Society of Ethhnobiology
Annual Fall Conference Call Agenda: September 23, 2011, 2:00pm (EST)
Attending: Justin Nolan, Bill Balee, Steve Wolverton, Cissy Fowler, Kitty Emery, Marsha Quinlan, Kris Gremillion, Valentina Savo, Cheryl Takahashi, Denise Glover,Ginny Popper
Absent:Peter Stahl, Dana Lepofsky, John Tuxill, Gene Hunn, Gene Anderson, Abe Lloyd, Jonathan,Alex McAlvay, Deborah Pearsall, Steve Weber, Paul Minnis, Jan Timbrook, Steve Emslie, Nancy Turner, Cecil Brown, Catherine Fowler
President’s report (Justin)
Ongoing initiatives, priorities, and directions of the Society
Everything is going well.
Schedule call for 2012 elections: (Open positions are Cissy’s secretary position, Kitty’s board position [#3, fundraising and promotion])
Nominating Committee for open board positions are thePresident (Justin), Vice-President/President Elect (Bill Balee),Promotions, Outreach and Inreach Coordinator/Intra- and Inter-Community Promotion (Marsha)
Treasurer’s report (Steve)
Financially we’re about in the same place as last year; i.e., no financial growth.
Membership update
SoE had 463 members in 2008. Now is September 2011, we have 460 members now. We’ll probably gain a few more members this year.
Justin suggests we mention Society membership to our students & give them the option of joining and/or attending the conference.
Steve requests help with recruiting members. Steve suggests that membership recruitment not be left up to the Treasurer. Student membership costs $35.00 with an online journal access. Steve will follow up with Dana on how the membership drive is going.
Cheryl & Dana worked together the send out a bulk email. The bulk email went out to all past members just after the conference. Steve says we didn’t see much of a response from that.
We’re moving from being a web-based Society to a paper membership.
Steve is concerned about some things that cost us money that shouldn’t: for example, sending journals out to members who renew late because this incurs a second mailing fee. So Steve suggests implementing a late fee for renewing membership late. Steve is suggesting an automated system for renewal. Among other reasons it would improve is that it would help with the late renewal issue. Cheryl needs to look into automating through the website. Cheryl says she can make an option available to check a box that gives you the option to auto-renew & this is managed through PayPal which would always, when the membership needs to be renewed, send a notice to the member that the charge for renewal is about to be incurred. Steve says the membership system already uses PayPal all the time.
Steve says start thinking about who will be our next Treasurer. We should elect someone in 2013, so they can work for a year with Steve before his term is up in 2014.
Steve says the Society doesn’t charge for Ethnobiology Letters (EBL) because it is open access. We are paying students to help with us with publishing Ethnobiology Letters. We are considering instituting page charges for publishing EBL & maybe have a different rate for members and for non-members. Bill suggests charging non-members to begin with and not members. Most/All of open access journals do this. We want non-members to become members: criterion needs to be that one of the authors on every submission needs to be a member.
Bill asks if JEB is catalogued through BioOne & the answer is ‘yes’.
Heather is weary of dissuading quality papers from being submitted & Kris supports that weariness.
Steve comments that he appreciates Kitty’s strategic plan because it helps us anticipate budgetary needs.
Secretary’s report (Cissy)
We need to develop advertising for EBL, conference, Contributions, Ethnobiology textbook, etc.
Bill suggests posting ethnobiology-related job advertisements of the SoE website. Kitty suggests posting them in the News section of the website.
Journal of Ethnobiology: Editors’ Report (Ginny, Heather)
A new Copy Editor has been hired. She has made some improvements. Justin, Bill, Cissy, etc. say the journal looks great.
Ginny and Heather likes the horse positioned to the left of “Journal of Ethnobiology.” The Board agreed with Ginny & Heather and they now plan to make the change on the cover.
Special Issues: Asking Guest Editors to put together special issue is asking them to do a lot of work. So, instead, they will ask people to be facilitators who will get authors together and then the Editors will manage the peer reviews, copy editing, etc. They want to post a Call for Special Issues with a list of some topics on the website. Cheryl asks where on the website? Heather asks it to be located on homepage. Bill and Justin and Heather determine that it would be better to personally invite people than advertise the possibility of special issues on the website. Justin and Heather will collaborate on recruiting a Guest Editor on Food Security/Food Sovereignty. Someone/Kitty suggests Heather open a discussion forum on the website where she could post a list of topics and we could discuss it and add names associated with the topics.
Ethnobiology Letters (Steve, Cissy)
We’ve published 5-6 articles and 5-6 book reviews. We have an Editorial Board. All Editorial Board members should be SoE members – for EBL & JEB.
Steve asks everyone to recommend obscure but important articles
Bill suggests we try to get the EBL articles indexed in a database e.g., ISI & we need a regular publication schedule. Bill compares us to Diversity. Bill suggests that all of us on the Board cite our own publications.
Steve encourages everyone to contribute theoretical pieces to EBL.
Website update (Kitty, Jonathan, Cheryl)
Strategic Plan (Kitty)
Photo contest (Jonathan, Kitty)
Verbiage needs editing on homepage, regarding publications (Steve)
Prospect of coordinating mentorships between members/scholars via website (Kitty)
Consideration of Gail Wagner’s request to advertise SEB mentorship program (Justin)
Video feature updates (John Tuxill). This is tabled because John is absent from the call.
Ethnobiology textbook (Justin, Dana)
Justin will distribute textbooks. Marsha suggests sending them to tribal colleges. Bill suggests distributing to other countries. Cissy suggests sending marketing ads to museums. Cissy will send photo & copy to ISE web coordinator& SEB website & other organizations. Kitty asks that we be sure to link to our mentorship information.
Annual Conference (Denise)
2012 Conference update (Denise)
SoE meets in Denver in April (11th-14th) 2012 at the Botanical Gardens. Denise negotiated good deals on hotels with shuttle services to the gardens. Field trips are in development. The biggest challenge is the two people heading local committee (Trish Flaster & Don Hieslik) are not connected directly to the University so it’s challenging getting students involved. The Garden has a great volunteer culture so they will be available to help out. Bill Balee recommends asking Darna Dufour – she might be interested in helping out. Dana has reached out to Museum of Natural History. Justin will reach out to Michelle Sauder at UC Boulder to see if she can help recruit local support. Bill says he might miss the meeting because he’ll be in Malaysia doing fieldwork and is returning on the 9th, so getting to Denver will be difficult.
2013 Conference venues (Steve, Justin)
Steve has offered to do the 2013 conference in Denton, TX. Steve is concerned because buildings are dispersed and hotels are far away. Steve has put a committee together. Everyone supports Steve’s proposal to host the conference in Denton so he’s going to move forward with the plans.
European Ethnobiologists Outreach Report (Valentina)
Valentina went to the European Ethnobiologists meeting last week in Amalfi. Next meeting will be in Albania and she will try to involve Pieroni. Valentina is trying to encourage friends in other Societies and her students to be involved. Valentina invites us to the next meeting in Albania.
Dana’s Report via Email
Create a note saying what is new and is happening and is planned. Dana suggests making a big, big splash of the textbook. Give people a heads up about the forthcoming Contributions Series (give titles....). Remind people about EBL.
Make an Action Item: Send Regular Updates to SoE Membership. First mailout should include a call for nominations for open Board seats, a notice about the Denver meeting, what we've been up to, EBL advertisement, Ethnobiology textbook advertisement, etc. Justin & Cissy will work on this action item.
Dana recommends posting an advertisement for the Ethnobiology textbook on the SoE website. Cissy & Cheryl completed this item.
Membership Updates (Dana…via email)
Contributions in Ethnobiology (Marsha)
This is tabled because we ran out of time.
Social Networking (Steve, and Chelsea, Dana’s student).
Tabled due to lack of time.
Board member reports
Action item updates from each Board member. This item is tabled because we ran out of time. Cissy asks callers to send updates on their progress to her and she’ll compile it to be able to keep track of what we’ve accomplished.
Other “discussion items”
Peter Stahl’s Report via Email
Peter recommends we conduct a membership survey to gauge the feasibility of increased non-membership access to journal publications. Cissy says in an email to everyone after the conference call: Great idea behind your survey proposal. Fortunately, pre-2005 back issues of the journal are available to non-members on the Society's website ( Pre-2005 digitized copies are also accessible through the Society's archives at the University of North Texas library. The archives also include a set of hardcopies up to the most recent issue that anyone can read at the library. BioOne owns control of the most recent issues of the Journal of Ethnobiology, so we are prohibited by their rules, from what I understand, from making the most recent content available anywhere else. The Society also published Ethnobiology Letters which is all online and completely free for members and non-members.
Action Items
Action Item: All Board members will send updates to Cissy on their progress with the Action Items assigned to them during the May 2011 Board meeting.
Action Item: Justin, Bill, and Marsha (the Nominations Committee) will compose an email and ask Cheryl to send out a call for nominations for the open board positions to the general membership.
Action Item: Justin will distribute copies of the Ethnobiology textbook to relevant outlets (e.g., tribal colleges, related professional societies).
Action Item: Justin, Cissy, et al. will circulate an announcement for the Distinguished Ethnobiologist Award, the Undergraduate Ethnobiologist Award, and other awards among General Membership.
Action Item: Cissy will send a photo & copy of the new Ethnobiology textbook to the International Society of Ethnobiology web coordinatorthe Society of Economic Botany webmaster & other organizations.