Message from SIG Chair
Message from SIG Chair
 
SIG Chair
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Message from the Chair, June 2021

A warm hello to MDE-SIG-67 colleagues, near and far! What a far-ranging group we are!  And made more distant from the past year and a half of Covid-19 Pandemic world-wide.  I hope you and your families are well.  I also hope you are finding ways to manage the challenges and difficulties of loss--loss of friends, coworkers, family; loss of workspaces, and time for yourself as you focus on family and educating your children (of every age, home and away) as they learn new types of lessons in new ways.  And loss of our face-to-face conference that we all look forward to each year. The good news is that as more of us are vaccinated, the safer it becomes to once again interact in person. I look forward to welcoming you to next year’s conference in San Diego!


As we look forward and prepare our paper, poster, or symposium proposals for 2022, know that your new Executive Committee is hard at work on professional opportunities for us to cohere together as researchers and colleagues.  We have met a number of times already since our terms began in April, and this newsletter introduces us to you in later pages.  But before sharing  our new initiatives, acknowledgement and hearty thanks goes to our previous executive committee. I am especially grateful for the service of the outgoing Executive Committee member  Richard Osguthorpe, most recently Awards Chair, and also, prior to that, SIG Chair. Per our by-laws, Jason Stephens will be succeeding Rich as Awards Chair, having served valiantly as most recent past SIG Chair.  Hyemin Han did a remarkable job with our Newsletter for the past 3 years, and we all thank him for keeping us connected and informed.  Ewa Nowak was  Program Chair last year, and again this year to complete her two year term. We will be looking for someone to take on this role next year, as well as an associate Program Chair for this year. Logan Wade was Web Editor and will continue in that role in the next term. Thank you all for your service, enthusiasm and dedication! 

The new members of the Executive Committee who will be working alongside me include Jonathan O’Brien, (Secretary and Treasurer) and Brandy Quinn (Newsletter Editor).  So along with Jason, Ewa, and Logan, we will work closely these next  three years to make our SIG even more active.  For more about members of the Executive Committee, please look for our bios elsewhere in this newsletter, and reach out to any of us with ideas, or to volunteer for one of the many new opportunities we plan for further SIG and collegial engagement across the year.

Some ideas we have already been working on are adding an associate to partner on the Program Committee. I am happy to report that Boris Zizek has volunteered in that new role! In addition, various opportunities are planned to be made available for connecting between conferences. These include connecting graduate students together, mid-career partnerships, and mentorships.  We also are looking to grow our membership numbers; more members means more space on the program, and more space provides us with visibility for our important research being presented at AERA.  We are also looking to possibly connect with members of other SIGs for networking, discourse, and collaboration. So be on the lookout for chances to volunteer in these new ways!  More on these initiatives will follow in our next newsletter.  Meanwhile, feel free to volunteer or nominate others to these roles by contacting me at dawn.schrader@cornell.edu

I look forward to working with you all in the coming years! Enjoy the summer!