Membership

Membership on the committee is voluntary and the committee recruits members with diverse representation across roles (e.g., principal investigators, information managers, education and outreach coordinators, site-level communicators, and students) and site geography. Co-chairs are elected every 3 years.

Meeting frequency

The committee meets every other month via video conference.

Major activities or accomplishments for 2018-2019

  • Support the “LTER Stories” special issue of Ecosphere
    • Member Peter Groffman convened manuscript authorship
    • Member Julie Doll is guest editor for special issue
    • Multiple members are internal reviewers for manuscripts
  • Long-term goal is to build a community of practice for site communicators and others interested in science communication across the Network.
  • 2019 action item: in collaboration with Diversity Committee and Higher Ed Working Group, facilitated 2 LTER-wide calls on communication and diversity issues in REU programming
  • Worked with NCO and NSF to amplify/populate from the site level multiple LTER multimedia campaigns (e.g. Earth Day Story Map project, #LTERlove, #WhyISynthesize)
  • ASM 2018
    • Led committee meeting (recruited multiple new members)
    • Supported cohort of REUs at ASM
    • With Higher Education Working Group, co-organized two preparatory webinars for REUs attending the meeting (an overview of LTER, and a session on how to communicate well with scientific posters)
    • Created & led Arthur C. Schwarzschild student poster contest, with a focus on science communication; worked with ESA to donate student annual memberships as prizes
scientist talking with reporter

Planned activities for the coming year

  • For the special edition of Ecosphere:
    • Contribute reviews of manuscripts
    • Work with NCO and NSF to publicize manuscripts’ story points for broad audiences with media outreach, partner outreach, and social media
  • To build the LTER community of practice in communication
    • Organize a “book club”-like viewing and discussion of the LTER site applications of a scicomm professional development topic (e.g. from the Sackler Colloquium)
    • Work with Higher Ed working group to plan a summer 2019 virtual session (giving an overview of the LTER Network) for REUs at LTER sites
  • Work with NCO to amplify outcomes/products from 2018-2019 synthesis working groups
  • Contribute as needed to 40-year review
  • If leveraged funding can be obtained: create & distribute calendar of LTER imagery for LTER community, funders, and stakeholders