The International Coral Reef Society (ICRS) Student & Early Career Chapter (SECC) is a community dedicated to providing support and resources for students and recent graduates in transitional roles within coral reef science.

We are currently seeking additional members to join various subcommittees within our chapter! We are looking for enthusiastic and diverse students, post-grads, post-docs, and other early career individuals who are involved in the coral reef community. We particularly encourage those from historically marginalized communities to apply.

In addition to roles described below, individuals in all positions are expected to attend full chapter (ICRS-SECC) meetings that occur 2-4 times each year.

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE MAY 23 AT 5PM UTC!

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Here are descriptions of the volunteer positions we aim to fill in each subcommittee that has a vacancy.
(note: It is possible to be on more than one committee.)

1. Early Career Committee - We are looking for early career researchers/professionals to spearhead our NEW committee dedicated to representing recent graduates (and other non-students early in their career) a part of the ICRS community. Tasks of this committee are expected to include collaboration with the Education and Outreach Committee to design webinars benefitting those in early career stages; managing content for a new early career section of our website; guiding chapter efforts to increase conference accessibility for ECRs; and liaising with social media teams to share ECR-specific resources. The ECR committee will work closely with the Steering Committee and EDI Committee to ensure that our new representation of the ECR community aligns well with the SECC ethos. As this is a new committee, there will be space and flexibility for new ideas and initiatives.

2. Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Committee - Our EDI team is committed to equipping student and early career researchers with the resources to understand, recognize, and mitigate bias and discrimination within ICRS and the local and global communities that are impacted by our work. We are looking for an individual(s) to join our team who is driven to advocate, increase visibility of, and empower marginalized communities in coral reef sciences. In this position, you will contribute to EDI efforts of the chapter, which may broadly include facilitating discussions, distributing information and resources, designing workshops, and collaborating with the other committees in SECC. As a part of this role, you will attend monthly 1 hour EDI Committee meetings, and contribute to shared EDI tasks and initiatives (~5-6 hours per month).

3. Education & Outreach Committee - We are looking for an individual(s) to support the development of a skill-building workshop series for early career coral reef scientists and students. The goal of the series is to both provide opportunities for professional development and skill-building in areas relevant to coral reef sciences (e.g., coding, reproducible research, scientific communication, etc.), as well as provide opportunities for students/ECRs with valuable skills to practice sharing their knowledge with others in a professional setting. The position could include proposing workshop content, contacting potential presenters, designing workshop promotional materials, working with other SECC committees, and organizing logistics. If you have an eye for detail, enjoy meeting new people, and like providing opportunities to fill knowledge gaps, this is the position for you! Note: the monthly time commitment can vary as work is largely dependent on workshop schedule.

4. Instagram Team -  Our Instagram team (@icrs.students) communicates science to a wide audience on the Instagram platform, creating accessible videos and multilingual posts. Currently our content includes fun facts on corals, as well as insights from different people involved in coral research and conservation through live Q&A’s, "A Day in the Life" stories, and Instagram "takeovers". As a member of the Instagram Team, you would create content for posts, share chapter news, and recruit individuals for Instagram Takeovers, Q & A's, and more. If you enjoy creating informational visual content and sharing people's stories and experiences, this would be a great fit for you. The time commitment is 1-2 hours per week.

5. Twitter Team - Our main goal as the Twitter (@ICRSreefstudent) subcommittee is to bring together our diverse backgrounds to 1) share information about opportunities in coral reef sciences, 2) disseminate and celebrate new publications by graduate student researchers, post-docs, and other early career researchers, 3) highlight research by underrepresented groups in coral reef science, 4) provide motivational posts and resources for our followers, and 5) spark interest in coral reef science by posting facts that are easily accessible. At this time, we’re specifically looking for graduate students, post-docs, and other ECRs to post weekly tweets containing "fun facts" about coral reef ecosystems (i.e., creating new content, retweeting content, and sharing content created by others within ICRS-SECC), in addition to helping amplify other voices in coral reef sciences on Twitter. The time commitment for this position will be about 5 hours a month.

6. Website Team - We are looking for individuals interested in maintaining our website (coralreefstudents.org). Main responsibilities (~1-1.5 hours per week) include: keeping our events page up to date, curating resources (e.g., grants, science communication, coding, and more) for students & early career researchers, helping set up our pages to host multiple languages (with help from our translators), & any ideas you may have for additions/improvements! While experience maintaining websites is a huge plus for applying, we will also consider those of you who want to learn!

7. Translators - As a chapter, one of our aims is to promote ICRS chapter diversity and inclusion by providing content in multiple languages. Our Translation Team translates various chapter content including (but not limited to) Reefbites articles, social media posts, infographics, and webpage content (this is still in the works!). We currently have the capacity to translate content into Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Italian. We are hoping to increase our translation capacity to include Arabic and various languages of the Indo-Pacific region. As a translator, you would translate SECC content from English to another language that you are fluent in, review other individual's translations, and attend regular Translation Team meetings. The time commitment is ~1-1.5 hours each week.

8. Reefbites Blog Writers - The mission of our Reefbites Blog (reefbites.com) is to share current research and information about coral reefs by engaging early career professionals, students, and the non-scientific community. We are looking for senior undergraduates, graduates, postgrads, postdocs, or reef-loving enthusiasts who work in the field to join our team as a permanent writer and editor. Your commitment would be to submit/edit a post on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule based on current coral reef literature (journal articles should not be more than 6 months old), your own research, or any related topics of discussion you are interested in. Posts should be written for a general audience and be between 800-1,000 words. If you can’t commit to a regular schedule but still want to write for us, we also welcome applications for Guest Writers.  For further information on post details, see https://reefbites.com/get-involved/.