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IASNR Committee Activities & Updates

Want to get invovled with IASNR? Join a committee! To do so, contact the IASNR Office at [email protected].

Updates from the Conference Support Committee

IASNR organized not one, but two very successful conferences in 2022!  In June, our in-person conference in San José, Costa Rica included nearly 250 attendees from 18 countries. This was IASNR’s first conference in Latin America and the first to offer sessions in Spanish. The University of Costa Rica was an outstanding partner and host and contributed invaluable capacity and expertise to the conference planning and implementation. In October, IASNR featured the 2022 IASNR virtual conference, which included over 200 participants from 21 different countries. The virtual conference was envisioned as an alternative for those who could not attend the in-person event. 

The Conference Support Committee continues its planning for the 2023 conference, to be held June 11-15 in Portland, Maine. This is envisioned to be an in-person conference with limited opportunities for virtual engagement. IASNR is not currently planning to hold another virtual conference event in 2023, so we encourage everyone to attend in person in Maine if possible.

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Jesse AbramsCouncil Member

University Georgia, USA (2021-2023)

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Sarah Church, Council Member

Montana State University, USA (2022 – 2024)

Updates from the Elections Committee

Elections to the IASNR Council are coming up in early 2023! Keep an eye out for a call for nominations in January and in the meantime be thinking about whom to nominate (including yourself!)

Additionally, our current Executive Team will be concluding their terms in 2023 and IASNR members will be electing a new set of officers.  If you would like to nominate a colleague or are interested in serving as an IASNR Executive Director, Treasurer, or Secretary, please contact [email protected].

Updates from the Professional Development Committee

The Professional Development Committee continues to focus on developing a fit-for-purpose mentoring program for IASNR members. Several new ideas were tested at the Costa Rica conference, although the long gap between face-to-face conferences saw a few hiccups in realizing these ambitions. The key lessons for the committee were to engage with the conference organizers much earlier and to focus on offering clearly defined activities to avoid confusion on the program.  The Committee will build on these lessons to get on the front foot for 2023. We are always interested in hearing member feedback so please get in touch via [email protected] if you have ideas about how to improve mentoring and other activities.

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Tanya Howard, Council Member

Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, Australian Government (2020 – 2022)

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Mysha Clarke, Council Member

University of Florida, USA (2022 – 2024)

Update from the Student Affairs Committee
Dana Johnson

Dana Johnson, Student Representative

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (2021 – 2023)

Keahna Margeson

Keahna Margeson, Student Representative- Elect

Dalhousie University, Canada (2022-2024)

This summer, the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) hosted several events in association with the IASNR Conference in San José, Costa Rica, including the Student Forum and the annual Student Quiz Bowl. Following the conference, Kindra handed the baton of Student Representative off to Dana Johnson and Keahna Margeson took on the role of Student Representative-Elect. Thank you, Kindra, for your past years of leadership and commitment to IASNR. Future tasks for SAC involve sending out a second round of student member surveys and exploration of additional student engagement events and opportunities to stay connected throughout the year.

The SAC would like to warmly welcome members of the new East and Southeast Asia and European hubs! We are looking for student members from each hub to join the SAC. Please reach out to Dana ([email protected]) and Keahna ([email protected]) if you’re interested. The SAC continues to actively seek input from all students on ways that the organization can best serve student members. New members are always welcome!

Updates from the Ethics  Committee

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Carla Koons Trentelman, Council Member

Weber State University, USA (2020 – 2022)

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Sarah Church, Council Member

Montana State University, USA (2022 – 2024)

We also continue to work on the evolution of the Code of Ethics, to expand it to be proactively based on the ethical principles central to our identity and conduct as professionals, rather than entirely protective, proscriptive, and punitive. To this end, we held two very successful facilitated workshops at the IASNR Conference in Costa Rica over the summer (one in English and one in Spanish). These workshops generated preliminary ideas for values, goals, and aspirations to be included in the Code. We are working to develop a report on these initial results, which we will share with the broader membership for additional feedback.

The Ethics Committee continues to work on two projects. First, we are happy to announce that the membership vote on the revised IASNR Code of Ethics passed!

The revision included implementing copy-editing and updates, while beginning to make the Code and the protections it offers more accessible for all members of this international association. The Ethics Committee, the Executive Council, and the IASNR Hubs will be working together to further improve the accessibility of the Code and the processes it outlines. You can read the revised code of ethics here: IASNR Code of Ethics

The Ethics Committee will be saying goodbye to our chair Carla Trentelman at the end of the year, as she moves off Council. We will miss her very much! We also have welcomed a new member, Chia-Kuen, who is a member of the new East Southeast Asia regional hub. Brooke McWherter is no longer our student rep (congratulations Dr. McWherter!) but has stayed on the committee. Thank you to our other members – Jessica Ulrich-Schad, Azahara Mesa-Jurado, and Brett Miller.  If you are interested in being student rep or member of the Ethics Committee, please reach out to co-chair Sarah Church. As always, if you have thoughts or concerns you would like to raise, whether related to the Code or about an ethics violation, please contact Sarah Church, Co-Chair, at [email protected].

Updates from the Membership Committee

The Membership Committee held a successful New Member’s Meeting at the 2022 IASNR Conference in Costa Rica in June, welcoming those new to the association and hearing about what they are looking for in a professional organization. We also announced the winner of the inaugural Bridgebuilder Award, Kelly Biedenweg, Associate Professor of Oregon State University in the United States. An Honorary mention was also given to Arini Utami, Assistant Professor at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia. The next Bridgebuilder Awards call will open in January and encourage applicants who meet all the criteria but who also align with the theme for the IASNR Conference 2023 in Portland, ME: Bridging the Gap between Research & Practice – Communicating & Collaborating with Practitioners.

Membership Committee Co-Chair Candace May co-chaired the organizing committee for a new event for IASNR, an online virtual conference, which was held in October 2022 with the theme of Access & Equity. Consistent with the theme we advocated for a membership fee waiver to attend that event. We were thrilled to hear that 211 participants attended from 21 countries, 73% of whom were not members but who represent a wonderful potential pool for recruitment. We will be reaching out soon to learn how attendees experienced that event and what we can learn for our committee’s commitments to help internationalize IASNR.

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Kate Sherren, Council Member

Dalhousie University, Canada (2021-2023)

Updates from the Publications Committee

The Publications Committee has concluded a collaboration with rdigital (https://rdigital.co/) for the production of communication/marketing material for Society & Natural Resources, the SNR Press and the Regional hubs of IASNR (templates for flyers; posters; landing page for Regional hubs). The company was selected among three rival offers we received in response to our call. The cost for the production of these materials ($2000USD) has been covered by the Council. We are currently working on these products to adapt them to suit our needs and we will plan a meeting for all colleagues interested in their use. Within the frame of an action plan, which we drafted and implement for the SNR Press, we have also (1) reviewed and edited the content in our website referring to the Press and (2) analyzed abstracts from previous conferences to select topics for soliciting book projects. The Publications Committee has also started discussing with Executive Officers the terms for renegotiating the contracts for Society & Natural Resources and the SNR Press.

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Tasos Hovardas, Council Member

University of Cyprus, Cyprus (2021-2023)

Why not publish your next book-length product with the IASNR Book Series?  If you have a book proposal, contact Rachel Levay.