providing information on the status of and the trends in the geoscience workforce and other pertinent information to support departments. The ensuing discussions from the webinars yield insights into the needs of academic departments and their leaders as well as their students, which informs programmatic efforts by the societies. It guides the AGU Heads and Chairs program to provide a framework during the annual workshop for ongoing discussion among academic leadership about emerging issues and solutions. It guides AGI on topics for coverage on its data-centric series Geoscience Currents or the need for a diversity of online continuing education opportunities for students.