Message from the DVM Officers

Rick Blob, Chair (chair.dvm@sicb.org); Nicole Danos, Program Officer (dpo.dvm@sicb.org); Vanessa Young, Secretary (secretary.dvm@sicb.org); Lara Ferry, Chair-Elect (chairelect.dvm@sicb.org); Alice Gibb, Program Officer-Elect (dpoelect.dvm@sicb.org); Adrien Arias, SPDAC Representative

Greetings everyone!  It’s a pleasure to reach out as your DVM officers to report on events from the past several months and look ahead to events for SICB 2023 and beyond!

To begin, we’ll re-introduce ourselves:  DVM officers are Rick Blob (Chair), Nicole Danos (Program Officer), Lara Ferry (Chair-Elect), Alice Gibb (Program Officer-Elect), Vanessa Young (Secretary) and Adrien Arias (SPDAC Representative).  Please reach out to any of us with items you would like to have attention from DVM.

Our current group of officers will be in place through the end of the 2023 meeting in Austin. New terms will begin at the end of the meeting, with Lara Ferry starting as Chair, Alice Gibb starting as Program Officer, and Rick Blob moving to the position of Past Chair. Thanks very much to Nicole Danos for her hard work as Program Officer, especially during the challenges of the past years! We’re also excited to welcome our new Secretary-Elect.

Spring 2022 Election Results

Congratulations to Crystal Reynaga on her election to DVM Secretary-Elect!  Crystal will begin her term as Secretary-Elect at the conclusion of the SICB 2023 annual meeting.

Thanks again to our candidates, and to the nominating committee for their efforts.

 

Announcing New DVM Initiatives

One of our key activities since our last newsletter was to survey DVM members on some proposed uses for Divisional discretionary funds. Thanks to the over 100 members who provided feedback for these important decisions about how we can use Divisional resources. The three proposed initiatives all received strong (> 80%) support:

• A new Mentorship Award:

• Contributing funds to support a shared Social Media Representative with DCB:

• Supporting a reimbursement program to defray Open Access costs for authors submitting to the SICB journal Integrative Organismal Biology:

These programs should be fully in place by the Annual meeting in January.  In fact, nominations for the DVM Mentorship Award and applications for OA support are currently being accepted!  You can find more information about both initiatives on the DVM webpage, and below, and consider applying or nominating for these programs this year or in the future!

Deadlines for Mentorship Award nominations and applications for OA Support are midnight, Hawai’i time, on November 10, 2022.

Link for DVM Mentorship Award Nominations: https://forms.gle/WYzqUZzfWrCHYV6x7

Link for OA Support: https://forms.gle/E3LLNRWu44gF2G8C7

SICB 2023 Symposia

As you plan for SICB 2023, be sure to check out the outstanding symposia that DVM will be sponsoring at the meeting in Austin:

• Pathways to adulthood: environmental, developmental, and evolutionary influences on the ontogeny of form and function
• Biology at birth: the role of infancy in providing the foundation for lifetime success
• The role of mechanosensation in robust locomotion
• Micro-scale life, large-scale influencers: functional consequences of small-scale biophysical processes
• Visions for a diverse, inclusive & safe future for field biology
• Sexual diversity and variation

Regional SICB Meetings

Need a SICB fix outside of the national meeting?  Be sure to check out these upcoming regional SICB meetings! See the images above for information on the Southwest (October 22, 2022) and Midwest (April 1, 2023) Regional Meetings. For questions, registration link, and/or to be added to the email list for the Southeast Regional Meeting (November 5, 2022), reach out to the Patek Lab at Duke University.

Want more options closer to home? Consider organizing your own regional meeting! These are usually 1-2 day events with a single session of shorter presentations, but many formats are possible. They’re especially great opportunities for student presentations, and to try out ideas ahead of the annual SICB meeting.

Several regions have run these for many years with great success, and DVM is happy to offer sponsorship for regional meetings, usually up to $500. Please reach out to Rick Blob if you’re thinking about organizing a meeting in your region.

DVM Member Spotlights

We are interested in streamlining the spring and fall newsletters, while also using this communication as a way to highlight our division members, especially early-career individuals.  If you have photos or other features that you would like to submit for consideration in future newsletters, please reach out to Vanessa Young.

DVM Member Photo Feature