ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN WAYS ACTIVITIES

Part I: WAYS and wlp
One of our members, Michael Fischer, a philosopher and lecturer at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany), has started an exciting project aiming at gathering available lectures worldwide: the World Lecture Project. Here are two aspects where we can surely contribute.

Database expansion:
Collecting free lectures on the web is of course a key activity and we have an essential role to play at WAYS since we could bring information about all of the countries in any languages. Having a centralized database and sorting out lectures by languages instead of universities would make a lot of sense.

Financing:
At the moment WLP is doing a survey of potential financial support programs, essentially in the EU. If you know about such programs, especially extra-EU funding possibilities, your input is welcome. More generally grant application skills would be of valuable help.

Part II : Beyond available lectures
Collecting lectures is a fantastic project but WAYS should certainly play a more active role in knowledge transfer. Two examples in brief:

• Given our diversity of scientific fields and languages spoken, it is conceivable to have any lectures subtitled upon request in any languages. This would be valuable for the community and would also benefit the translator by enriching his CV.
• We could also broadcast lectures from our members -in principle this only requires a camcorder and an agreement from the university- an initiative that would have two advantages. Young scientists are usually at ease in establishing contact with students; lectures could be more "lively", more attractive. Recorded lectures could also be the basis to discuss best practices and to set up a prize in teaching for young scientists.

Collecting available material is of course not restricted to lectures and could also apply to PowerPoint presentations, protocols ... Moreover, all of the above would perfectly apply to science education of the general public, another key objective of our academy.

If you're interested in contributing to any aspect of the above, please join the tok_ways group at:
tok_ways-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you have a knowledge transfer project not described in the above, please join as well!

WAYS is planning to join the initiative of Eurodoc to run a survey on the situation of early stage researchers in Europe. The two organisations are currently discussing the terms of agreement concerning the collaboration and the extension of the survey worldwide. The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences volunteered to co-ordinate the survey on behalf of WAYS, and decided to establish a special working group to discuss the extension of this survey and its adaptation to the needs of WAYS. You are warmly invited to join the working group and contribute to the preparation and promotion of the survey. In particular, we invite the representatives of the scientific and regional departments of WAYS to join this initiative in order to avoid any bias in the survey. The WAYS Secretariat set up a mailing list, to which you can subscribe simply by writing a letter to ways@sztaki.hu, and stating that you would like to take part in this work actively.

WAYS has recently established collaboration with the Mother and Child Health International Research Network. Since the Mother-Child Health Program is a young organization, they are seeking for new members to establish even wider connections between people, countries and research areas. Therefore, the coordinators kindly invite you to register at their website as individual or institutional members. If you are working in a related area or have relevant experience, ideas or suggestions, please let us know and make this collaboration more fruitful.
Contact: WAYS Secretariat at ways@sztaki.hu