Supporting and Empowering Polar Early Career Scientists through the Polar Science Early Career Community Office

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The University of Colorado at Boulder will provide support for the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) to accelerate national and international polar workforce development. This effort will bring the APECS leadership office to the USA for the first time and support the US-APECS office functions. The APECS office provides organizational support to the trans-disciplinary international membership of ~3800 early career polar scientists. The goal is to provide leadership development, training, networking and a voice to polar science students and postdocs. The three key activities are to: 1) establish an APECS office in the USA to provide infrastructure and expertise to the network, 2) build US early career polar science capacity through travel grants and support of the USAPECS national committee, and 3) directly support impactful initiatives that support Belonging, Accessibility, Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (BeAJEDI) in polar science. The CU Boulder-based APECS office will leverage existing NSF investments to elevate the visibility of polar science and connect early career scientists to international polar research efforts, such as large field and modelling campaigns, and efforts aimed at improving the inclusion of local and Indigenous voices in Arctic research. US polar research will benefit by connecting to this international and diverse pool of early career scientists, creating pathways to new collaborations and opportunities and being exposed to new voices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.