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ASPT Newsletter
Electronic Issues of the ASPT Newsletter
Most Recent Issue: Volume 22(2), December 2008 — pdf
CURRENT NEWS
The Most Recent News from ASPT
Systematic Botany Editorial Staff Changes for 2009 [17 December 2008]
ASPT Travel Grants for Students [17 December 2008]
Letter from the Program Director [17 December 2008]
In Memoriam [23 July 08]
People [22 September 08]
Job Opportunities [7 November 08]
Fellowships, Internships, Post-Docs [17 December 08]
Special Exhibits [No Entries]
News from Herbaria and Collections [28 August 08]
Organizations [No entries]
Institutions [No entries]
News from other Societies [No entries]
Funding and Award Opportunities [21 October 08]
Symposia and Meetings [25 August 08]
New Serials and News about Serials [No entries]
Special Courses [7 November 08]
New Books Received by ASPT [9 July 08]
Electronically Distributed Products [No entries]
New Web Sites [7 February 08]
Services Available and Commercial Products [No entries]
ASPT NEWS
Systematic Botany Editorial Staff Changes for 2009
We are pleased to announce the following change to the Editorial Board of Systematic Botany.
Managing Editor. Jim Smith will begin serving as the new Managing Editor in 2009. We are very grateful to Jim for his willingness to serve Systematic Botany and ASPT in this important position. Leigh Johnson has done an exceptional job as Managing Editor for the past two years. We thank Leigh for his service to ASPT.
ASPT Travel Grants for Students
In July, the ASPT Council approved a new grant program to promote graduate and undergraduate student attendance and participation at our annual meetings. This new program grew out of the excellent recommendations of the 2007—2008 ad hoc committee on enhancing graduate student participation in ASPT and will provide funding ($300) toward travel or meeting expenses for up to 20 student ASPT members who are pursuing graduate study in plant systematics or (for undergraduates) are greatly interested in the area. Recipients also will obtain a free ticket to the ASPT annual banquet.
Recipients will be selected using a lottery, with at least 14 grants going to students who will be presenting papers or posters and up to 6 to students who will not be giving presentations. The new ad hoc ASPT Membership Committee will be administering this new grant program, which will be formally announced soon (e.g., on the ASPT website) in time for Botany 2009 registration. Please encourage eligible students who are in need of funding to attend Botany 2009 to apply for a travel grant and, if you are one of those students, please apply! Thanks to the members of the membership committee and the awards and honor’s committee for their help in instituting this new opportunity for our student members.—Bruce Baldwin, ASPT President
Letter from the Program Director
Dear Fellow ASPT and BSA Systematics Section Members,
I am writing with news about the upcoming Botany & Mycology 2009 conference, which will be at Snowbird, Utah, July 25-29, 2009. The conference web site is now online and is being updated as information on the meeting comes in: http://www.2009.botanyconference.org/. The web site should be open for registration in early January.
In this note I have important information for students regarding participation in field trips. In addition I have information about our plans for an auction at the conference. And finally, if you are interested, I have some responses to comments that we received following the Botany 2008 conference.
1. Attention Students! In 2007 the BSA Systematics Section decided that we want to enhance support for student participation in our annual conference- specifically participation in field trips, because we believe these are great opportunities to get to know other botanists. To do this we established a modest dues fee for the Section. The 2009 conference will be the first year to use these funds to help students participate in field trips. We will provide up to $50 to 40 student members of the Section to participate in one of the Botany & Mycology 2009 field trips.
Procedure: send me an email message after you register for the field trip (as part of your conference registration). I will need your name, address, and field trip title, and I will arrange for you to be reimbursed for $50 (or the cost of the trip if it is less than $50). As of yet we do not have a way to discount your registration fee so reimbursement is necessary.
Important! You must be a member of BSA Systematics Section to receive this funding since the funds are coming from the Section. Student membership in BSA is quite reasonable. If you are not a member you can join now for 2009.
2. BSA Systematics Section membership- when you renew your membership in BSA please be sure you are a member of Systematics Section. The Systematics Section is using income from dues to enhance student participation in our annual conference (#1 above) so it is especially important that we all support this effort through the modest dues payment for the Section. Please also renew your membership in ASPT!
3. Botany & Mycology 2009. I am working with conference organizer Johanne Stogran and the other program directors, including BSA Program Director David Spooner, on plans for next year’s conference. Johanne and the Snowbird Conference Center are doing a variety of things to make the meeting as affordable as possible (e.g., housing options, food). There will be more details on this on the conference web site as Johanne has them.
The scenery at Snowbird is magnificent and there will be numerous field trip opportunities, including early morning plant walks (special thanks to our local representative Lynn Bohs and her students for organizing these walks).
Auction- ASPT will hold its auction this year, but it will be on Wednesday evening during the all society banquet. This is because Mycological Society of America will be meeting with us, and they also do an auction. The usual day for their banquet is Wednesday so we have decided to hold a joint auction on Wednesday evening. ASPT Council as well as BSA and MSA Councils are also supportive of this idea, as are the auctioneers for the two societies. We will handle donations of auction items the same as in previous auctions, and proceeds will be distributed based on the source of the items (ASPT donation or MSA donation). It should be an enjoyable evening, and profitable too if participants bid high and often! More details on the auction will follow later. For now please think about auction items that will be interesting, humorous, or special in some other way that will make them desirable. Think outside the book!
4. I recently had the opportunity to read through comments that Botany 2008 participants submitted and I thought that I should respond to some of them in this message for those who are interested.
Program conflicts- The program chairs will be implementing some new procedures to minimize conflicts among concurrent sessions. Complete avoidance of conflicts is impossible, but we will work hard to minimize them. We also must resist requests for last minute program changes once all pieces of the program puzzle are assembled. This is how many of the conflicts arise. The first step in our process is to distribute the symposia across the three days of the program, then fill in with contributed paper sessions. Sessions on similar topics are merged when possible or scheduled consecutively. Sessions that might draw similar audiences are noted to avoid conflict. We also try to avoid individual conflicts when they are noted by the submitting author, although this can be very challenging at times!
ASPT banquet- we underestimated the number of people who would attend the ASPT banquet, and as a result we settled on a venue with a 200 person maximum capacity. By the time we realized we would sell out it was too late to change the venue. The silver lining in this is that we have record numbers of people who want to join us for our banquet. Lessons learned!
Reduce number of concurrent sessions?- Several people suggested we reduce the number of concurrent sessions because there are too many good papers to see. The only way to accomplish this is to extend the meeting into Thursday, or limit the number of abstract submissions, or judge abstracts and reject the weakest ones. While some people have advocated a limit of one paper per person, I am aware of no support for either of the other two options. Establishing a limit is an option, but it is something that needs to be discussed broadly among all participating societies.
Cancellations and no-shows- This was a significant problem in Vancouver. We are trying to develop mechanisms to minimize this without resorting to an abstract submission fee. Some of the problem was caused by several attendees not being able to obtain a visa for travel to Canada, but this was not the only cause. A number of the cancellations came from people who are not members of one of our participating societies, so we have decided to require payment of the conference registration fee by anyone submitting an abstract who is not a member of one of the participating societies. We recognize that sometimes things happen and in a large conference like ours there will inevitably be some people who are not able to attend for one reason or another. In these cases it is important to communicate the cancellation to the conference office as soon as possible. The inconvenience of cancellations was exacerbated in some sessions when the moderator moved up talks to fill in the gap caused by a cancellation. While I always instruct systematics session moderators to never do this, it did happen in some other sections. In future we will be certain that all moderators are briefed on proper procedures.
Lecture room size- There were several comments about sizes of lecture rooms and mismatch with size of the audience. I have found this to be the most difficult part of the job. Program directors and symposium organizers must estimate the size of the audience for each session. But audience size depends in part on what the concurrent session topics are. This can be very difficult but we try to learn from the mistakes and do better next time.
Conference venue- the greatest number of comments focused on the type of venue that people prefer for the annual meeting. Quite a few expressed pleasure at being on a university campus, but many others were not happy with the need to walk between buildings to change sessions (including several who also expressed pleasure at being on campus). Some people expressed preference for convention centers with closely grouped meeting rooms. Clearly it is not possible to satisfy everyone! The only solution to this is to select a mix of different venues so over time everyone is happy at least some of the time! One thing to keep in mind with university campuses is that our conference is not the only thing that is happening on campus. Classes, faculty activities, and camps also have claims on spaces, and conferences usually get the spaces that are left over. This often means walking between buildings to change sessions.
You can help in venue selection by sending me any suggestions you have for possible sites. What does it take to accommodate our meetings? We need 15-18 lecture rooms with a capacity range of 50-200 plus a large space for the plenary on Sunday evening that can accommodate approx 1200. We need a space for approx. 100 poster boards and 20-30 exhibitors, which amounts to about 30,000 sq ft. Ideally there will be a variety of housing options (combination of hotels, dorms, etc.) within walking distance, and places to eat. If you have an idea, please send it to me and I will be sure it is considered.
There were many other comments from Botany 2008 but I do not have time to answer all of them, and I am sure you do not want to read them all either! We do read these comments and try to act on them wherever possible. —Patrick Herendeen (pherendeen@chicagobotanic.org), ASPT and BSA Systematics Section Program Director, Chicago Botanic Garden
Additions and corrections to newsletter materials can be sent to Eric H. Roalson.