Message from the DVM Officers

Rick Blob, Chair (chair.dvm@sicb.org); Nicole Danos, Program Officer (dpo.dvm@sicb.org); Angela Horner, Secretary (secretary.dvm@sicb.org); Lara Ferry, Chair-elect (chairelect.dvm@sicb.org); Alice Gibb, Program Officer-elect (dpoelect.dvm@sicb.org); Vanessa Young, Secretary-elect (secretaryelect.dvm@sicb.org)

Our in-person meeting in Phoenix, AZ

Hello everyone! We hope you have been able to stay safe and well. It is exciting to look forward to our upcoming national meeting in Phoenix, and hope many of us will be able to see each other there in January. The Program Officers of DVM and DCB, Nicole Danos and Matt McHenry, recently sorted through the 339 abstracts of poster and oral presentations submitted to our divisions. Of those, 162 individuals agreed to share their presentations with SICB+ making them accessible to potentially a much larger audience. Our Best Student Presentation sessions will be running at the meeting, but will also have participants whose presentations were submitted exclusively through SICB+. This arrangement allowed us to maintain a special focus on the Davis and Liem Awards at the in-person meeting, but to be inclusive toward participants who could not attend in person. This means that we will not announce winners at the in-person meeting, but gives extra motivation to check out the SICB+ presentations!  A worthy reminder to everyone is that if you selected “in person/SICB+” at abstract submission that means that you have committed to be in person and also to make your material available to SICB+.

We are sponsoring several exciting symposia on a diversity of topics, from “Best practices for bioinspired design education, research and product development”  to “Morphology and evolution of female copulatory morphology in amniotes”. However, we had a small number of symposia proposal submissions for 2023. If you have an idea for a symposium proposal, we encourage you to reach out to DVM Program Officer, Nicole Danos (dpo.dvm@sicb.org). It is an exceptional opportunity to bring together researchers from a diversity of backgrounds and to publish a collection of papers on the state of the art knowledge for a topic that interests you.

In Phoenix a full slate of events will be running, including our Divisional social coordinated with DCB. We will hold it onsite this year, but plans are still taking shape so feel free to contact your officers if you have suggestions. Society leadership is discussing the best ways to address safety concerns regarding COVID-19 for the in-person meeting, and we will be sure to follow their guidance and appropriate health and safety recommendations. These plans will be distributed as they are developed, so that we are all informed about the precautions that will be expected.

Division Elections

Congratulations and thanks to Lara Ferry as the incoming Chair-elect, and Alice Gibb as the incoming Program Officer-elect. We appreciate the participation of everyone who stood as candidates and who voted in the Spring 2021 election. Additional thanks to everyone who voted in our Fall elections addressing revisions to our Division Bylaws–which passed! Updated divisional bylaws are available on the DVM website.

We have another Divisional Officer election on the horizon for Spring 2022, when we must vote for a new Secretary-elect. Many thanks to Susan Williams (willias7@ohio.edu), Andrew Clark (clarkaj@cofc.edu), and Sharlene Santana (ssantana@uw.edu), who have agreed to serve as our nominating committee. Please contact them with ideas for nominees, and we encourage you to consider self-nominating if you are interested in serving. We are especially eager to have a slate of nominees that reflects the full diversity of our division.

Regional DVM meetings

If January is too long to wait for the SICB you want and need, there may be a regional meeting near you! As of this writing, we have confirmed that the Southwest Organismal Biology (SWOB) meeting occurred on October 23. This meeting was FREE and coordinated by Patricia Lopes and Douglas Fudge at Chapman University. The Southeast regional SICB meeting will be held on November 6th; meeting coordinated by David Hu and Andrew Schulz through Georgia Tech and Zoo Atlanta. All are sure to be exciting events. DVM can offer some support to help sponsor regional meetings, so please reach out to your divisional officers if you are thinking of organizing one. If your region did not feature a local meeting this year, it is never too soon to start planning next year’s! These regional meetings are a great venue for feedback on ideas, and a fantastic opportunity to introduce SICB to new colleagues and students. 

Best wishes to all of you for a safe and productive fall!