Division of Animal Behavior (DAB): 2006 Fall Newsletter

Message from the Chair, Program Officer and Secretary

We're trying the efficient approach this time and condensing everything we have to convey into just a single message from all three of us.

We have a new Chair-elect and Secretary-elect: Tom Hahn will be replacing Scott MacDougall-Shackleton as Chair, and Scott will be replacing Tom as Secretary. Many thanks to Allison Welch for standing for election to the Secretary position, and to Keith Sockman for standing for election to the Chair position. You're both spared serving this time, but it's only a matter of time! It has been some time since we actually had more than one candidate for one of these positions, and we hope that the fact that we actually had two candidates for each post reflects an increasing interest on the part of DAB members in participating more vigorously in division activities. The next election in DAB will be for Program Officer, so be thinking about whether you would be interested in standing for election to that position, or whether you know of someone else you would like to nominate. We will be sure to pester folks further about this as the time approaches.

The annual meeting this January 3-7 in Phoenix looks like it will be outstanding, as usual. Check out the website, and pay particular attention to some of the special activities that are planned. Two particularly timely things that caught our eye are the Evolution Town Meeting regarding the aftermath of the Dover decision on teaching evolution/creationism in public schools, and the Media Workshop on how to create and use a Blog for communicating widely about scientific issues. We have a relative dearth of specifically behavior-related symposia this time, so please do consider planning a symposium yourself for future meetings. The symposia are absolutely central to the mission of the SICB, and DAB has historically played a strong role in fostering high quality symposia. You can get money from the society to help make your symposium happen. You just need to be sufficiently organized to propose it about a year and a half in advance. The deadline for proposing symposia for the 2008 meeting in San Antonio has already passed, so the target now is the 2009 meeting. Deadline for proposing symposia is always in August.

Finally, please attend the DAB business meeting / social, and let one of us know if you're willing to help with judging student talks / posters. We can always use help with that!

Looking forward to seeing you all in Phoenix!

Scott MacDougall-Shackleton (Chair)
Sarah Humfeld (Program Officer)
Tom Hahn (Secretary)

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Link to officer list on DAB page