2024-2026 AGU Annual Meeting Chair
Chair Position
The Chair, AGU Annual Meeting Program Committee leads the AGU Annual Meeting program committee in the organization of the scientific program content. The chair also serves as a member of the AGU Meetings Committee. The chair may be invited to participate in AGU Council meetings to report on AGU Annual Meeting activities relevant to producing the science content or to solicit input on current and future strategic issues.
The chair must be active in soliciting the best program content from the best scientists to participate in the AGU Annual Meeting. Working with the program committee and AGU staff, the chair is responsible for assuring that the scientific content will include disciplinary and multi-disciplinary programming and that there are avenues for assuring that innovative formats and “late-breaking” and timely topics can be considered, e.g., there is an openness to trans-disciplinary topics. The chair is also responsible for considering the integration of virtual content and the exploration of non-traditional session formats and keynote speakers. The work of the chair is done in consultation with AGU staff, the Meetings Committee, Council, Board or other committees/task forces as required to address unique situations.
What the position entails:
The Chair, AGU Annual Meeting Program Committee is an ambassador to the AGU Council, members and meeting participants, and the scientific community at-large. The chair is responsible for leading the programing committee and organizing the science. The chair works closely with staff and the Meetings Committee, Council, and AGU leadership to prepare and/or respond to issues concerning new approaches and to recommend new policies that impact the scientific program, program committee, convener or author participation, general meeting participation, or other issues during organization of the meeting. The chair is expected to work within AGU Annual Meeting-related policies or engage appropriate leadership or staff on issues that should be reviewed.
In addition, the AGU Annual Meeting Chair is expected to:
-
• Actively promote AGU Annual Meeting to relevant communities.
-
• Actively solicit sessions and presenters from leading scientists to facilitate the best Union sessions and innovative programming for the meeting program.
-
• Encourage sessions that are relevant to societal problems, policy, and cutting-edge science.
-
• Work with AGU staff, the program committee, AGU leadership, and AGU members to extend the reputation of AGU Annual Meeting.
-
• Participate in discussions as appropriate in their role as Chair, AGU Annual Meeting.
-
• Participate in appropriate face-to-face or virtual meetings, as required.
-
• Provide effective and timely leadership and communication to the program committee throughout the year.
-
• Engage the Council and new ideas and approaches in arranging the scientific program content.
What the position does not entail:
The chair does not make financial commitments on behalf of AGU or the AGU Annual Meeting, nor is the chair responsible for operational and logistical aspects of the meeting or partnerships and society relationships. AGU staff is responsible for and manages the operational side of implementing AGU Annual Meeting, such as making meeting venue and facility decisions; confirming meeting room setup and requirements; setting registration fees; and budgeting for marketing, production, systems implementation, and all hiring of non-volunteer resources, staff, and contractors. AGU staff are also responsible for developing any partnerships or society relationships for the meeting.
Chair, AGU Annual Meeting Charge
AGU Strategic Plan and Meeting Strategy. The AGU Strategic Plan was approved by the AGU Board of Directors in 2020 and recognizes that AGU meetings and events are a critical part of advancing Earth and space science. The Chair, AGU Annual Meeting works with AGU staff and the Meetings Committee to monitor a competitive meetings environment and ensure that AGU Annual Meeting is state of the art in terms of the science program and is reflective of the overall AGU Strategic Plan. The chair works with leadership, staff, and volunteers to develop new initiatives that leverage AGU Annual Meeting to maintain its position as the leading meeting for the Earth and space science community and that it provides trans-disciplinary opportunities as appropriate. The chair works in collaboration with AGU staff and the program committee to accomplish short- and near-term goals, objectives, and strategies for AGU Annual Meeting.
AGU Annual Meeting Work Activities and Deadlines. Most of the chair’s work is done via e-mail, AGU Connect, and using the online abstract/programming management system. The abstract/program management system is used to collect session and abstract proposals, accept and/or reject submissions, and schedule the scientific program. The chair and all other volunteers are required to use this system throughout the process. The chair will be provided with access to reports in order to gain an understanding of the dynamics of submissions and the workload of individual program committee chairs as it pertains to numbers of proposals, abstracts, and scheduling progress.
The chair and AGU staff will monitor the workload of the program committee to ensure that session proposals and abstracts are being reviewed, accepted, merged, rejected, and scheduled withing the timeline. The chair will have responsibility for leading session proposals and abstract submissions for Union sessions with the support of program committee members, Council, AGU senior staff, and AGU leadership to ensure that the Union program is reflective of the strategic priorities of the organization. The chair and AGU staff will ensure that the program committee as a whole understands the need to meet deadlines through the meeting organization process so that all meeting production processes, objectives, and commitments are made to the membership, meeting attendees, and the AGU leadership.
Decisions of ethics. The chair upholds the ethics and conflict of interest policies of AGU and works with the program committee to resolve questions of ethics pertaining to participation in AGU Annual Meeting. Ethical violations may involve, but are not limited to plagiarizing, falsification of data or results, misattribution of authors, or misuse of session convener or author information. The chair, in consultation with AGU staff, will determine whether violations are of a sufficiently serious nature to be forwarded to the appropriate AGU body for investigation under the Union’s Misconduct in Science procedures.
Conduct and attend meetings. The chair must be present at two face-to-face meetings of the AGU Annual Meeting Program Committee, one that takes place in May and the second in September. AGU staff will also participate in these meetings and provide information appropriate for each meeting. The chair is expected to participate in any scheduled meetings of the AGU Meetings Committee to represent any issues or concerns of the program committee or provide insights for organizing future AGU Annual Meeting meetings.
Leadership Criteria for the Chair, AGU Annual Meeting
Effective management
- Knowledge of the AGU strategic plan
- Understanding of AGU’s governance structure
- Basic understanding of administrative processes
Intellectual engagement
- Vision, openness to possibilities
- Anticipate needs, opportunities, threats of meetings
- Knowledge of topics affecting geoscience and the environment impacting geoscience and the AGU as an organization
- Ability to engage, influence, stimulate, and inspire
Strategic thinking
- Ability to support the alignment of AGU Annual Meeting with the AGU Meetings Strategy
- Innovative thinker that embraces pilots and development of new opportunities within AGU Annual Meeting
- Ability to connect scientific themes from AGU Annual Meeting to other programmatic areas (e.g., publications, other meetings in the AGU portfolio)
- Investigate and assist in the development of organizational partnerships with affiliated scientific groups
- Balance risk with opportunity
Leading change
- Ability to make complicated decisions at the request of the Program Committee, AGU Board, Council, and other stakeholders
- Look beyond the traditional geoscience disciplines to incorporate transdisciplinary and related topics as part of content programing
- Ability to conceive new meeting and session approaches and designs for strengthening the importance and value of the meeting, both in person and offsite
- Ability to conceive new forms of scientific content integration with other AGU scholarly content
Collaborator
- Flexible and willing to work collectively
- Aware of and sensitive to cultural differences
- Promotes diversity
- Understands and relates to a wide audience of stakeholders
- Engages stakeholders to support decision making
Communication skills
- Effective written/oral communicator
- Knows when to restrain and when to exercise chair privileges
- Good listener
- Interpersonal skills
Ethical integrity and transparency
- Objective and impartial