Life and its events have gone virtual since the COVID-19 pandemic began and the Northeastern Storm Conference (NESC) will be no exception. NESC is a conference held by the NVU-Lyndon AMS & NWA chapter. At NESC, students from universities in the Northeast region often share their research on topics relating to atmospheric and environmental sciences. These conferences also provide a great way to network with people from surrounding schools.
This year however NESC will look a little different. On April 23 through April 25, students will log onto their devices and have their conference experience over Zoom. Usually, conferences like NESC have a lot of academic presentations. However, from the experience of learning over Zoom, the AMS club has decided to make it more about professional development this time around, which is almost a complete redesign of what NESC looks like.
Another aspect that is a big part of the storm conference is networking. As people are not able to connect as easily being remote, networking has become a challenge to plan for. AMS President Bobby Saba told The Critic that they found a way to overcome this challenge. “We have been using Whova for an electronic conference booklet. They have redesigned their layout and now have networking tables,” he said. These networking tables will be randomly assigned breakout rooms for 5 minutes where attendees are able to exchange contact info.
Zoom NESC is going to have some other new things besides the platform they use. They will also have schools and universities across the nation attending, not just Northeastern schools. “This year being in a remote setting, we have no restrictions. We are looking to get any school across the country that has some sort of atmospheric, environmental, or climate science program,” Saba said.
Feature Photo courtesy of NVU-Lyndon AMS & NWA || This year’s Northeastern Storm Conference logo was designed by Dawn Saba and digitized by NVU-Lyndon graphic designer Mary Berger.