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Division of Ecology & Evolution (DEE): 2002 Fall Newsletter

In this newsletter:






Message from the Chair Cathy McFadden, Secretary Michael Temkin and Program Officer Brian Helmuth

The DEE Officers hope you all had pleasant and productive summers and are looking forward to another stimulating meeting in Toronto. The SICB Program Officers recently met at the Sheraton in Toronto (on Sept 27-29) to discuss symposia for the Toronto 2003 and New Orleans 2004 meetings. For the upcoming Toronto meeting, DEE is co-sponsoring the symposium "Patterns and Processes in the Evolution of Fishes", organized by Francesco Santini and Gustavo Ybazeta, and the society wide symposium "Selection and Evolution of Performance in Nature", organized by Joel Kingsolver and Ray Huey.  In addition, DEE is the primary sponsor for approximately 50 contributed talks and 50 posters that will be presented in Toronto. For the 2004 New Orleans meeting, DEE is sponsoring a symposium organized by Mike Angilleta entitled, "The Evolution of Thermal Reaction Norms for Growth Rate and Body Size in Ectotherms".   Remember it's not too early to begin thinking about symposia for the 2005 meeting in San Diego. 

Make sure you mark your calendars for the joint DEE/DIZ/AMS social, to be held immediately following the DEE divisional meeting in Toronto on Monday January 6.  At the divisional meeting we will be discussing the following items:

1) Changes to the rules concerning the judging of the Best Student Paper competition. Should students be judged by the division to which they belong (the current policy) or by the division which best fits the topic of their paper or poster?  The outcome of this discussion will not affect the Best Student Paper competition in Toronto (for which we have 28 applicants) but it will affect the policy for the 2004 meeting

Anyone who would be interested in serving as a judge for the best student paper competition in Toronto should contact Mike Temkin (mtemkin@stlawu.edu).

2) Changes to the DEE by-laws concerning the mid-term replacement of officers and the duties of the past-president and past-program officer. At the 2002 Anaheim meeting, divisional officers were charged with reviewing their division's by-laws to determine if a procedure was in place for replacing an officer mid-term. (This review was precipitated by the untimely death of Larry McEdward, which left DIZ without a Program Officer and with no specified procedure for mid-term appointments.) DEE does not have a replacement procedure in its by-laws, and at our divisional meeting in Anaheim we discussed several possible models for handling mid-term replacements (see Minutes of the DEE Business Meeting in the Spring Newsletter). The DEE Executive Committee has since drafted a replacement policy to be voted on at the 2003 Toronto DEE Divisional Meeting (see below).

In addition, while reviewing the DEE by-laws we discovered several inconsistencies in the specification of Officer's duties. While Article III ("Administrative Organization") lists the Past-Chair as a member of the DEE Executive Committee, no duties are assigned to this position in Article IV ("Duties of the Officers"). Conversely, Article IV specifies that "The Past Program Officer shall serve one year as a member of the Executive Committee of the Division", but Past Program Officer is not listed as an Executive Committee member in Article III. The current officers feel that having the Past-Chair and Past Program Officer each serve a year on the Executive Committee is beneficial to the Division as there is otherwise little temporal overlap among incoming and outgoing officers. Having the Past-Chair and Past Program Officer available to assist new officers will help maintain continuity and facilitate information transfer within the Division. The Chair-Elect currently serves a one-year term concurrent with the second year of the Chair's term, and is formally charged to "assume the duties of the Chair whenever that person is unable to act". We suggest that it be specified that the Past-Chair serve a one-year term concurrent with the Chair's first year, and that the duties of this position be the same as those of the Chair-Elect. Past-Chair and Chair-Elect will never serve concurrent terms, but will each be available in alternate years to fulfill the duties of Chair if necessary.

Following are the proposed changes to the by-laws (underlined text) that will be discussed and voted on in Toronto:

Article III. Administrative Organization

Section 1. Officers

The Officers of the Division shall be Chair, Past-Chair, Chair-Elect, Secretary, Program Officer and Past Program Officer. The Chair-Elect shall be elected biennially and shall then automatically become Chair for the two years following his/her tenure as Chair-Elect. Upon completion of his/her term as Chair he/she shall serve as Past-Chair for one year. The Secretary and Program Officer shall be elected triennially and shall hold office for three years, but not to commence in the same year; neither shall be eligible for reelection. If for any reason a divisional office should become vacant before the expiration of the normal term and there is no officer-elect to assume the duties, the Executive Committee, in consultation with the President of the Society, will appoint a replacement for the remainder of the term.

Article IV. Duties of the Officers

Section 2. Chair-Elect and Past-Chair

The Chair-Elect or Past-Chair shall assume the duties of the Chair whenever that person is unable to act.


(The full text of DEE's by-laws is available on the SICB website at: sicb.org/handbook/bylaws.php3#deebylaws)




Link to officer list on DEE page