2022 UFERN Network Meeting

The 2022 Undergraduate Field Experiences Research Network (UFERN) Annual Network meeting took place virtually on January 27th and 28th. 105 people attended at least one of the sessions. Session topics included the future of UFERN, transformative justice in field research, accessibility in undergraduate field experiences, and workshops related to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) in undergraduate field experiences. 

If you would like to get involved in UFERN please sign up for our listserv and see the opportunities below:

1. Community College Interest Group – This interest group is for people who are interested in meeting occasionally to share resources, discuss research ideas, and work on collaborative products related to engaging community college students in undergraduate field education. Please email Alicia Farmer at farmeral@umich.edu if you’d like to join the discussion.  
2. Field-Based Mentoring Interest Group – This interest group is for people who are interested in meeting occasionally to share resources, discuss research ideas, and work on collaborative products related to mentoring undergraduates in field situations. If you want to be involved in any capacity, please sign up here.
3. Research Interest Group – This interest group is for people who are interested in meeting occasionally to share resources and latest research results, discuss research ideas and work on collaborative products related to conducting research about undergraduate field education. If we get enough people we can think about splitting into subsections based on research topic and discuss how we might overlap or not with the other interest groups. If you want to be involved in any capacity, please sign up here.
4. UFERN Slack Workspace – UFERN has a Slack workspace! Within the workspace you can also join the new “research-interest-group” slack channel. The slack workspace and channel will be a place to share resources, ask a question to the network, or reach out to potential collaborators. No expectations on regular dialogue. Join the UFERN Slack space here.
5. UFERN Organizing Committee – Join the UFERN organizing committee if you are excited to be a part of and support continued interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations related to UFERN topics. Since we are not sure when we will next be able to offer a network meeting, we would like to hold periodic UFERN “meet-ups” over the next year to continue to nurture and grow our community. The purpose of these meet-ups will be to continue the interdisciplinary conversations, collaborations, and proposals that are at the heart of UFERN. Depending on interest, we envision that these meet-ups will be a monthly or occasional event held via Zoom and/or partnering with other organizations or professional societies on topics of shared interest. Our idea is for this committee to be a very doable level of commitment to accommodate busy schedules; we are envisioning that each member or two members as a small team will be responsible for leadership of one of these meet-ups. The exact structure of the committee and meet ups will be decided during our first meeting in March. If you want to be involved, please sign up by March 9th, 2022.
6. Resources shared at the UFERN Network Meeting – Many valuable resources were shared at the UFERN Network Meeting. We pulled resources shared on the Whova meeting platform, including some of the presentations, articles shared by meeting participants, and other resources suggested at the meeting, and made them available on the Resources page.

Special thanks go out to all the UFERN members who helped make the meeting a big success, especially the volunteer organizing committee: Alec Aitken, Alyssa Abbey, Amanda Robin, Carol Colaninno, Debbie Lichti, Mallory Rice, Meghan Cook, and Sammy Nyarko!