On the Front Burner...
June 8-12 marks the 26th annual ABLE conference/workshop. If you have
not yet marked your calendars, do so now. In preparation for this year’s
Bowling Green State University venue, the Major Workshops Committee
has solicited, previewed and presented a slate of major workshops. Charlene
Waggoner, our host, is in the last organizational stages of
clarifying titles prior to posting registration forms. Once the registration
materials are posted, count on initiating your travel plans. Hopefully,
the midwest and eastern seaboard will be uncovered from snow enough
by then to allow smooth travel to the great state of Ohio! I look forward
to seeing you there.
The call for mini-workshops has now been posted to the BioLab listserv
and forms are available from our ABLE
website. Consider sharing a novel pedagogical approach or a newly
implemented lab idea. Contributions are highly encouraged as this may
help you secure travel funds from your school and provide participants
with valuable insight for their own programs. Additionally, if you are
a graduate student, post-doctoral fellow, new academic staff, or staff
from a community college, check out the Registration
Waiver form if you are having trouble securing total funding. The
completed form and a letter of support should be sent to Bill
Glider at the University of Nebraska by March 15, 2004.
On the Back Burner and Simmering Nicely...
At the ABLE
meeting last June at UNLV, several motions were addressed and action
items listed.
The ongoing conversation concerning peer review will be a topic of
discussion at our June 2004 General meeting. We will have a breakout
session similar to the one two years ago that solicited input from members
on a variety of topics. This session would solicit ideas about how ABLE
could modify current peer review practices to better conform to member
ideas of their professional peer review criteria. Please refer to Bill
Glider’s Labstracts
piece for more information on this. Your feedback will help us refine
questions for the General Session.
Within the new ABLE
brochure, we now have a membership form. This addition provides
easy access for membership application or renewal in a tasteful, public
promotional brochure. Additionally, ABLE has marked its partnership
with the Bioscience Education Network, BEN, by adding the BEN logo to
the brochure. Many thanks go to Doreen Schroeder, University
of St. Thomas, for this work.
Sarah Deel, Carleton College, is determining the digital
status of our archives. Omni Press has published our proceedings since
Volume 5, Clemson University, 1983. However, the file formats have modernized
many times since that electronic era. Determining the file formats for
all proceedings is the first step in making our archive available to
our membership through our website. Our partnership with BEN depends
on allowing access to this valuable archive through the BEN portal.
Although this work will be tedious short-term, the outcome will be a
unique contribution to undergraduate biology laboratory education, our
hallmark.
To the end of promoting membership in a downturn, ABLE spent more on
promotion of ABLE in the last year than in many years. The ABLE
exhibit at the October annual NABT meeting in Portland, OR was well
received by conference attendees. As we do not have a place on the ABLE
brochure to ask new members how they heard about ABLE, we will track
new memberships this year to determine net increases over past years.
Major increases could possibly be explained by the NABT presence. Additional
considerations for promotion included advertising in the online journal
Bioscience. However, the board consensus was to wait until
next June to advertise. The rationale here was to attempt to determine
membership number changes as a function of the NABT exposure prior to
additional promotions, since there is no mechanism to survey how members
hear about ABLE through the membership brochure handed out at NABT.
Despite our ongoing efforts to augment membership, ABLE is in sound
financial condition (see the mid-year treasurer's
report in this issue). We can afford to do NABT promotions in addition
to advertising. According to Alec Motten, ABLE treasurer,
“The strength of our financial position is such that we can wait
for a delayed payoff … and we will not be devastated if it does
not materialize.” To the end of increasing membership and promoting
ABLE, an ad hoc committee on membership was formed at the UNLV conference.
The effort will entail an online survey to determine why previous members
did not renew. Input from the General Session last year plus the survey
and ongoing conversations will keep the issue at the forefront of our
agenda.
To determine how the 25 years of ABLE Major and Mini Worshop ideas
are implemented in member institutions, Bob Hodson,
University of Delaware, and Todd Nickle, Mount Royal
College, are preparing an online survey. This survey will probably be
the first of two you will receive in the near future. Please take time
to answer the questions requested.
As you can see, there are lots of pots full of ideas simmering and
at various stages of completion. The ongoing conversations with the
various pot stirrers provides me lots of contact with ABLE colleagues.
The aroma is delectable and the outcomes, I am sure, will be most satisfying.
Thanks to all for their efforts.
My best for your semester efforts, and be safe.
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