We’re excited to be able to announce the inaugural class of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows! Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program is in its pilot year. The program’s mission is to improve community-building and collaboration in scientific organizations and research collaborations by providing a year of training and support to a cohort of scientific community managers.
The Fellowship will begin this January when the first cohort of Fellows gathers for a week-long training course at AAAS headquarters. They will work together with guidance from leaders in the field to develop tools and strategies for effective engagement in their communities. Over the next year the fellows will attend monthly webinars, report out their challenges and successes, and attend mid-year and end-of-year meetings.
The 2017 cohort of AAAS Community Engagement Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers. The Fellows represent a diverse range of scientific communities, from local research collaborations to global cross-disciplinary initiatives. While their roles vary in title and emphasis, the Fellows share many of the same goals. They hope to strengthen their skills in online and offline community management, support and empower their community members, promote collaboration within scientific networks, and develop and distribute tools to support the scientific community.
Over the course of this week, we will introduce each of the 2017 AAAS Community Engagement Fellows, focusing on a different type of scientific community each day:
Today: Fellows promoting open collaboration in science
Tuesday: Fellows supporting global research networks
Wednesday: Fellows working with cross-disciplinary scientific associations
Thursday: Fellows supporting local research collaborations
Friday: Fellows working at scientific professional associations
Want to join the 2017 Community Engagement Fellows Program? There’s one final spot for a Fellow who would like to work with The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), based in Bethesda, MD. If you’re interested you can learn more and apply here.