May 25, 2017

Greetings AERA Systems Thinking in Education SIG members!

First, I wanted to thank all of our members who helped make the annual meeting a success. I wanted to update all of you on our business meeting and other pending business. But first of all, I wanted to put forth a final request for members willing to be nominated for our open officer positions:

We are seeking nominations (please also feel free to nominate yourself) for the following positions (each is a two year term, with the first year as an elect position, mentored under the current officer): 

1. Chair
2. Program chair
3. Secretary/Treasurer

In order to nominate yourself or someone else, please email me at brwatson@purdue.edu no later than noon Eastern Time on Monday, May 29th. The SIG would very much appreciate your service as an officer.

I also wanted to let you know that our planned bylaws changes (which will need to be approved via vote) include these updated term lengths for each of these positions. They also will place several awards into our bylaws to allow our SIG to better recognize our members’ contributions. Here are the awards we decided to put forward at our business meeting last month:

1. Refereed Publication of the Year (yearly) - Oct. 1 submission deadline
2. Best SIG Paper (yearly)
3. Practitioner Award
4. Recognition of Scholar
5. Dissertation Award (20 page submission) (yearly)
6. SIG Service Award

Finally, we will seek to send out short newsletters that highlight some of our membership and their current work, so please keep an eye out for that, as well as our election and bylaw vote emails over the next month. Thanks again for considering running for an officer position – the SIG needs our members to step forward and provide service to the SIG, and we appreciate your help in keeping the SIG vibrant and helping us grow!

- Bill