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Get Involved

New members are welcome and encouraged to join any or all FOUR of the ECNG task forces no matter what career stage you are in! This is the place to connect with peers and mentors, become more actively involved in ACRM, build a network to support your career development, and become recognized in a leadership role. Read on for a description of each task force, select the ones of interest and contact the task force chairs today to get involved.

Early Career Development Course Task Force

This task force plans the full-day Early Career Development Course held each fall at the ACRM Annual Conference. We are currently finalizing our exciting agenda for this year’s ECD Course, entitled, Building an Individual Professional Development Plan. We will kick the course off with our Keynote speaker, Dr. Kenneth Ottenbacher on Making Science: Characteristics of Successful Scholars.

Next up will be a presentation by Drs. Dawn Neumann and Amy Herrold on designing Individual Development Plans (Grab the Bull by the Horns and Steer Your Career in the Direction You Want), which will be followed by small breakout sessions to discuss options and solutions to potential challenges and barriers that our attendees may face as part of their career development adventure. These include:

  • Balancing Values, Passions and Vision
  • Goal Alignment
  • Time Management
  • Tackling Last Year’s Challenges
  • Setting Personal Goals
  • Work Life Integration

There will be Roundtable Lunch Discussions with Mentors to get more advice about popular career development issues (topics described above in Conference Updates). Don’t miss News You Can Use about research funding for early career scientists presented by numerous funding agencies and their representatives.

And last but not least, you will hear success stories and words of wisdom from early career recipients who received some very impressive grant awards! Being a part of this task force is great fun and very rewarding. If you want to get involved with the task force for next year, contact Dr. Monique Pappadis.

 

Physicians Task Force

The mission of the ECNG Physicians Task Force is to cultivate collaboration among multiple rehabilitation medicine disciplines with a focus on improving the implementation of research, knowledge translation, and program development. We are just shifting gears to a new project, focusing on the theme of programmatic development. Also, many of the participants in our group are early or mid-career faculty members that are learning how to navigate their careers. Calls are every other month. For more information, contact Dr. Brad Kurowski.

 

Communications Task Force

Our Task Force is working on 2 main projects right now. The first is aggregating the content and resources for these Quarterly E-newsletters you are reading right now. We try to address the most popular topics by finding resources on the internet, or writing our own original articles on these topics and our early career experiences. Our major topics are: Grants and professional writing; Jobs, Promotion and Tenure; Mentorship; Leadership; Work life balance; Professional Service membership; and News for Clinicians. Our members sign up for the topics they want to contribute resources for our newsletter; they hunt for information on the topic and send their resources to me by a certain deadline each quarter.

Our second project is a collaboration with the Mentoring Task Force. We are working with the Mentoring TF to produce an “Ask the Mentor” column for the Quarterly e-newsletters. See Mentoring Task Force below for more info! We welcome new members – so please email Dawn Neumann if you are interested in joining our Task Force. We hold conference calls every other month, but many of our members contribute mostly through email exchanges.

Also, the Communications Task Force is currently looking to fill the role of Chair-elect for 2016. Responsibilities of the Chair-elect are to: support the co-chairs and task force efforts; participate in ECNG Communication Task Force calls every other month; and participate in ECNG Executive Committee conference calls every other month. In preparation for transition to Chair-elect, this person will be included in all of the executive activities. Responsibilities of Chair-Elect are to promote and partake in activities that advance the mission of the task force with the assistance of the Communication Task Force membership. The Chair-Elect is also responsible for putting together the resources and content (provided by members) for the e-newsletter that goes out every other month to our members.

The only criteria to be eligible for an executive position, is that you must be a member of ACRM, and willing to be active in the ECNG Communications Task Force. You can be at any stage in your career to hold this position (early, mid, or late). Please send nominations and inquiries to Dawn Neumann, no later than October of 2015.

 

Mentoring Task Force

The mission of this task force is to facilitate the development of mentoring relationships among rehabilitation professionals at varying stages in their career development through research, educational, and clinical collaborative opportunities. If you are interested in joining our TF or becoming a mentor, please contact the co-chairs.

One of our current projects is to get questions and answers for the Ask the Mentor column, which will be published in the ECNG Quarterly Enewsletter. Check out this month’s column! We will be focusing on a variety of common early career issues and concerns. So, if you need some advice, please submit your questions to the task force co-chairs and we will get those questions answered! Or if you would like to serve as a mentor for the column, also email us! Dr. Brooks Wingo or Dr. Meghan Geiss.