SFS 2025 Additional Workshop Facilitators: Jonathan Lopez & Marc Peipoch
This half-day workshop provides opportunities for early career scientists and students to develop professional “soft skills” that may help them navigate their early careers. These skills are often termed the “hidden curriculum” and are not often presented in a structured setting, making obtaining these skills difficult. Within SFS, the Headwaters Leadership Academy (HLA) program is one avenue to further develop these professional skills, and this workshop is meant to provide a taste of what the HLA offers. The two-year HLA program provides a cohort of early career scientists with a variety of networking, mentoring, service, and professional development opportunities through webinars and mentor meetings. To provide a sample of HLA opportunities, this workshop focuses on soft skills including professional development (e.g., networking, selling yourself, conflict management) and mentor-mentee dynamics. The goal of this workshop is to provide participants with the opportunity to improve or develop professional development skills in a hands-on way while also providing information on further avenues with SFS (e.g., the HLA) to expand these skills. Additionally, participants will be invited to attend the HLA social later at the meeting. The target audience for is late-stage students and early career scientists who are interested in the HLA or gaining more professional development skills.
The workshop starts with an overview of the HLA program followed by a series of workshops that focus on soft skills. These workshops start with an overview of a skill/topic followed by an activity to practice. We anticipate covering networking (identifying and expanding your network and speed networking), selling yourself (perfecting the elevator pitch), mentor-mentee dynamics (identifying healthy dynamics), and conflict management (recognizing and working through conflicts). We will finish with a question-and-answer session with current HLA members to give workshop participants the opportunity to ask questions about covered topics and the HLA program.