SCB Newsletter

NOTE: As many of you may be aware, the SCB websites experienced unusual downtime over the last few weeks. Our websites are now live and available to serve you; however many pages are still offline and will not load correctly (you will see an error that reads "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect" -- we are aware of these problems. We are dealing with a SQL Injection attack. These types of attacks are known to exploit website vulnerabilities with the intent of distributing viruses and malware. We are working to correct the problems and clean up the data corruption this has caused. Thank you for your patience while we work through this problem. More information is available here.

INITIATIVES FROM THE STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

The Student Affairs Committee was well represented at SCB's 2007 annual meeting. As always, committee members played a vital role in organizing the student awards. These awards demonstrate the diversity and professionalism of SCB's student members. Following the 2006 meeting, Aram Calhoun stepped down from chairing the committee after many years in this role. Under Aram's leadership, the committee became a key player in increasing student involvement in SCB and raising awareness of the issues facing student conservationists today. Aram has kindly agreed to continue working with the committee to help facilitate the transition to a new chair. Welcome to our new members from around the world:

David Patrick, Chair (North America)
Babalola Folaranmi (Africa)
Pralad Yonzon (Asia)
Wendy Jackson (Australasia)
Mark Jordan (North America)
Pilar Palacios (Austral and Neotropical America)
Piero Visconti (Europe)
Chris Parsons (Marine)
Chris Elphick (North America)
Elizabeth Harper (North America)
Iara Lacher (North America)
Nancy Karraker (Asia)
Aram Calhoun (North America)
Mohammad Jafari (Asia)
Eugene Simiyu (Africa)

To learn more about the Student Affairs Committee and its members please visit www.conbio.org/Activities/Committees/StudentAffairs/

Student Mentoring

As a global organization, it is important that conducting meetings in English does not make it more difficult for any of our members to attend and present. This is an especially important consideration for students, for whom the annual meeting provides rich opportunities to meet people, share ideas, and establish professional contacts. Last year, the Student Affairs Committee launched a pilot effort designed to help students for whom English is not a first language submit abstracts to the 2007 annual meeting. The effort was a great success; we received positive feedback from all of the participants. We particularly thank those who dedicated their time to reviewing the abstracts.

We will continue to offer abstract mentoring for the 2008 meeting, and therefore we are seeking reviewers. The amount of work is modest; each reviewer is likely to receive only one or two abstracts. Potential mentors must have a good technical understanding of scientific English and some experience in writing and reviewing abstracts. We will assign abstracts to each mentor, provide details of how to communicate with students and receive abstracts, and send reviewers a comprehensive checklist to help in standardizing the review process. If you are interested in acting as a mentor for student abstracts, please contact Dave Patrick (dpatrick@esf.edu).

The Sister Lab Scheme: Call for Graduate Students

Intellectual diversity and new ideas are keys to success in conservation. For example, extensive dialogue and sharing of approaches among indigenous fishing communities in Indonesia and academic researchers helped to shape policy in the Mollucan Province that led to conservation of marine resources. Such sharing has its place in among graduate students, as well. In order to increase the exchange of ideas and knowledge among graduate students, the Student Affairs Committee is developing a "Sister Lab" program.

This program is designed to link graduate students who are based in different laboratory groups [i.e., groups of students working with the same supervisor(s)] but have similar research foci. The networking among sister groups will facilitate collaboration and foster the sharing of skills and understanding. The students themselves will decide on objectives and process for working together. The many types of potential interactions might include transfer of specific research expertise, collaborative research, transfer of materials such as pdf versions of journal articles (as permitted under copyright law), and possibly visiting field sites. We envision this program as a mechanism to link groups of students in developed and developing countries, but decisions about whom to collaborate with are entirely at the discretion of participating groups. We encourage you to contact other labs that are doing similar research (but have not yet signed up for the program) to determine whether they might be interested.

If you or your lab group is interested in joining the sister lab program, please follow these steps.

1. Send a description of your lab group, including contact information and the type of research you are conducting, to dpatrick@esf.edu. Please also send a list of eight key words to aid us in categorizing lab groups.

2. When we have received expressions of interest from a sufficient number of lab groups, we will direct you to the Student Affairs Committee Web site, where you will find a link to a database of interested groups.

3. After you have selected a sister lab from the database and have reached an agreement with that group, you will be asked to send an email to the committee describing your arrangement. This will allow us to update our database.

We will also provide a list of broad guidelines suggesting how contact should be made and how to ensure that both labs benefit from the partnership.

David Patrick