Volunteering opportunities at the EGU

Even though the EGU is a large organisation with thousands of members, it only employs a handful of people in its Munich office. In addition, it is a truly bottom-up organisation that relies on, and values, the input of its members on a variety of projects and activities. As such, there are a number of tasks we would like our members and other interested parties to help us with on a voluntary basis. If you are an enthusiastic early career scientist or a GIFT teacher, or simply someone who would be interested in helping us in our activities, you may be interested in the information on this page.

To give visibility to its volunteers, the EGU acknowledges their support by, e.g., by-lining their articles or naming them as reviewers or translators, and we encourage them to add their EGU work to their CVs.

Planet Press

Please note that Planet Press is currently on indefinite hiatus.

Planet Press is an educational project that aims to make geoscientific research accessible to young kids. The project consists in writing EGU press releases in a language suitable for children, with the texts (in English) being reviewed for both scientific and educational content. You can find various examples at the Planet Press Articles page.

Planet Press texts are written in-house, but they are reviewed and translated by volunteers. At the moment we have enough scientists and teachers helping us with reviews, but are always looking for more translators to make sure the texts are available in the various European languages. If you are interested in translating, please email EGU's Media Relations Manager at media@egu.eu indicating what languages you’d be able to translate into.

Educational databases

The EGU hosts on its website two educational databases. The GeoLocations Database is a list for anyone interested in visiting geological locations (landmarks, parks, etc.) in European countries either for general interest or on an educational field trip. We are looking for enthusiastic geoscientists to help us both increase the number of entries in the database, as well as improve the descriptions of the current entries. If this is something you’d like to help with, please contact EGU's Media Relations Manager at media@egu.eu.

The Teacher’s Corner is a list of resources for educators looking for inspiration for teaching across the Earth, planetary and space sciences. At the moment the database consists of entries that link to teaching resources on third-party websites. We are looking for enthusiastic geoscientist educators to help us both increase the number of entries in the database, as well as improve the descriptions of the current entries. In addition, in the future we would like to use the Teacher’s Corner to share educational activities, lesson plans and resources created by GIFT teachers. If you are a teacher or educator who participated in one of EGU’s GIFT workshops, please help us improve the database by submitting your teaching activity to the site. For more information, please contact EGU's Media Relations Manager at media@egu.eu or the EGU Committee on Education at education@egu.eu.

Wikipedia

The internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia is an increasingly important source of information, which can be accessed and edited for free by anyone in the world. It is one of the largest websites in terms of traffic and its pages show up in the top ten search results for the vast majority of online searches.

The EGU has a page on Wikipedia, but this entry is incomplete and out-of-date. The same can be said of other EGU-related pages, such as those of journals published by the EGU (e.g. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics). If you have experience contributing to Wikipedia, we would love to have your help in editing our pages. The aim would be to, eventually, get the EGU page on Wikipedia to be awarded the ‘Featured article’ distinction. Once the EGU entry is improved, we would also like to find Wikipedia editors to translate the entry into various languages. For more information, please contact the EGU Media Relations Manager at media@egu.eu.

Science writing

Are you a researcher interested in communicating your science or an aspiring science writer? If so, you might be interested in contributing to the EGU blog, GeoLog, where we welcome guest posts on any topics relating to the Earth, planetary and space sciences. If you have an idea for an article, please read our guidelines for submission on GeoLog and contact the EGU Communications Officer at communications@egu.eu.

Courses database

Especially thought for young and aspiring geoscientists, the EGU hosts a database of undergraduate (bachelor, diploma, etc.) and master courses on its early career scientists’ website. We are looking to increase the number of university courses listed in this database, with entries spreading more European countries. If your university offers an undergraduate or postgraduate course in the Earth, planetary or space sciences, please submit it online.

Within each scientific division of the EGU, early career scientists representatives (early career researchers who are EGU members affiliated with a particular division) can take on a variety of tasks, according to their areas of expertise and interest. These can include (but aren’t limited to): organising events for early career scientists at our annual General Assembly, outreach to early career scientists and the wider public through social media or a division blog, or establishing a mentoring programme for other early career scientists. For more information about how to get involved, please check our Early Career Scientists website or contact the EGU Communications Officer at communications@egu.eu.