BPS Council met for Spring Council at BPS headquarters in Rockville, Maryland on Friday, June 2. This was our first meeting at the BPS offices since Fall Council in 2019. Although we met virtually and in person several times in the intervening three years and eight months, it was great to reconvene at headquarters to focus on the progress of the Strategic Plan and other efforts to move the Society forward.
The meeting opened with an overview and discussion of BPS Committees including their charges, duties, and programs. You may recall that a priority for 2022 was updating the BPS Strategic Plan. Once the new Strategic Plan was approved by Council in November 2022, the committees began the process of updating their charges and aligning their duties with the new plan. In addition, committee activities were compiled into a workbook where timing, audience, costs, effort, etc. could be examined and compared. Most importantly, alignment with Strategic Plan goals and objectives was detailed for each activity and enabled Council to see the progress being made in support of our goals as well as highlight gaps where more efforts are needed to further certain objectives.
While our strategic goals of fostering a diverse and inclusive global community and investing in the future of biophysics will always be ongoing, much work has been done to advance these goals. Notably, efforts to increase participation and engagement, advance racial and ethnic diversity, and support biophysicists at every career stage were prioritized by most committees and Council. Recent evidence for this includes the open call for names for BPS Elections, the addition of a self-nomination option for BPS Awards, the President’s Symposium Black in Biophysics, the Multilingual Networking Event hosted by the Committee for Inclusion and Diversity, and the launch of the Postdoctoral Reviewer Mentorship Program initiated by the Editor-in-Chief of Biophysical Journal.
In addition to committee programming, we assessed the BPS Ambassador Program. Launched in 2019 and currently on its fourth cohort, the Ambassador Program aims to support all our strategic goals, but it excels at enhancing the sharing of knowledge and advocating for biophysics as our ambassadors contribute content to the BPS Bulletin and blog, participate in education and career panels, and host Biophysics Week and networking events in their countries. We discussed how to better address large countries, such as China, where regional representation might be more appropriate and whether the program should be expanded. The discussion is ongoing, but the Ambassador Program itself is moving several of our strategic objectives forward quite effectively.
As always, finances are an important component of every Council agenda. Strategy requires action, and action requires resources which usually means people and/or money. We examined and accepted the audited financial statements, which ensure that BPS is following appropriate financial practices and is financially sound. We also evaluated a request from the Education Committee to provide more support to our Student Chapters by way of a new Student Chapter Events Grant Program. Council unanimously approved this idea, which not only aligns with our strategic goal of investing in the future of biophysics but is also a great way to help Chapter leaders strengthen their local programming.
We revisited the new programming changes for the 2024 Annual Meeting and are excited to increase speaking opportunities with the new Symp Select and Flash Talk speakers. Allowing platform speakers to also share their work with a poster will enhance scientific exchange and provide presenters with another opportunity for engagement. Speaking of engagement, we voted unanimously to bring back the dance social after the BPS Lecture at the Annual Meeting, so brush up on your moves and plan to join us on the dance floor in Philly!
Subgroup performance was another topic of discussion for us at Spring Council. Many of our Subgroups are thriving, but some are challenged with declining membership numbers and sponsorship. As Subgroups are the lifeblood of BPS and reflect areas of interest for our members, we want to ensure that we are responsive to emerging needs while supporting Subgroups in a sustainable way. To that end, we will uphold the bylaws of Subgroups and BPS by enforcing minimum membership requirements and will continue to consider other thresholds for performance as indicated by the Subgroup report card.
BPS Society Awards remain a regular agenda item for Council. The 2024 awards nominations statistics provided the backdrop for our continuing conversation of increasing diversity and increasing numbers in awards nominations. The new self-nomination option for this most recent cycle did result in a few more nominations than last year but had no measurable impact on diversity. While we’ll continue this experiment and look for other ways to address diversity and nominations moving forward, we also initiated a President’s New Awards Task Force to explore whether additional awards might better serve our membership. That group will convene over the summer and will report out in the fall.
We closed our spring meeting with a Council self-evaluation exercise. Having spent the majority of the day examining progress on the Strategic Plan and adjusting or affirming actions accordingly, it was good to take a moment to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we are practicing principles of good governance, consider how we are doing in terms of oversight and direction setting, and examine our decision effectiveness. The exercise gave us the opportunity to reflect and identify challenges and opportunities for improvement as we work to realize the mission and vision of BPS.
As always, we welcome your feedback on this update and all things biophysics. Please reach out to us at [email protected] and [email protected].
—Taekjip Ha, President
—Jennifer Pesanelli, Executive Officer