by Stephen Gray
This time of year is always especially busy for the CLEx admin team as we put the finishing touches on the Centre’s annual report (check it out online, here ) and welcome many new students at each of our five university nodes.
If you’re a newly enrolled student, welcome! As you will soon discover, being affiliated to the Centre of Excellence will provide you with access to a wide range of scientific and professional development workshops along with opportunities to network within your institution, across universities and beyond into our Australian and overseas partner organisations. This gives you unrivalled access to some of the greatest scientific minds in the field.
Centre of Excellent alumni have gone on to a wide range of roles within academia and beyond. Your skills will be in demand! When you arrived, you should have been given a CLEx welcome pack which, among other things, includes a checklist of CLEx-related things to talk to your supervisor about. If you haven’t already had that conversation, you’re encouraged to do so as soon as you can.
An example of an opportunity that the Centre has helped bring to fruition is the upcoming Advanced Ocean Modelling Summer School in Tasmania. This ambitious workshop initiative has been largely conceptualised and led by early career researchers who were able to secure funding from a number of sources, including CLEx, to bring attendees and speakers to Tasmania next month for a highly focused week-long workshop for ocean folk.
Perhaps you have an inkling of an idea for a workshop or special research sub-project aligned with the Centre’s goals that you’d like to see happen. While our funds are obviously limited meaning not everything can be funded, we do invite Centre researchers to come with ideas that would be of mutual benefit to the Centre and their own development and training. As with all requests to access Centre funds, there are three steps in the process: talk to your supervisor; find out if there’s money available at your university node; submit a funding request via Clever if you’re seeking additional Central CLEx support.
Finally, by the time you’re reading this, there will only be a few weeks left to submit an application for the inaugural CLEx Career Development Award for Women and Underrepresented Groups. This award, valued at up to $10,000 seeks to provide women and others in the Centre from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds with funds to invest in career enhancement or leadership development. With each year’s award, we’re looking to invest in proposals that the recipient will be able to look back on and point to as having made a genuine difference in their career progression.
Applications close 30 April.