Biophysical Society Bulletin | June 2019

Communities

BPS Student Chapters

Attendees at the first meeting of BPS Student Chapters, Baltimore, Maryland.

with free coffee or pizza were frequently well attended. Chap- ters highlighted approaches for communicating with their members to promote biophysics events and activities. Ideas included creating a chapter Facebook page; distributing flyers; and developing a chapter newsletter that profiled chapter members, publications, conference presentations, and stu- dent awards. The students also shared successful approach- es for fundraising to support chapter activities, including t-shirt sales (along with a chapter logo competition), holding raffles, and leveraging funding from university departments and other internal sources for student organizations. After presentations, an open discussion between students, chapter advisors, and the Biophysical Society Education Committee representatives followed. Students provided ideas and suggestions to each other for approaches to recruit more students to their chapters, how to promote events on campus, how to secure funding from both internal and external sources, among other topics. Students also provided feedback to the Society on how to best support the growth of chapters and to facilitate communication with other chapters throughout the year. Overall, feedback from the student chapter attendees at the session was very positive: students overwhelmingly found the session informative and gained new ideas for their chap- ters. The roundtable discussions were particularly valuable. Thanks to Seth Weinberg , Allen Price , and all who contributed to the planning of this event.

The BPS Student Chapters Program launched in the summer of 2017, and the inaugural student chapters were recognized on November 1, 2017. Since then, BPS has announced 18 student chapters around the world. The Education Committee sponsored the first meeting of the student chapters during the 2019 BPS Annual Meeting to help the chapters connect with one another and share their experiences. Planning for the first meeting of the student chapters began in May of 2018. Important goals of the organizers were to make the session as useful as possible for the students and for student chapters to take ownership of the event with the plan that in the future, the chapters themselves would drive the event planning. A questionnaire sent to the chap- ters identified marketing and recruitment, outreach, and event planning as the three most important topics to them. A follow-up check-in survey was sent out in September, and by the end of October, 100 percent of the chapters had respond- ed. Nine chapters volunteered to present on one of the three topics, and the new chapter in Egypt (Mustafa Kemal Univer- sity) offered to present an introduction to their university. At the BPS Annual Meeting in Baltimore, representatives from several chapters including, Arizona, Clemson Univer- sity, Emory University, Mustafa Kemal University, New York District, University of New Mexico, University of Missouri, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, presented high- lights from their chapters’ activities during the previous year. Several groups reported on successful events that had been held, including hosting invited speakers, professional devel- opment events, Biophysics Week activities, high school visits and science demonstrations, and science trivia nights. Events

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