LTER Graduate Student Symposium

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Graduate student day plan
One of the core themes of the LTER network to develop and discover concepts of natural systems that contributes to the advancement of the health, productivity, and welfare of the global environment, thereby advancing human well-being. To develop such insights requires long-term and broad-scale research to understand key environmental phenomena. The most effective method for identifying these global scale phenomena is to conduct cross-ecosystem scale research. In this proposed graduate student symposium, we aim to develop a platform for idea sharing that will hopefully facilitate cross- LTER research at the graduate student level. We propose the graduate student symposium be separated up into two sessions which are discussed in detail below:

Sunday Morning
1) Summary talks highlighting core questions and key findings from representative LTER sites
For the morning of the graduate student symposium, we propose to convey key information about each LTER site and current graduate student research using an ESA ignite style approach. The purpose of these talks will be to tell a brief story of site's past research that has led to their current research questions. Coupled with this brief site overview, student representatives will highlight key finds and new work from students in attendance at the LTER ASM. Talks will be limited 8-10 minutes with data slides and figures being used sparingly. The focus of this ignite session will be more on current graduate student work, therefore, the brief summary of respective LTER site history should just be enough to inform the audience of the general research theme of the site

Expected outcomes
We expect that using this ignite framework, will provide graduate students with an overall understanding of LTER site research, as well as specific projects graduate students are working on in attendance, that should create a good platform for facilitating idea sharing. To ensure that students at different motivational and academic levels have a chance to produce a tangible product, we will inform attending students of other potentially positive professional and network products that students can engage in and complete. Our expected outcomes are conceptualized in the figure below.

Figure 1) Conceptualization of expected outcomes. The size of the area in each of the box of the pyramid corresponds to the proportion of students that likely participates in or completes each activity.

Hopefully, every student in attendance will meet and interact with students from other LTER sites that may lead to long-term professional relationships in the future. A smaller proportion of the students in attendance may work together to develop a "non-academic" product such as a newsletter article for the LTER network news or a blog post. Fewer students may work together to produce multiple "non-academic" products or potentially start a cross LTER site, social media outlet, such as a twitter account, blog, or Facebook page, that may highlight a particular LTER research theme. Last, even fewer students may pursue and complete an academic product, such as a special session at a national conference, collaborative cross-site proposal or a collaborative paper.

Speaker list and agenda:

Working groups

Working Group Materials

Related materials: 

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Related links: 

Graduate Student Committee Website