The Midwest North Regional Node, which covers Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, held a Regional Node Meeting virtually on January 26, 2023. The meeting was organized by the Node Leader, Dr. Jackie Wittke-Thompson (University of St. Francis). The 28 attendees were from 21 institutions and included 19 GEP faculty, 6 prospective GEP faculty, and 3 undergraduates. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce GEP to community college faculty in the Midwest North region and to give an opportunity for undergraduate students to share their recent annotation projects. Sessions at the Regional Node Meeting included a presentation by Dr. Paula Croonquist (Anoka-Ramsey Community College) on the impact of using CUREs at community colleges and the support from GEP for implementing genomics CUREs, a discussion with Dr. Natalie Minkovsky (Community College of Baltimore County) on the trials and successes of implementing GEP CUREs at a community college, and three undergraduate research presentations by Jacob Jones and Kwame Asamoah from Taylor University, and Julia Kaniuk from Loyola University Chicago. This successful event is meant to be the precursor to a Regional Node Training for the Midwest North Node during Summer/Fall 2023.
What worked well for your event that might help others plan similar events?
Event organizers sent personal invitations to colleagues at community colleges. The event was also held using the Zoom platform, which includes various accessibility features, such as recordings, auto-generated captions, and text formatting.
What would your Node do differently based on your experiences?
Organizers started planning the event in mid-December. Between the Holidays and everyone being busy during the start of the Spring Semester, there wasn’t much time to send out invitations and recruit students for presentations. Future events need to be planned earlier in advance and invitations need to be sent out with enough time for faculty and students to register.
