ember.js beginner advice required

I am attempting to learn ember.js to produce a simple-ish web application. I have read around the subject and completed the basic tutorial on emberjs.com . So far, I have managed to create the beginnings of an API using PHP and I have been able to retrieve that data into my fledgling application. So far so good.

As a starter, I wish to retrieve a list of users from the server and populate a select with these values. The select is to sit on the menu bar and the selection from this drives the rest of the data for the application. I have placed the model in models/users.js. The application menu I have defined in templates/application.hbs (not sure if this is considered correct or not).

I am unable to get the users data for the select retrieved from the server unless I visit the users route that I have also setup. How can I ensure that the users data is populated at application initialisation? How would I apply/filter the rest of the application data upon selection from this component - would I need to set a global variable or something?

Additionally, I am using materializecss, which requires $('select').material_select(); to be run in order to render the select input. I have this as:

$( document ).ready(function(){
  $('select').material_select();
});

in templates/route.js and works fine on initial page load, but upon navigation to another area and back again, the select is not rendered, and from what I have read, I need to call material_select() again, but I can't for the life of me work out where this call should go.

If anyone is willing to take the time to help me better understand things, I will be very grateful.

Cheers

Tim