Biophysical Society Bulletin | July/August 2019

President’s Message

AMessage from the President We often get questions about how the Society is run, and specifical- ly, exactly what it is that the BPS Council does at our meetings. To answer these questions in the spirit

for Women (CPOW), the Committee for Inclusion and Diversity (CID), and the Nominating Committee were reviewed. CPOW and CID provided comprehensive reports and metrics about their activities. The work of these committees and their re- ports were exceptional, but Council identified shortcomings in our review process, especially regarding how we give feed- back to the committees and support them in implementing changes. Council is now developing more detailed procedures to streamline the process and facilitate communication with the committees. For the Nominating Committee, procedures were vetted against best practices, compared with those of other Societies, and no recommendations for changes in our process were made at this time. Council also participated in a self-evaluation exercise to assess our own performance as it relates to the principles of good governance processes, oversight and direction setting, and decision effectiveness. The results of the exercise and discussion highlighted themes including the need for more concrete, data-driven planning, improving communication between Council and committees, and better integration of the strategic plan in all activities of the Society. We plan to repeat the Council assessment exercises regularly and use the information to improve our processes and effectiveness. Subgroups are a vital part of the Biophysical Society, and they have been working over the last year to develop focused names and descriptors with a goal of clarifying their prima- ry focus for members to more easily select the Subgroup(s) appropriate to their interests. We reviewed and approved the proposed name changes and new descriptors and will be pro- moting this information broadly beginning July 1. We encour- age all members to take advantage of Subgroup programming and enjoy Subgroup Saturday at the Annual Meeting. Council spent a significant portion of the afternoon discuss- ing the issue of sexual harassment. We unanimously agreed to join the Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM which was launched earlier this year. The mission of the consortium is “to support academic and professional disciplinary societies in fulfilling their mission-driven roles as standard bearers and standard setters for excellence in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) fields, addressing sexual harassment in all of its forms and intersectionalities.” Our main motivation for joining this group is to learn what actions are most effective towards eliminating sexual harassment in our Society. We acknowl- edge that sexual harassment is only one aspect of bias and harassment that affects our members, and we hope that the actions we take in this arena can be translated to help eliminate other barriers to our goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

of transparency, we will use this column to summarize the delibera- tions and actions of Council for our members. The Council meets four times each year (twice at the Annu-

David. W. Piston

al meeting, once in late spring and once in the fall). The spring Council meeting is focused as much as possible on strategic planning, and is often held in the hometown of the Society President. This year, we met in St. Louis, Missouri, on Satur- day, June 1, for a full day of discussion and actions, involving program activities and strategic initiatives. We started the day with a couple of committee-related action items. First, we reviewed the new BPS Conferences Commit- tee charge and approved the inaugural committee members who will be led by Chair Suzanne Scarlata. We are excited to be launching this series of small, recurring conferences on fo- cused biophysical topics. Second, we discussed and approved a recommendation from the Public Affairs Committee to expand the BPS Congressional Fellowship Program which will further expand our relationships on Capitol Hill. In 2017, the Society leadership developed a five-year strate- gic plan. As part of this planning process, Council requested that all committees develop metrics for their activities and established a cycle on which to review the work of the com- mittees and their alignment with the strategic plan. The first committee to undergo this review was the Annual Meeting Program Committee. Council accepted the completed review report prepared by the Annual Meeting Subcommittee. We view this report as a living document that will serve as a guide for each new Program Committee with the gathered wisdom of each year’s successes and challenges. The subcommittee made recommendations including: (1) providing more op- portunities for Society members to participate in the Annual Meeting planning process; (2) increasing opportunities for members of all career levels to speak in platform talks; (3) increasing representation of international scientists; (4) increasing representation of non-academic scientists in all aspects of the meeting; and (5) shifting the balance of sym- posia topics to allow for more coverage of new and emerging areas. We are very appreciative of the thoughtful work of this subcommittee and will be working to include their recom- mendations for BPS2020 and future meetings. We have set up a four-year rotation for committee reviews, and this year the Committee for Professional Opportunities

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