The News Reel (December 2022)

The News Reel

The Education Section of the American Fisheries Society Newsletter

President’s Line

Greetings, Education Section!

By now, the AFS Annual Meeting is a distant memory, and we’re bar- reling toward the holi- days. As I look back to my first section meeting as president, I smile. After the challenges around the Baltimore 2021 meeting, it was wonderful to see a packed room (and hit quorum!) at Spokane. Of course, we had great food and adult beverag- es, as usual (thank you, Marty!). We were fortu- nate to have a past- president of the Nation- al Association of Univer- sity Fish and Wildlife Programs (NAUFWP), Selina Happel, to talk about the AFS-NAUFWP memorandum of under- standing. I look forward to working with NAUFWP as a section. The rest of our meeting was filled with educator and student recognitions and rousing discussions of what we could do as a section. Be sure to read all about this in our meeting minutes (thank you again, Marty!).

The next day, we had a small, but mighty sym- posium on rising to the challenges of teaching in the time of COVID and how that might inform education moving for- ward. A huge hank you to our other speakers – Kyler Hecke, Don Orth, and Brittany Palm-Flawd – for sharing your expe- riences and generating some great discussions! If you have not had a chance to watch their recorded presentations from the Spokane meeting website, I highly recommend! Look for a summary of the sympo- sium later in the news- letter and in the Decem- ber issue of Fisheries magazine.

Now, on to Year 2 in my office! This year, we’ll be building our momentum from last year and wel- coming some new faces to our leadership team, particularly in our Divi- sion Representatives. Thank you to Henry Her- shey, representing the Southern Division, and Joe Zydlewski, repre- senting the Northeast- ern Division! And thank you to all of our return- ing leaders in 2023. This section isn’t able to do the good work that it does without your time and efforts.

I will be working with our leaders on efforts like articles for Fisheries, new social media ac- counts to communicate with our members and students, and updates to our website. And we’re always looking for more ideas and help to keep our section thriving. Share those with me at any time.

I also want to challenge each of you to encour- age your students – un- dergrad and grad – to apply for an Education Section Award, whether that be the Skinner Memorial Award, the Best Student Presentation/Poster, the Student Writing Contest, etc., in 2023. We have lots to celebrate in our future professionals, so let’s get those sub- missions numbers up!

I hope you enjoy the rest of fall and cheers to 2023!