Vol. 69, No. 1 | Spring 2024
 
 

ABS 2024 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes
Animal Behavior Society Executive Committee Meeting
Feb 6th 3pm – 5pm CDT

Present: Adriana Maldonado Chaparro (Member-at-Large 2), Alex Trillo (Diversity Officer), Beth Jakob (2nd President-Elect), Delia Shelton (Member-at-Large 1), Erica Westerman (Program Officer-Elect), Melissa Hughes (Program Officer), Norman Lee (Secretary), Scott MacDougall-Shackleton (Treasurer), Susan Alberts (Past-President), Susan Margulis (Historian), Swanne Gordon (Member-at-Large 3), Vanessa Ezenwa (President)

Ad hoc Attendees: Jessica Cusick (Communications Committee Co-chair), Nora Prior (Communications Committee Co-chair), Darrell Chambers (General Counsel), Doug Rosenbloom (General Counsel).

Restructuring the Communications Committee
4:00 - 4:30 Communications committee discussion

  • The Communications Committee would like to overcome some challenges related to their efforts including: rebuilding enthusiasm from a burned-out and overworked Team and responding to significant shifts in functionality/impact of social media platforms like Twitter (“X”).
  • Top goal to restructure the organization of the Communication Committee in a way that is sustainable long term. This long-term structure and engagement of the Committee needs to be reasonable (protect members from burn out), transparent (between ABS community, the EC, and the members) and be able to persist within rapid dynamic shifts in social media platforms.
  • Before - high volume constant activity on twitter - would like to switch to an understanding there is no amount of required activity. So that when membership is low, it's not possible with a small number of people. Maybe we don’t have enough people to have a presence on a large number of platforms. Need to have consistent minimum expectations around annual meetings.
  • Transparency - people wondering if ABS will leave twitter. There needs to be transparency about what and why we are doing, and availability of society to address questions. Will need to work with SPLtrak to make mechanisms to submit inquiries.
  • Need to have distributed responsibilities - what are the expectations for leadership in the long term? Does it need to be someone not a grad student? It is a lot of responsibility for grad students. Initially it was run by grad students, with heavy involvement from EC. Now Jess and Nora have brought experience to the position. Should more senior people (faculty, postdoc) be involved in Communications Community leadership?
  • Perhaps leadership should be elected and the terms should be a staggered rotating 3-years period (just like the Presidents of the society).
  • We need to also consider restructuring the compensation structure.
  • There is a need to come up with protocol to deal with how messages and content are posted online. For example, when there was Twitter take-over by pop circles - there was a bit of red tape - steps needed for authorization. Tweets had to be checked by the President before they were posted. In order not to run into this (because the President could have different points of views) - will the Communications Committee develop protocol to be structured in a way that works? Response - in the past, the President confirmed all the tweets. The Communications Committee member would also double-check with 2-3 others on the committee before a tweet was posted.
  • Daily tweets seems like a lot. Can there be a guaranteed weekly or biweekly tweeting activity? Have some consistency but at a lower level.
  • Twitter has changed a lot in the last year - impacted components of the conference. The algorithm now makes it difficult to get actual info to people that you follow. There's no way to deal with this - it might impact our reach. Changes in terms of ways you can post info ahead of time (scheduled tweets). Can't view tweets if you no longer have an account. Want to pull back efforts here and diversify efforts elsewhere (e.g. Instagram).
  • One of the EC members suggested that the Communications Committee could explore different social media options, different models of restructuring, and report back to EC on what works.
  • Another EC member mentioned that the society will be fine if we don’t have society media presence for a few months while we figure out how to run the Communications Committee. How do other societies deal with issues? Take the linked doc and turn it into your proposal - what is your ideal based on your experiences.
  • The Communications Committee Chairs should set up meeting with the Presidents to discuss leadership plans. Emily DuVal volunteered to help the committee work on the proposal.

ABS Participation in NSF BIO LEAPS Project
4:30-4:55: ABS participation in NSF BIO LEAPS project

  • Richelle Tanner, faculty at Chapman University wrote a funded proposal for the “design phase” of a project.
  • The goal of this project is to work towards changing the culture of biology through the culture of professional societies - towards a culture of care.
  • They have interest from 5 societies - Evolution, American Society of Mammalogist, and others.
  • Design phase - two years of project planning to put together activities, ways to evaluate activities, and etc.
  • Now that the design phase grant is funded, Tanner would like to know if ABS can commit to participating.
  • This will require society leadership (PO and EC members):
    • Six virtual meetings, two of which will occur before the 2024 society meeting, the rest to occur between the 2024-25 meetings.
      • Pre-2024 meeting: 1 hr listening session and 1.25 hour workshop.
      • Meetings between 24-25 meetings, 1-1.5 hours
        • 2024 conference debrief
        • Action item brainstorming (2 calls): select individuals based on topic.
        • Logistics planning for 2025 conference evaluation (only conference organizers).
    • Activities at the conference:
      • Early Career Researcher interviews - POs to solicit members to participate in paid focus groups of 20 ECRs (2 year commitment).
      • Membership surveys
      • Booth - host a booth at conference (2K budget per year) for passive data collection.
      • Optional - pilot interventions (workshops, special issues).
    • Deliverables:
      • Developing a strategic inclusion plan based on cultural change goals
      • Standardized evaluation and demographic data collection tools.
    Discussion of issues:
    • There is general support for this project, but have we thought of the budgetary implications that will be incurred by ABS?
    • We have an international society - there may be limitations of using NSF funds to cover expenses from international people.
    • Need to ask Diversity Committee Chair and the Diversity Committee of interest and availability to commit to such a project.
    • When this proposal went in - they had already given a letter of collaboration.
    • In both 2022, 2023 submissions ABS Presidents agreed to support with a letter of collaboration. Some of the activities in the proposal are already things that the Diversity Committee have been working on. It is important to have that communication relatively earlier. Important to bring in people from Diversity Committee earlier on in the discussion before the letter of collaboration was issued.
    • Program Officers are ok with helping this project. They will work with the Diversity Committee to identify conflicts of interest.

    4:55-5:00: 5-minute break

    Safe Behavior Committee Case Recommendation
    5:00-5:20: Safe Behavior Committee (case recommendation and vote)

    In the presence of General Counsel, the Safe Behavior Committee Recommendations on a case (revoking J. Pruitt of the “Outstanding New Investigator Award”) was considered during the EC meeting. A vote was held and it was unanimously agreed that the award should be revoked.

    Details of the discussion protected by Attorney-Client Privilege.

    Budget Discussion

    • Net loss of $78k resulting mostly from having the annual conference in Oregon.
    • The treasurer presented amounts left in the Named Award Funds:
    • These awards were set up as expendable awards (and not as endowed funds)
    • In the past, when funds run out, awards were given from the operating budget. The EC will need to decide if we should continue to give awards even when the balance reaches 0.
    • Can we have these values shown to people so that donor efforts could be allocated differently?
    • Amounts will be part of the Treasurer’s Report at the annual meeting.
    • There was a question about how budget support to the different committees were decided. This year, the Treasurer looked typical amounts given for e.g. supporting workshops ($2k) at the annual meeting, and decided that other workshop budget requests should be in line with this.
    • SIGNAL, WFAB, and TURNER program all put on workshops, with different asks. Some workshops only occur as a one day event during the conference. Other workshops are longer. We need a better approach to structuring how we provide workshop support so that the Treasurer doesn’t have to make funding decisions alone.
    • On the future of named awards - preferably not have the awards based on a named donor. However, if this has to be the case for a donation, we will include a reputation clause to the award. For example, a $10k donation can set up endowed funds of $500 / year for the award.
    • MALs mentioned how it can be difficult to eventually manage and string together a lot of small separate awards for students.
    Meeting Adjourned.

     

 
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