Held annually, the Leadership Meeting is an opportunity for people involved with all facets of SEEDS to engage in a dialogue. The meeting provides a venue for SEEDS participants to discuss their involvement with the program as it relates to their career, academic and personal development. These discussions help define how the program can further its mission of diversifying the field of ecology.
Funding
SEEDS Leadership Meetings are made possible with the generous support from the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and ESA member donations.
Voices of Hope in a Rapidly Changing World - Commentary on the 2008 Leadership Meeting, ESA Bulletin, July 2008
On 16 November 2007 the Ecological Society of America's Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability (SEEDS) became the 2006 recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Three months later, at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, we, 35 SEEDS students and alumni leaders from across the United States, met to further immerse ourselves in a program unique in its ability to stimulate minds while encouraging multicultural perspectives. The latter is perhaps what enables us to take effective approaches to understanding new concepts in ecology, as well as to address the need to develop new education, outreach, and peer communication initiatives. We present a vision of optimism in a plan to maintain a framework of support unbound by cultural, social, and geographic barriers, and built on a strong foundation—the SEEDS program. Complete article.
SEEDS of a New Millennium - Commentary on the 2006 Leadership Meeting, ESA Bulletin, July 2006
Ideas that each of us nurtured in private seemed to blossom when we shared them at a recent leadership workshop held in Phoenix, Arizona by the Strategies for Ecology, Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) Program. We are 12 young scientists, representing three cohorts of the Ecological Society of America's SEEDS Program, who have been awarded Undergraduate Research Fellowships in 2004-2007. We were chosen from America's minority and immigrant populations. Some of us represent Native Americans, including Hawai'ans and the Lakota, Mandan, Hidasta, and Arikara Nations. Some of our parents or we ourselves come from other countries, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Peru, Africa, and China. More than a nod to political correctness and affirmative action, we embody the diversity that ESA seeks, a diversity that is necessary for the advancement fo science and society. Complete article
