PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Sally Assmann

Election 2009!

This letter will have two parts. The first part is a plea to vote in the upcoming ASPB elections. This year, members are asked to vote to elect the next president-elect of ASPB, who will succeed Tuan-hua David Ho when he becomes president on October 1, 2009. Members are also asked to vote for an ASPB secretary to succeed Danny Schnell, who will be completing his two-year term as secretary, and for an elected member of the Executive Committee to succeed Steve Huber, who is concluding a three-year term.

The voting process is straightforward. On April 17 the ballot will be posted on the voting web page at http://www.aspb.org/voting and snail-mailed to those members who have requested paper ballots. Biographical information about the candidates will be available both online and on the paper ballots. Voting is a simple matter of filling out the electronic or paper ballot. I’m pleased to report that membership reached a new high point in voter participation in 2008, with a record 45% of the membership participating in the voting process. With your help, we can exceed this percentage in 2009.

Regarding ASPB elections, back in the spring of 2006, I had a funny conversation with a plant biology colleague. He urged me to become more involved in ASPB, and suggested that I should perhaps consider serving on an ASPB committee. At that point in time, I had just been elected as the next ASPB president-elect. When I advised him of this fact, he said, “Oh, I just delete those e-mails from ASPB—I never read them!” So, please, don’t be like my friend! Read the e-mails that arrive in your inbox regarding the voting process, and vote! Your participation gives you a voice in the Society and helps to make our leadership representative of our members, as it should be. (And, by the way, quid pro quo, my esteemed colleague has now begun to serve, for the first time, as a member of an ASPB committee!).

Now on to the second part of my letter. I expect that most of you know that the Society holds a fantastic annual meeting, thanks to our ASPB Program Committee and our highly dedicated and indefatigable meetings staff at headquarters, Jean Rosenberg and Wendy Sahli, as well as yearly sectional meetings, thanks to our sectional officers. Most of you also know that ASPB publishes two leading plant biology journals (Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell), this newsletter, the online Arabidopsis Book (TAB), and occasionally other items, such as the critically acclaimed Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of Plants text. The ASPB Publications Committee plays an advisory role in all noneditorial issues related to ASPB publications. However, I know that it was only upon becoming more involved in ASPB activities that I became aware of just how much else the Society does via its various committees. With the expectation that the same may be true for some of you, I wanted to recap just some of the other activities of ASPB, with a focus on three committees: the ASPB Education Committee, Minority Affairs Committee, and Women in Plant Biology Committee. In addition to highlighting just how much ASPB does for its members, I also have an ulterior motive: between now and September 30, 2009, the ASPB Nominating Committee, and in particular President-elect Tuan-hua David Ho, will be identifying new members to replace those individuals who are rotating off the various ASPB committees. If you read below (or online at http://www.aspb.org/committees/) a description of committee activities that sounds like your cup of tea, don’t hesitate to contact Tuan-hua David at ho@biology2.wustl.edu and express your interest. Conversely, if Tuan-hua David contacts you, I hope you’ll consider serving.

ASPB has a very active Education Committee that has concentrated much of its efforts on K–12 education. Many educational activities that could be used in your own local setting/school district can be found via the Education page at http://www.aspb.org/education/. Some of you may have participated in the several events sponsored by the Education Committee at PB2008 in Mérida, including not only the education booth, but also the education and outreach workshop, minisymposium, and poster session. We can look forward to similar opportunities at PB2009. In addition to the meeting in Mérida, the presence of the Education Committee truly has been felt around the world this past year as Mary Williams, an EdCom member, took advantage of her sabbatical in the United Kingdom to provide ASPB education materials and activities to conferees at the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB) Congress in Tampere, Finland. Mary will also have an ASPB education booth at the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB) meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, June 28–July 1. Back in the United States, EdCom members exhibited last year at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) Professional Development Conference in Memphis, Tenn., and at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference and the AAAS Family Science Days, both of which were held in Boston, Mass., in 2008. The Education Committee also continues to participate in PlantingScience; check out the website at http://www.plantingscience.org/ if you have an interest in online mentoring of middle and high school classes and science clubs. Importantly, the EdCom also participated, by invitation, in a summit hosted by the HHMI/NSF/AAAS on the topic of “Vision and Change in Biology Undergraduate Education.” More details on the summit were given in the January/February edition of this newsletter (see http://www.aspb.org/newsletter/janfeb09/12summit.cfm). It is worth noting that follow-up activities to the summit are planned and could prove very influential in improving how science is taught at the introductory college level.

The Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) was similarly active this past year, continuing its yearly minisymposium at the annual meeting, this time on “Model Plants of the Americas,” and their yearly dinner, at which we were treated to an engaging, if sobering, talk from David Burgess of Boston College on the status of underrepresented minorities in the sciences. The speaker for PB2009 will be Clifton Poodry, director, Division of Minority Opportunities and Research, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH, whose talk is entitled “Developing Plant Scientists for 2020.” MAC provided recognition awards for members of underrepresented groups to attend PB2008 and will do so again for PB2009. Last year’s awardees were undergraduates Winter Santander (Humboldt State University), Jonathan Torres (University of Texas, Austin), and Joe Darren (San Juan College); graduate students Uvetta Dozier and Herman Fennell (both of Howard University) and Brandon Gaytan (Clark University); and faculty members Geoge Ude (Bowie State University) and Charles des Bordes (Medgar Evers College). Last year, MAC also continued its tradition of participation in ABRCMS, the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, which attracts more than 2,000 participants, including more than 1,500 undergraduates. Despite the biomedical emphasis suggested by the name of the conference, MAC participants report that the ASPB exhibit booth was well attended. This coming year, MAC will participate in the SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) conference in Dallas, Texas. MAC also continues to sponsor the Diversity Bank at http://www.aspb.org/diversitybank/. Please take a look and sign up if you’re interested in presenting a talk at or otherwise connecting with a minority serving institution. I also want to mention the crowning achievement of MAC this past year: the submission to NSF of a proposal entitled “Recruiting and Retaining Underrepresented Minorities in the Plant Sciences: A Comprehensive Approach.” Proposed activities include increased support for members of underrepresented groups to participate in both the ASPB annual meeting and in ASPB sectional meetings, as well as plans for regional conferences on plant biology, to be held at minority serving institutions.

The Women in Plant Biology Committee (WIPB) participates in a diversity of forums. One activity that I particularly enjoy is its Women in Plant Biology columns in this newsletter, which can be viewed at http://www.aspb.org/newsletter/wipb.cfm. Each year, WIPB also brings to you a WIPB luncheon or dinner at the annual meeting. Last year the speaker was Patricia Léon from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), who provided an informative and entertaining talk on “The Good Side of a Macho Culture.” Mary Lou Guerinot from Dartmouth College will be the speaker at the luncheon in Honolulu. Another major initiative of WIPB is the organization and running of the Career Workshops at the annual meeting; any meeting attendee can sign up to attend these workshops. Workshop topics for Honolulu are “How to Survive a New Job” and “Alternate Careers for Plant Biologists.” WIPB members also spearheaded the Laboratory Leadership Workshop held in conjunction with PB2007 in Chicago, and a reprise of this highly successful event is being planned for Montreal in 2010. This year, WIPB also launched a new initiative, the Women’s Young Investigator Travel Awards, to support travel to the annual meeting of new female investigators in academia, government, and industry. The impetus for this award came in part from data showing that the percentage of women in our membership declines from a high of 47% of graduate student members to a low of only 28% of regular members. These statistics suggest that there is a need to provide more support to women scientists at the beginning of their independent professional careers.

I hope that the above descriptions have given you some idea of the ways in which ASPB committees help to make our professional society as vibrant and engaged as it is. I have not mentioned all the activities of these three committees, and I also beg forgiveness from the members of the Executive, International Affairs, Membership, and Public Affairs Committees for their lack of mention in this article: I promise to describe their activities in other letters later this year. As one final note regarding committee activities—one of particular interest for our U.S. members—it is worth mentioning that I, along with Public Affairs Committee chair Gary Stacey and Public Affairs Committee member Pat Schnable, were in Washington, D.C., during the week of February 9 and visited the offices of congressional leaders on the Hill to urge retention of support for science and science agencies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As of this writing the bill has been signed into law, with inclusion of significant support for the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and National Institutes of Health.

Sally Assmann
sma3@psu.edu