NCAR Early Career Scientists Assembly (ECSA)
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Strategies for Planning Effective Scientific Workshops
Dr. Amanda Staudt
National Wildlife Federation

April 13, 2007

Why do some scientific workshops leave you energized and excited while others just seem to drag? Workshops can be an excellent way to share new information among colleagues, make cross-disciplinary connections, take an in-depth look at an area of scientific controversy, or scope out a new project or subject area. Yet, if poorly organized and executed, they are just a waste of everyone's time. This training covered the major steps of workshop planning, from setting clear objectives, creating the agenda, and engaging the participants in advance, to facilitating discussion, handling logistics, and developing deliverables during the workshop.

This training was given by Amanda Staudt. Dr. Amanda Staudt provides scientific expertise for the National Wildlife Federation's activities on global warming. Prior to joining NWF, Dr. Staudt was a senior program officer at the National Academies, where her work focused on climate change, air quality, and weather impacts on transportation. As a key liaison between the scientific community and the federal agencies that support climate change research, she directed the National Academies Climate Research Committee and helped author over a dozen reports on topics including the U.S. strategy for supporting climate change research, radiative forcing of climate, past records of surface temperature, and practices for effective global change assessments. Dr. Staudt holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences (2001) and an A.B. in environmental engineering and sciences (1996) from Harvard University.

Meeting materials:

Ten tips when facilitating discussion
Workshop checklist
Stratagies for Planning Effective Scientific Workshops (Amanda's PowerPoint presentation)