Become a Member

To sign up to become a member of APECS, go to the discussion forum on the APECS website: http://arcticportal.org/apecs/forum and click on the Register link under the APECS logo.  This will take you through the registration process where you will be asked to enter your email address and other information. We only use the email address to send you announcements from time to time. Your information can only be accessed by other members for the purposes of finding new collaborators, networking and learning more about other polar research projects. The more information you enter, the more people will be exposed to your work.  If you have troubles, please contact our Chief Information Officer, Peter DiFiorie (pdifiore at Princeton.EDU).

Benefits to Membership

Worldwide, many early career polar researchers work in isolation – in our institutes as well as our fieldwork. Becoming an APECS member connects you into our membership network of researchers and educators with similar interests, passions and experiences. Moreover, it gives you access to job vacancies and other opportunities from around the globe and from a variety of institutions and organizations. We have many wonderful advisory committee members – established senior scientists - who are happy to help with career advice or put you in contact with others who can help you with various questions. APECS will be sponsoring a number of workshops and works closely with the International Polar Year office to find financial support to ensure and increase early career participation in all IPY events. From time to time opportunities arise for early career representatives at science planning activities and other events – being a member allows you access to those opportunities to help build an international and interdisciplinary polar career.  Being a member lets you search the membership database to find new colleagues or email people questions you might have on various science topics, and to develop new professional contacts and friendships. APECS has many activities and resources that could use your help and that will simultaneously advance your career. See our Get Involved section for more details.

As an international organization, the major connecting point for our organization is our website. Being an APECS member gives you access to resources that will be helpful for your career development, along the continuum of undergraduate through to successful polar researcher.  Our discussion board allows you to interact with the larger community regarding a variety of issues such as questions regarding laboratory procedures, finding out where to get polar experience, sharing stories and tips and discussing recent publications.  You also have access to a variety of RSS feeds regarding polar research all in one place – from recent news stories to the latest polar related Science paper.  We have a database of polar related job openings and several RSS feeds from other job databases.  One of the most useful benefits of membership is the membership database itself. Using this tool can help you find other people in your field asking similar questions, allowing you to meet new international colleagues, or find additional resources to help your research and career development.

Being an APECS member also gives you access to the many early career workshops and meetings that will be held in the coming months and years, as well as opportunities to serve on science planning and conference organizing committees as the voice of early career polar researchers.  The APECS meetings allow rare face-to-face contact with those involved in the field, which is both professionally and personally rewarding.  Each of these workshops will have a different focus, from very technical and technique specific to broad career development strategies. Many of these workshops will have limited openings, and being an active APECS member will give you higher priority in the application process.