| Ballots for the AIBS Board elections have been mailed; members can also vote online at www.aibs.org/vote.
At the end of 2007, the following positions become vacant on the 13-person AIBS Board of Directors for individual members to vote on (a) president-elect, (b) secretary, and (c) two board members at large. (Board elections by the AIBS Council of Member Societies and Organizations are also under way through a separate online ballot.) All terms start January 2008. The president-elect serves a one-year term and automatically succeeds to a one-year term as president, then a one-year term as immediate past-president. Board members serve a three-year term, as does the secretary.
To cast your vote, please go to the online ballot at www.aibs.org/vote and sign in with your last name and six-digit AIBS membership number (as it appears on your AIBS membership card and BioScience mailing label; for assistance, contact AIBS at admin@aibs.org, 703-790-1745, or 800-992-2427). A paper ballot was mailed to all members; if you prefer to use that ballot, please complete it and mail it to AIBS. The polls close on 9 November 2007.
AIBS thanks all of the candidates for their dedication and willingness to run for these voluntary positions. Biographical sketches and election statements are presented below.
Candidates for President-Elect
The two candidates are listed alphabetically; vote for one.
May Berenbaum
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1953, May Berenbaum graduated with a degree in biology from Yale University in 1975 and received a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University in 1980. Since August 1980, she has been on the faculty of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has served as head since 1992. She is interested in interactions between phytophagous insects and their host plants and the function of these interactions in the organization and structure of natural communities. On the physiological level, she investigates mechanisms of toxicity of plant chemicals as well as molecular and biochemical adaptations of insects to these toxins; on the ecological level, she examines patterns of insect host plant use as a function of the distribution and interaction of plant chemicals. In addition, she is concerned with the practical application of ecological and evolutionary principles and has examined impacts of genetic engineering, global climate change, and invasive species on natural and agricultural ecosystems. In recognition of her work, Berenbaum has received the George Mercer Award and the Robert MacArthur Award from the Ecological Society of America and the Founder’s Award from the Entomological Society of America. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 and is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.
In addition to her research, Berenbaum is devoted to teaching and fostering scientific literacy. She has written many magazine articles, as well as four books, about insects for the general public. She has had public speaking engagements at over 100 schools, service organizations, museums, science and nature centers, and special interest organizations and has been interviewed by media hundreds of times about insect-related news stories. She also founded the UIUC Insect Fear Film Festival, a celebration of Hollywood’s misperceptions of insect biology, an outreach activity now entering its 25th year. In recognition of her efforts in teaching and outreach, she has been granted the Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists in 1999 and the Entomological Society of America Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2006.
Recent service to her profession includes membership on the editorial boards of four journals and terms on the National Academy of Sciences Council and Governing Board, the National Research Council Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Creationism, and the Advisory Board of the Koshland Museum of the National Academy of Sciences. She has chaired two National Research Council study committees, including most recently the Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America. At present she is on the Board of Directors of the Xerces Society for the Preservation of Endangered Invertebrates and the Board of Directors of Conservation through Poverty Alleviation International (wild silk project).
Berenbaum’s statement: The year 2007 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The biological sciences have changed substantially since its founding; spectacular advances have presented new opportunities to the community of biological scientists. The rise of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and computational biology has provided tools for investigating biological phenomena with hitherto unimaginable precision. At the same time and on an entirely different scale, globalization of trade and information technology has created new challenges to our community; among the most conspicuous are global climate change, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, invasive species, bioterrorism, and accelerating losses in biodiversity. The exponential growth of the life sciences has resulted in an explosion of literature, a proliferation of programs, and a tremendous expansion of the field, blurring disciplinary boundaries and affecting the development of allied physical and mathematical sciences. One perhaps inevitable consequence of this remarkable expansion has been a balkanization of the life sciences—progressive evolution of more specialized units that at times, due to perceived competition for funds, students, or attention, may be hostile to one another. The great strength of AIBS is that it can summon the disparate life sciences together again for greater impact and authority. Due to the comprehensive nature of its aggregate membership, AIBS is best equipped of all biological science organizations to advocate for the life sciences as a whole, provide guidance for their advancement, and rally to meet the challenges of the 21st century global community.
Chief among the missions of AIBS is improving informal bioscience education, aimed at both providing a sound foundation of knowledge and communicating cutting edge developments to a general audience. The need for outreach and public engagement has, I believe, reached a critical juncture. Although I am completely enthusiastic about the upcoming Year of Public Understanding of Science, in 2009, at the same time I’m dismayed that there is a need for such a special, designated “year.” Digital communication of all sorts has made virtually every kind of scientific information available to the general public to an unprecedented extent. Innovations in open access publishing have made elements of the primary scientific literature universally accessible online; websites, podcasts, blogs, cable shows, and videos complement the more traditional radio, magazine and book sources of scientific information for the general public. Every year in theory should further public understanding of science, without any assistance from AIBS or any other science organization. Unfortunately, the increased accessibility of information through the Internet and in other new (and even traditional) media has been accompanied with a veritable explosion of misinformation, pseudoscience, and at times inflammatory rhetoric. Outreach efforts by scientists were in the not-too-distant past generally regarded as déclassé or undignified or the responsibility of individuals incapable of doing anything else in science. The bioscience community can no longer afford such attitudes; the entire science enterprise in the United States depends on the good will and support of the general public, and that support is contingent upon a clear understanding and appreciation of the value of science to public welfare. AIBS must lead by example in this enterprise.
Insuring accurate and comprehensible communication of biological science is also essential in fulfilling the AIBS mission of advancing biological research in service to society and in promoting informed decision-making by policy-makers on issues relating to biological science. The complexities of interacting living systems have made science policy-making more difficult; access to objective information to inform policy is thus critical at all levels of government. American competitiveness in life sciences worldwide is at risk, in part because policy decisions at times have been unduly influenced by politics rather than sound science. AIBS has both a responsibility and an opportunity to contribute an articulate, rational, and objective voice to national and international discussions. Complex problems often require complex solutions and AIBS should contribute to promoting multidisciplinary systems approaches to addressing these problems. At the same time, the history of the biosciences, including many of its most spectacular recent advances, owes a great deal to investigator-driven basic research; in the midst of the fervor for developing new team-based multi-institution collective efforts, the importance of curiosity-motivated individual investigators should be recognized and nurtured, to insure a creative, competitive future.
Finally (but no less importantly), I hope AIBS can insure the future of biosciences in the United States by articulating the fascination of the natural world and the adventure, excitement, and rewards of bioscience research to all facets of American society. Attracting and helping to train the next generation of biologists, by reinvigorating and enhancing K–12 education and broadening impacts in college and beyond, are the surest ways to brighten prospects for everyone’s future. It’s my fervent hope that the relevance of AIBS will continue to increase over the next 60 years.
Deborah E. Goldberg
Deborah E. Goldberg is the Elzada U. Clover Collegiate Professor and chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan (UM). Her research explores the processes that control the structure and function of ecological communities over a variety of spatial and temporal scales, and how these processes are affected by changes in climate, nitrogen enrichment, and by invasion of exotic species. Her work includes syntheses of diverse aspects of species interactions and their contribution to community dynamics. She collaborates broadly both within ecology and across disciplines, including projects with hydrologists, remote sensing specialists, and molecular epidemiologists, and has conducted fieldwork in deserts, wetlands, and forests.
Goldberg has also held appointments as a visiting faculty member at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of New Mexico, Ben Gurion University, and Charles University in Prague. She has served or is serving on the editorial boards of Ecology and Ecological Monographs; American Naturalist; Journal of Vegetation Science; Conservation Ecology; American Midland Naturalist; Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics; and Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution; she is also on the Advisory Council of the International Association of Vegetation Science and the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. She has served as chair or member of numerous committees for the Ecological Society of America and the American Society of Naturalists, as well as for the University of Michigan, where she was on the Steering Committee for the UM theme semester “Explore Evolution.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Goldberg received her BA from Barnard College in 1975, and her PhD from the University of Arizona in 1980. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Kellogg Biological Station of Michigan State University from 1980 to 1983, and has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan since 1983.
Goldberg’s statement: Perhaps it is now pedestrian to note that the 21st century is the century of the life sciences, or what we used to call biosciences. Yet in the public imagination, Life Sciences seems to have taken on a far more narrow meaning, “how will biotech allow me to live forever.” That is, the traditions that emerged from Wallace and Darwin and Mendel and Watson and Franklin and Carson and McClintock, to name a few, have been collapsed in the public mind into the narrow category of “biomedical.” It is imperative that we reinsert bioscience, with its original inclusive intent, into the discourse.
In this context, I would argue that we have now entered the century of the integrative life sciences or, as AIBS has long had it, the biosciences. Scientists increasingly understand the complexity of feedbacks between the biosphere and all aspects of human society and the global environment. This complexity means we must ultimately view all levels of organization, from molecules and genes to organisms and ecosystems, as interacting with an ever-changing environment that includes other organisms, rather than as isolated in time or space. Such a dynamic and interactive perspective is essential not only for understanding the world around us, but for meeting the societal challenges in health, energy, food production, and natural resources that are the result of our gross mismanagement of the environment.
Given this framework, AIBS has the unique responsibility to put forward a coherent and compelling message of the importance of this organismal and environmental focus of the biosciences through formal education, outreach, new research initiatives, and policy development. We have all bemoaned the declining state of scientific literacy in the United States and this declining state is undoubtedly connected with the complacency that has met the many government attempts to discredit or ignore scientific consensus in recent years. The upcoming Year of Public Understanding of Science in 2009 is a tremendous opportunity to do something about these related dangers, with some recent signals suggesting cause for optimism. We should be capitalizing on the remarkable sea change in public, corporate, and political attitudes towards the reality of global climate change over the last year to expand the dialogue between environmental and organismal biologists and the public. Similarly, the consequences of invasive species and biodiversity loss for ecological services are now often major items in the popular press. The move towards biofuels, with all their promise yet potential problems, has already had major impacts on world economies, with the price of tortillas in Mexico reflecting the speculations of corn farmers in Iowa. If AIBS does not take the lead on educating the current and future generations on these topics, who will?
If elected president of AIBS, I would focus my efforts on two particular challenges in education and research in the biosciences:
(1) Research in science pedagogy has made enormous advances in recent years, with expanded federal funding and many agencies and nonprofit groups involved. Indeed, AIBS has been the center of outstanding efforts to develop and distribute effective curricula and teaching materials for biology, including initiating the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study and coordination with the National Association of Biology Teachers. However, communicating what works and doesn’t work to those “in the trenches” is still an enormous challenge. We need new and creative approaches for dissemination and communication to greatly expand use of successful strategies and reduce time spent in local reinvention.
(2) Diversifying the work force in biology is both a moral imperative and a necessity to develop the next generations of researchers and educators in the biosciences. AIBS has several projects ongoing, including a coalition to disseminate ideas about what works and doesn’t in increasing diversity in student and professional populations, but again, the communication of effective strategies must be broadened to have maximum impact. If we are to solve the major problems we face in the biosciences today, we must take advantage of all the talent available to us, and not restrict ourselves to dip into the same pool from which our professionals have emerged since the nineteenth century.
Candidates for Secretary
The two candidates are listed alphabetically below; vote for one.
John R. Jungck
John R. Jungck is the Mead Chair of the Sciences, professor of biology, and chair of the Science Division at Beloit College. He specializes in mathematical molecular evolution and bioinformatics, history and philosophy of biology, and science education reform. In 1986, he cofounded the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, a national consortium of college and university biology educators devoted to curricular reform across the nation. It promotes quantitative, open-ended problem solving, collaborative learning, peer review, research, and civic engagement and social responsibility. He teaches courses in evolution, genetics, cellular and developmental biology, bioinformatics, mathematical biology, finite mathematics, and the history and philosophy of biology, as well as liberal arts courses team-taught with a poet, such as East/West; Gödel, Escher, Bach; Two Cultures/Four Epochs; and Victorian Studies. He has also held many editorial positions at the BioQUEST Library, Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, American Biology Teacher, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, BioScience, and Journal of Computers in College Mathematics and Science Teaching, and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online, Numeracy, BioSystems: Journal of Molecular, Cellular and Behavioral Origins and Evolution, American Journal of Undergraduate Research, and Cell Biology (Life Science) Education. He is the chair of the National Academies’ US National Committee to the International Union of Biological Sciences, on the council of AAAS, a member of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Biological Sciences, chair of the Education Committee of the Society for Mathematical Biology, Vice President of the Commission on Biological Education of the International Union of Biological Sciences, on the Governing Board of the National Numeracy Network, and chair of the Awards Committee of AIBS. He formerly served as president of the Association of College and University Biology Educators (www.ACUBE.org). He served on two National Research Council committees: the Board on Science Education and the Information Technology committee. He has received significant grant support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Education, the Annenberg Fund/Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and numerous private foundations. His awards include the 2004 AIBS Education Award, an honorary doctorate from the University of Minnesota, two EDUCOM awards for software and curricula, a National Science Teachers Association O’Haus Award for Outstanding Innovations in College Science Teaching, and Teacher of the Year at Beloit College. He has traveled to more than forty countries and presented professionally at many of them. He serves on boards in both New Zealand and Thailand. He is a Fulbright Scholar (Thailand), a Mina Shaughnessy Scholar, a fellow of the National Institute of Science Education, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jungck’s statement: I first presented at an AIBS annual meeting in 1967, as part of a panel on the future of American undergraduate education, and cosponsored by the then Commission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences (CUEBS) and chaired by Ed Kormondy. AIBS became the home of CUEBS and, later, of CELS (the Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences), while I served on its executive board. While much has changed in these past forty years, several things remain the same: first, AIBS still is one of the major voices standing behind the need for reform of teaching and learning in the biological sciences; second, AIBS has maintained a consistent policy of promoting the participation, recruitment, retention, and advancement of minorities and other historically underrepresented groups; and, third, AIBS has been a significant partner in establishing federal policies on environmental and health issues. These three aspects of AIBS attracted me to AIBS and have kept me involved in projects associated with these agendas ever since. Unfortunately, each of these issues is as pressing today as it was then.
I have been delighted that AIBS is currently involved with two national initiatives: NESCent (the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University) and NEON (the National Ecological Observatory Network). I am chair of the education initiative at NESCent entitled the SELECTION Working Group; we are dedicated to the production of evolution education materials that stress the benefits of understanding and applying evolutionary science to everyday societal problems: resistance to cancer chemotherapy, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, etc.; design of vaccines and pharmaceuticals (especially for emerging infectious diseases and pandemic diseases of people in developing countries); strategies for biocontrol of invasive species; breeding programs for maintaining endangered species; phylogenetics in forensics; development of engineering designs by Darwinian programming and/or genetic algorithms; and the use of quantitative genetics in agricultural and silvicultural breeding. We are trying to engage the community in collaborative curriculum development, better peer review of learning materials after actual classroom and laboratory use, and the construction of collaboratories that allow us to engage students in original investigation with access to professional tools, complex data bases, and remote real time data acquisition. With respect to NEON, I believe that their efforts will surpass the Human Genome Initiative in terms of production of a data stream. How will we deal with the challenges of terabytes of data per day, nonlinear complexity, multiscale phenomena, and multidimensional visualization associated with the NEON project?
As an education reformer, I actively communicate with multiple professional societies such as the Botanical Society of America, the American Society for Microbiology, the Society for Mathematical Biology, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society for Cell Biology (all of which are actively engaged with biology education). I believe that AIBS plays an important role in its power to convene heterogeneous players and to promote and celebrate their innovations. I believe that synergies are possible when we bring the constituent societies within AIBS and with other major professional societies with shared interests together to focus on topics. Particularly, I celebrate the work of AIBS’s ActionBioscience.org Web site’s successes in intelligently informing the public and policymakers with personal and professional journalism. As someone who travels extensively internationally and locally, I believe that face-to-face exchanges are crucial to the work of AIBS. We live in a heavily networked world that has become intensified by the pressures of instantaneous communication: cell phones, e-mail, faxes, express mail, wireless mobile technologies, etc. With such pressures, I believe that quality personal communication has become more important and that we need to develop new strategies for meaningful interaction.
Finally, I believe that nearly every professional journal is struggling with more pressures on our ability to sustain quality peer review and vetting of professional work as well as negotiating the waters of open source, copyright, and open access. I believe that AIBS can help lead the way to sensible solutions for multiple professional societies.
Thus, I would be pleased to serve AIBS as an officer committed to civil rights, social responsibility, public policy, internationalism, and education.
Gordon E. Uno
Gordon E. Uno is currently chair (since 2000) of the Department of Botany and Microbiology at the University of Oklahoma–Norman. A faculty member at Oklahoma University since 1979, he became a David Ross Boyd Professor of Botany in 1997, with interests focusing on plant reproductive biology and science education. He has served as a program officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (1998–2000), was president of the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) in 1995, and was awarded Honorary Membership to NABT in 2001. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the AIBS and is the chair of the Education Committee of both AIBS and the Botanical Society of America. He became part of the AAAS Organizing Committee for the Bioscience Education Network (BEN) collaborative (2000), is on the BEN Pathways Advisory Board, and was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2000. He has served on the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for GPRA Performance Assessment for two years and is an editorial board member for the International Journal of Science Education and BioScience. He received his BA in Biology with Education from the University of Colorado–Boulder in 1973 and his PhD in Botany from the University of California–Berkeley in 1979. During his tenure at Oklahoma University, Uno has taught nearly 8000 undergraduate students, mostly in his inquiry-based Introductory Botany course. Among his publications, he has been author or coauthor of 25 different textbooks, workbooks, and study guides, including the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study’s Green Version textbook for high-school biology students; two college-level botany texts, Principles of Botany (with Randy Moore and Richard Storey) and Introductory Plant Biology (10th edition with Kingsley Stern); Developing Biological Literacy: A |