Global change is considered as one of the most serious threats to the sustainability of the human society in recent decades. Developing an improved understanding of the global change effects on different ecosystem goods and services—and being able to better predict these effects—will help society to develop better strategies to adapt to future global change. Global change research drives an important component of research directions among ecologists around the world, and the next generation of ecologists plays an important role at present and in the future. By “next-generation” we refer here to researchers in their early career stage, i.e. new faculty, postdocs and senior graduate students. Many of them are also involved in building extensive national and international research networks for fruitful collaborations to advance global change research by sharing advice, data, and methods, etc. The direction and future success of global change research depends to a significant amount on the work of these young scientists. Our workshop proposes to bring a representative group of next generation ecologists involved in global change research together with established ecologists to stimulate discussions about the current state and future trends in global change research. The panel will help continue the dialogue of research priorities and directions beyond this ESA workshop through discussions on a regular basis via future workshops. The panel discussion of the workshop will be summarized and submitted for publication in Frontier in Ecology and the Environment.