The SCAR Mentorship Programs
Antarctic Mentor Match Initiative 2024
SCAR launched the inaugural Antarctic Mentor Match Initiative during the XI SCAR Open Science Conference in Pucón, Chile, from 19-23 August 2024. The initiative aimed to connect researchers at different career stages within the same field, fostering the exchange of ideas. Participants could sign up as mentors (if they were further along in their careers and wanted to share their expertise), as mentees (if they were earlier in their careers and seeking guidance), or as both (for those in the middle of their careers who could benefit from both roles). Nearly 240 participants registered and were matched based on their areas of expertise. SCAR is now exploring ways to continue the initiative at future conferences.
Involvement in PIMI Mentorship Program
In 2024 PIMI (Polar Impact Network) started a new mentorship initiative. Inga Beck, coordinator of the SCAR EDI AG was selected as one of the mentors and is now mentoring a mentee from India for a one year period.
Advice for applicants to the SCAR Fellowship Scheme
Preparing a successful fellowship application is a skill. Often, lack of success with applications is not due to a poor research idea but comes down to the inability to express clearly and confidently, in writing, your research to someone else. Everyone’s writing skills can be improved and be made more effective. This mentoring activity is designed to help early-career researchers with developing their fellowship-proposal-writing skills. It is particularly meant for young researchers in countries with a small or just developing Antarctic research community that may not have adequate mentoring in their home institutions.
The first webinar on writing tips for SCAR and COMNAP fellowships was hosted by APECS in April 2016 and is available below and on APECS’ Vimeo site. To complement the webinar a “Writing for Success” document was produced which includes information on the evaluation of proposals, feedback on positive examples as well as areas where improvement is often needed from those who review applications, and some Frequently Asked Questions on the technical details of submitting an application (also see the FAQs page as new questions are being added regularly, based on the queries we receive).
Building on the success of the first webinar, SCAR, COMNAP and APECS partnered again to hold a similar training webinar in March 2017, but this time in Spanish. This webinar hopes to provide additional tips and tricks for writing applications in English for Spanish speakers.
Further APECS webinars were held in 2021 in Portuguese and German. Both are available on the SCAR YouTube channel.