Fall 2009 Newsletter
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SER Student Caucus

President's Corner - Arijit Nandi

It is my pleasure to serve the student caucus and coordinate stu-dent events for this year. Thanks to the purposefulness of last year’s student caucus board, including Vanessa Stevens, Stella Aslibekyan, Jennifer Smith, Karen Schliep, Whitney Robinson, and Michael Lowe, our programs in Anaheim were well attended and favorably reviewed. This year, we hope to build on this momentum through the continuation of our student programs at the Annual Meeting in Seattle, as well as the launch of some new initiatives.

During the 2009 meeting in Anaheim we asked students about the ways in which the student caucus could aid in their academic and professional development. Overwhelmingly, the most common responses were about increased networking, both among students and between students and faculty. Given last year’s theme of Epidemiologists as Vectors for Transmitting Health and high-profile research showing network trans-mission of everything from happiness to obesity, perhaps it is time we look introspectively into the ways in which we can leverage our professional network to facilitate the develop-ment of our student members. With the continued support of the SER executive board, we are considering a number of innovative programs.

Click on the link below to see the SER web meeting pilot project, including recordings of the SER 2009 Keynote Address on Climate Change and Health, plus talks by Poole and Hernan on absolute versus relative measures of effect. http:/web.his.uvic.ca/HINF591/SERwebmeeting.htm

One idea raised last year by Dr. Malcolm Maclure was the idea of a mid-year web meeting. This would be an extension of last year webinar, which allowed students to view presentations over the internet in advance of a half-day in-person workshop that focused on reviewing and writing epidemiologic abstracts, as well as strategies for developing them into publishable manuscripts. The ratings for the workshop in general, and the webinar in particular, were extremely positive, suggesting that the use of online or virtual forums may be an underutilized resource for encouraging the links between us. Although the details are tentative, a mid-year web meeting would allow students to view online presentations concerning an epidemiologic topic of interest, such as a methodological session on absolute vs. relative measures of risk, and give them the opportunity to interact with the presenters and with one another. The potential formative benefits are many, including the didactic benefit of being able to view presentations at one’s own pace along with relevant readings, as well as the professional component, which would allow students to network at a time and space besides the Annual Meeting. There is also, of course, no additional risk of swine flu!;-). An extension of this idea is to take advantage of our entire network through enhanced web services, something that we will be exploring in the coming year with the assistance of the SER executive committee and administration. Potential resources available to student caucus members could include job postings, online presentations and pod-casts from our Annual Meetings, and polls/surveys. I look forward to investigating these possibilities along with a talented and inspired group of student leaders, including:

• Edgar Simard, President-Elect
  University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey SPH
• Katie O’Brien, Membership/Nominations Co-Chair
  University of North Carolina SPH
• Elizabeth Brownell, Membership/Nominations Co-Chair
  University of Rochester
• Leona Bessonova, Program Committee Co-Chair
  University of California, Irvine
• Miranda Ritterman, Program Committee Co-Chair
  University of California, Berkeley SPH
• Kellee White, Abstracts Committee Chair/Treasurer
  Harvard SPH
• Jennifer Lund, Secretary/Communications Chair
  University of North Carolina SPH

Of course, the most important input should come from you, the members of SER and the student caucus. I hope to hear back from you about our plans for the upcoming year and the ways in which we can continue to strengthen the SER professional network. No, twitter is not an op-tion.

Regards,

Arijit Nandi
anandi@hsph.harvard.edu