ASPB President
Nick Carpita

Mark Brodl

Wendy Boss

Mel Oliver

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Making the Most of Your ASPB Membership

In a reflective lecture to the American Society of Plant Physiologists (ASPP) on its 30th anniversary, Charles A. Shull, the Society’s first president and the first editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology, intimated glibly that the tipping point for a new society may have been that physiologists never had their own dinner at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America (BSA). Shull commented that “Societies have dinners, sections of societies do not” (1). Beyond the desire for a good dinner together, growing dissatisfaction with the inability of the Physiological Section of BSA to further the field of physiology in accordance with their precepts prompted three prominent plant physiologists—Burton Livingston, the permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); R. B. Harvey, from the University of Minnesota; and Shull, from the University of Chicago—to ask members of the Physiological Section of BSA if they would rather be a member of a new society at a cost of $1 for annual dues (about $12.50 in today’s money) or continue sectional membership in BSA for 50 cents. The ballots cast in December 1923 by the 80-plus members showed overwhelming support for establishing a new society.

The launching of a new journal to publish Society members’ work was the first order of business. But Shull couldn’t depend on dues to sustain production of a journal, and thus the Society’s first endowment of $20,000 underwrote Plant Physiology’s start in 1926. It isn’t completely clear where the money came from, but it appears that Mrs. Shull was the source of the funds (1). By 1930, membership had quadrupled from the 104 charter members, the 86 library subscriptions obtained in the year of the journal’s charter had grown to 264, and there was a growing international readership. By the time of Shull’s 30th anniversary lecture in 1954, membership exceeded 1,000, with even more journal subscriptions—70% of them international.

The Society would grow to near its present level over the succeeding 30 years, but not without disturbing declines in membership along the way. Far too often, success breeds complacency. The growth of ASPP matched the growth of faculty ranks at home and abroad, but the Society leadership failed to address the changing demographic—more graduate students and young professionals were entering the Society—and ASPP needed to open its arms to women and minorities, who made up ever-increasing proportions of the scientific community. A journal and an annual meeting would not suffice, and the leadership responded. In today’s American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB)1, postdoctorals, graduate students, and undergraduates make up a little more than 25% of the membership, and they represent more than 50% of the attendees at the annual meeting. They and the entire membership benefit by a virtual network of nearly 5,000 members worldwide, free electronic access to Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell, discounts on page charges that are greater than the cost of membership, and free open access publishing in Plant Physiology. Discounts for students and young scientists extend to the annual meeting registrations, with many additional opportunities for travel awards.

What is not so visible is what our members have done for ASPB through the years to give the Society prominence, adapt to the changing climate of science, and assure our sustainability. In 1986, ASPP unanimously endorsed the formation of Women in Plant Physiology as an official committee. At the 1985 annual meeting, Ellen Weaver reported on the status of women in the Society, noting that in ASPP’s entire 60-year history, only two women had served on its Executive Committee, with Beth Gantt, University of Maryland, as secretary being the committee’s only current female member. (Mary Stiller of Purdue University was the first; she served as ASPP secretary from 1973 to 1975.) Despite the growth of female membership to 16% at that time, only one woman, Birgit Vennesland, had won a Society award, and no woman had served as a symposium chair in the previous five years. The 1985 meeting was the first time the need for child care at the annual meeting was raised as an issue to be solved. Although representation of women has now reached 38% of the overall membership, the proportion of regular members who are women is considerably lower. ASPB continues to work to deliver career-building and networking opportunities designed to support women as they move past the postdoctoral and into professorial and industry positions.

A monumental year for Society action was 1993. Women in Plant Physiology had become a standing committee of the Executive Committee. But when Sheila Fennoy, UC Riverside, reported to the Executive Committee on how we might further strengthen diversity in ASPP, her comments immediately resulted in the formation of the Minority Affairs Committee (MAC), with Bill Gordon of Howard University as chair. With strong support from President Russell Jones, UC Berkeley, and President-elect Jim Siedow, Duke University, MAC expressly sought extramural support for minority student and faculty attendance at annual meetings and began featuring luncheons honoring minority speakers.

These two committees are even more active today and are looking for young members to step up to help. Indeed, through MAC’s efforts, ASPB was awarded a grant in 2009 by the National Science Foundation that has allowed the Society to significantly bolster its own support for projects aimed at increasing diversity while also developing stand-alone symposia at minority-serving institutions. The first of these was held last March at Bowie State University in Maryland in conjunction with the spring meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Section; the second will be held in early April in Pomona, California.

In 1985, the Education Committee was formed through the inspiration of Ellen Weaver (emeritus, San Jose State University) to promote the teaching and public awareness of plant biology as an ever-expanding science. Thanks to the efforts of immediate past chair Jane Ellis (Presbyterian College), current chair Erin Dolan (Virginia Tech), and the dynamic support of committee members such as Jeffrey Coker (Elon University), Chad Jordan (North Carolina State University), John Cushman (University of Nevada, Reno), and many others, the Education Committee has been one of the more active of ASPB’s committees. The committee has direct contact with thousands of teachers each year and disseminates free multimedia resources, classroom materials, and even inquiry-based science fair tips for K–12 students. The committee has also contributed to national and international policy discussions on education-related topics and worked to promote the scholarship and application of discipline-based education standards at all levels. In 1993, Board of Trustees member Hans Kende, Michigan State University, proposed that the Society establish a foundation to raise money from corporate and private donors to support worthy activities, such as promoting knowledge about plants in schools and the global community. Presidents Jones and Siedow made it their top priority in 1994, and Jim saw through the 1995 establishment of the ASPB Education Foundation by vote of the full membership.

But the pulse of the Society cannot be measured only through the impacts of just a few of ASPB’s very engaged and active committees and their many enthusiastic members. Our lifeblood is the dedication of members who work to create opportunities for young people and advance our mission. There are so many stellar contributions from so many dedicated members that it’s almost unfair to highlight just a few, but I’ll give you three superb examples of how members have stepped forward to better the Society.

Mark Brodl first encountered ASPB as an undergraduate going to Midwestern Section meetings—an experience that solidified his plans to pursue a PhD in plant biology. He has missed only one annual meeting in 28 years. As a faculty member at Knox College in Illinois, Mark took his own students to the Society’s Midwestern meetings to give talks, and after a few years of bringing three to five students to the meetings, he was secretary/treasurer of the Midwestern Section, starting a rotation that culminated in his service as the Midwestern Section representative to the Executive Committee. That experience led to three terms as ASPB treasurer (2001–2010). What he accomplished for the Society during those years was remarkable. He established the first networking breakfast at the ASPB annual meeting for faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) with the goals of fostering informal interactions and highlighting individual members’ successes in sustaining active research programs at PUIs. He brought forward the Undergraduate Poster Session as a meet-and-greet for undergraduates at the annual meeting, helping in the process to build a pipeline of younger scientists into the world of plant biology research. With Jon Monroe, from James Madison University, Mark promoted the ASPB-SURF program, first as an annual Good Works effort funded by our endowment and then as a permanent part of the operating budget. Mark is now a distinguished professor of biology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and is currently serving ASPB as a member of the Education Foundation Board.

In fact, he continues to contribute in multiple ways. Along with former Women in Plant Biology Committee chair Laura Olsen (University of Michigan), current Board of Trustees member Mary Tierney, ASPB Executive Director Crispin Taylor, and others on our staff, he is organizing our second Laboratory Leadership Workshop. Modeled after recent workshops held by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund—and ASPB’s initial offering in this area in 2007—the workshop’s objective is to provide detailed practical information (and plenty of networking opportunities) to pre-tenure faculty and postdoctorals in the job market to give them a firm foundation for a successful career as a principal investigator.

Wendy Boss considers herself a late bloomer. A trained chemist, she took a three-year hiatus from academia during her husband’s military service before returning with him to Indiana University. Wendy got hooked on plant physiology after reading The Living Plant by Peter Ray and taking Al Ruesink’s course in plant physiology, but she credits the mentoring of Carlos Miller and Bob Togasaki as her major influences. Like Mark, it was her experiences meeting enthusiastic colleagues and students full of new ideas at the Midwestern Section meetings that guided her career choice. That shared enthusiasm and excitement about plant biology is what Wendy continues to strive for through teaching and research at North Carolina State University. With the encouragement from Jim Siedow to become more involved with ASPB at the national level, Wendy was elected to the Executive Committee, where she pioneered international outreach as a major Society effort, writing a proposal to use ASPB Good Works funding to support international workshops. ASPB supported workshops in Argentina, China, and Greece thanks to Wendy’s drive. Wendy describes her greatest reward as seeing former undergraduates at the ASPB meetings presenting their work for the first time and following former lab members as they develop their own careers and present their research.

Mel Oliver first joined ASPP as an assistant professor of biology at New Mexico State University in 1986. He believes strongly that building a career in plant sciences is rooted in increasing his connection with a network of colleagues to stay abreast of developments. For nearly a decade, Mel’s only activity in ASPP was to participate in the annual meetings. In the spring of 1995, he was invited to talk at the annual meeting of the Southern Section of ASPP by Cindy Galloway, who was then vice chair. Cindy encouraged him to run for the upcoming secretary/treasurer position, to which he was elected in 1996. Mel continued on as vice chair, chair, Executive Board member, and finally Southern Section representative to the Executive Committee of ASPB. In 2005, Mel took the position of chair of the Membership Committee because of his long-felt desire to get more input and participation from graduate students and postdoctorals in the governance of the Society. In 2006, he proposed and won a permanent place for the Membership Committee on the Executive Committee, simultaneously establishing inclusion of postdoctoral and graduate student members on the Membership Committee. Mel then worked to establish the Graduate Student Ambassador program and later a Postdoctoral Ambassador program that gives greater voice to early career scientists. These programs serve as the spearhead of our efforts to involve graduate students and postdoctorals in ASPB and to offer them a voice in how the Society positions itself for the future.

Mel’s interests in supporting the professional development of plant scientists and in demonstrating the vital importance of plant biology research in addressing many of the pressing global problems that we face today are not limited to ASPB. In 2009, Mel led ASPB’s efforts to bring together a critical mass of the world’s plant science societies at a meeting that convened in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before ASPB’s annual meeting. The society presidents that were present for the meeting agreed to continue working together, and the Global Plant Council (GPC) was formally established in Montréal last summer. Mel is serving as the GPC’s first executive director, and he is working with the GPC leadership to develop a constitution and bylaws for the organization, to establish its legal identity, and to set up its second meeting, which is planned for Qingdao, China, in late June.

Since Livingston, Harvey, and Shull tipped the balance toward a freestanding society for plant physiology in 1924, our dinners, those hallmarks of independent societies, have undergone an evolution from dinner, to banquet, to full-scale party. Always, though, our Society has prepared a feast of plant biology and a celebration of the vibrancy of our community. What are you waiting for? It is time for you to think about how you can make the most of your membership.

Nick Carpita

¹In a move to be more inclusive of the breadth plant sciences had achieved, the American Society of Plant Phys­iologists, with overwhelming member support, changed its name to the American Society of Plant Biologists in 2001.

References

1. Hanson, J. B. (1989). The History of the American Society of Plant Physiologists. Rockville, MD: American Society of Plant Physiologists.