ACPA Seminar Series: Staying Cool Under Fire: Resilience and Performance Techniques for Stressful Presentations

Welcome to the ACPA Seminar Series, a monthly webinar series including various topics of interest related to advancing the Chemical Profession in Alberta. For the next seminar in this series, we are happy to introduce Jerry Vandenberg, for 'Staying Cool Under Fire: Resilience and Performance Techniques for Stressful Presentations' on March 11, 2026. Each seminar will be eligible for 1 PDC credit.

Agenda

6:45 PM MT - Networking

7:00 PM MT - Seminar

Speaker

Jerry Vandenberg

Jerry Vandenberg is an environmental chemist who specializes in modelling, environmental impact assessment, and pit lake management. He is also a resilience trainer for a volunteer fire department, where he has been a firefighter since 2014.

Seminar

Public presentations and expert witness testimonies are important duties for many professional chemists, and these events can be highly stressful. While we often emphasize the technical quality of our work in preparing such presentations, mental preparedness can be overlooked. This professional development seminar considers such presentations through two frameworks. First, psychological resilience is evaluated within the framework of an environmental risk assessment by identifying and mitigating hazards associated with stressful presentations. Second, performance factors are considered through the “Big Four” framework developed to help military personnel and first responders perform during stressful situations.

Registration

Admission: FREE

Registration Deadline March 10, 2026

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Register Today

If you have questions, contact the ACPA office at [email protected].

Note: The ACPA seminar series is a professional development event and the opinions of the speaker are not ACPA policy.