President's Letter - April 2022
Written by Dr Susan Northfield, MRACI
Published 22 April 2022
Dear RACI Victorian Branch community,
I hope you all had a lovely Easter long weekend. Before the break our Branch held our first Diversity & Inclusion Training Event for the year, made possible by funding from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The event was presented by the fantastic team from Expression Australia, and they did an amazing job educating the audience on Deaf Awareness. We not only benefitted from the presenter’s lived experience, but he also took time to answer all the audience questions. This was a fantastic first event for our series, and I thank all the audience members who attended for their contribution to the Q&A at the end. The event was free for members and I strongly encourage you all to book yourselves in for the next series of training sessions. All the Diversity & Inclusion Training Sessions we are running this year are being presented by external organisations who are experts in their fields and are eager to work with the RACI. I congratulate our Diversity & Inclusion team in the Victorian Branch for all their work so far! What a great start!
If you’re eager to get involved with the RACI locally, the Branch committee are currently seeking members to volunteer to work with us to develop our social media and early career chemist portfolios. If you are interested in these opportunities and want to learn more, please contact me directly at [email protected].
Speaking of social media, the RACI’s official national podcast, “Chemically Speaking” has joined the Twitter-verse. If you are on Twitter, you can follow them at @ChemPodcast. If you’ve not yet listened to episodes of the podcast, you can check out previous episodes via our website. They are currently seeking a partner to support the podcast, as well as volunteers to contribute to the running of the program. If you have any suggestions, ideas or feedback, you can email the podcast team via this link.
I also have an update regarding our Awards Night. We realised that April was becoming a very busy month for everyone, and so have made the decision to reschedule the event to June 24th. You can visit the website to register now, and further details of the event will be circulated to our membership soon.
Finally, applications are now open for RACI Postgraduate Student Travel Awards. There will be 12 awards this year, which consist of a certificate with free registration to the RACI 2022 National Congress and an amount of $500 towards travel and accommodation expenses. I encourage all student members to consider applying for this funding, and hope to see many of you at the RACI Congress in July.
Best wishes to you all!
Dr Susan Northfield
RACI VIC Branch President
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