ESA Governing Board Summer 2023 Meeting Minutes Portland, OR, and Zoom Meeting 5–6 August 2023

Abstract

Attending

President Collinge Presiding; meeting called to order at 9:00 AM PDT.

A. Adopt Agenda

Motion: Bruna moved to adopt the agenda. Seconded by Ramirez. All aye.

A. Report of the President (Collinge)

President Collinge began by welcoming all GB members, staff, and guests Stephanie Hampton and James Rattling Leaf – both of whom will shortly be joining the GB – and by reminding all GB members of their fiduciary duties as ESA GB Members. She also reminded all GB members to submit their annual COI declarations.

President Collinge continued by sharing her excitement about the upcoming meeting, it being in Portland, and how its structure and content has changed to reflect member interests. She also reminded all of the recent change in governance structure, which brought us the smaller ESA Council and its leadership to provide a direct line of communication between membership and the GB. She reminded all of the afternoon's discussion of the GB self-assessment, as well as of the visioning project conducted under Past-President Ojima. The visioning project will be used to inform a new strategic plan to be led by a new Strategic Planning Working Group.

President Collinge next acknowledged the launch of the new journal Earth Stewardship, which places much of the work published across the ESA portfolio in a new outlet. She also recognized the work going into changes in the meeting format (e.g., spreading out special sessions, hybrid sessions) designed to allow more people to participate and learn new skills and the assessment, via survey, of how membership feels about these changes.

Finally, she reflected on her year as President, beginning by expressing her gratitude to the staff for their efforts and leadership on ESA activities and for carrying out GB initiatives. She also recognized Executive Director O'Riordan for her leadership, collaboration, and commitment to ESA.

President Collinge felt that three words came to mind regarding her term: relevance, engagement, and impact. Among the activities she highlighted were the Visioning Exercise, efforts to understand how the ESA demographics have changed and how the ESA can broaden participation by all sectors in society, and contributions to the National Nature Assessment spearheaded by Past-President Ojima, Incoming President Naeem, and Past-Past President Kathleen Weathers. She also highlighted ESA's efforts at DEIJ and the work of the DEIJ Committee under the leadership of Carmen Cid, which included participation in the SACNAS meeting and the NSF LEAPS projects. She noted one of the most interesting things she learned from the NSF-LEAPS RISE program – the idea of “Intellectual Humility” (“Justly recognizing the limits of one's knowledge so that one is not arrogant nor differential”) She hypothesized that groups that are Intellectually Humble and able to recognize their limits should be more effective at building diverse groups and communities, and hopes ESA and its members can partner to evaluate this idea.

She ended by expressing her deep gratitude and welcoming all to the meeting in Portland, where she hopes all can truly express the meeting theme of “ESA For All Ecologists”.

B. Report of the Executive Director and Staff (O'Riordan)

The ED began by welcoming all and noting that while the Staff Report includes an overview of all ESA activities, she especially wanted to highlight the activities and themes related to DEIJ, such as the LEAPS programs.

Adrienne Sponberg provided an overview of ESA's member demographics, and then compared ESA numbers with those of other societies. She emphasized that one axis of diversity towards which the ESA has made limited effort is different forms of disability.

The ED then provided a summary of the NSF LEAPS grants: one on promoting inclusion, and a new planning grant focusing on institutional diversity of meeting attendance and whether a different delivery of conferences translate into having a diverse membership and representation.

Finally, Teresa Mourad provided an overview of the partnership supporting the TEK section and their activities here at the meeting, the ESA SEEDS events at the annual meeting, a new $15 K grant from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation to support SEEDS, a new MOU with Oak Ridge Associated Universities for developing activities with this DOE-related consortium (which provided 20 student ESA memberships), and a partnership with tour operators Betchart Expeditions that emerged from efforts to diversify ESA's funding sources; ESA will receive $300–500 for each trip participant identifying as an ESA member.

A. Discuss financial status

VP for Finance Cavender-Bares explained that the unaudited financial report shows a fiscal year deficit of $139 K, but that this is due to a mismatch between when Wiley's final payment for journal royalties will arrive and the close of the ESA's current fiscal year. Although the new agreement with Wiley does not guarantee a set value for income, it is expected that the next payment will make up for the deficit.

VP Cavender-Bares also reminded the GB that while ESA ran deficits in the past, this has been corrected over time and the society now has over $6 million in net assets. ESA's investment accounts both had a positive year as the overall stock market was up as of 6/30/23. The Merrill Lynch account (unrestricted funds) closed the year at over $6.5 M, an increase of just under 14% from the prior year. Townley Capital (temporarily restricted funds) closed with just over $2.5 M, an increase of just over 10% from the prior year. Now up to 4% of assets can be spent on proposals designed to be transformative.

B. Audit committee appointments (Collinge/O'Riordan)

Motion: Funk moved to appoint Jay Lennon to serve a two-year term as a member of the Audit Committee. Seconded by Cavender-Bares. Unanimous approval by those voting (Lennon abstained).

C. Generative discussion of membership types (Pataki/Miller)

Pataki summarized recent informal discussions regarding new membership categories that might attract new members into ESA beyond the current (primarily) academic membership of ESA. Miller then presented data demonstrating a recent increase in public sector and nonprofit sector memberships, as well as the very rapid growth in recent years of several chapters (Restoration Ecology, TEK, Early Career, Inclusive Ecology). These increases reflect results from surveys indicating members have career aspirations in the private sector and interests outside of the traditional scientific disciplines.

Pataki noted two of ESA's strengths valuable for membership is great public interest in the environment and a demand for input on policy related to environmental issues. Another is strong regional interest and participation. Finally, ESA credentials more professionals than many other societies, though it is notable other societies have more stringent requirements for certification that have become requirements for employment. With an eye towards the future, there is a limit to what ESA can do due to how it is structured, especially the effort required to start chapters and sections. There is, however, tremendous interest among sustainability professionals, industry ecologists, etc. for professional networks, and that ESA can provide those.

The GB then discussed the pros and cons of different membership models (e.g., individual, institutional), the services new members would need and expect, and how these models and services would affect staff workloads, and the assumption that an increase in ESA membership numbers should actually be a goal. President Collinge suggested forming a working group to gather additional information and propose membership categories.

Motion: Ramirez moved for the creation of a Working Group to study potential for new membership classes, with members of the Working Group to be selected by the President and President–elect. Cavender-Bares seconded. All aye.

D. Discuss formation of and charge to Strategic Planning Working Group (Collinge, Naeem, O'Riordan)

President Collinge reiterated that the visioning report revealed some clear directions to be taken, notably a need for action by the GB on several issues and the preparation of a new strategic plan. She recommends a draft plan be developed for the November GB meeting, with a vote on approval to be taken at the February GB meeting. President-Elect Hampton has agreed to chair a working group charged with preparing the report.

A discussion followed in which GB members emphasized the need for clear metrics for measuring success, the role of the senior staff in setting metrics given their role in implementation, and the role of the Council and especially the Council Speaker in light of their serving as a bridge between the Council and membership. There was also discussion about whether areas vital to ESA (DEIJ, Private Sector members) should be represented by membership on the committee or if the committee should be explicitly charged with gathering information from the relevant sections.

Motion: Cid moved for the President and President-Elect to create a Strategic Planning Working Group and prepare its charge. Ramirez seconded. All aye.

E. Adopt new procedures for the Board of Professional Certification (BPC) Election Slate (Miller)

Motion: Ojima moved to accept the proposal allowing the BPC to submit a single slate of nominees for election to the BPC. Funk seconded. All aye.

G. Federal Agency Public Access Plans – Potential impact on ESA journal business models (Wallace/Biggs)

ESA has been engaging as much as possible with the agency planning groups for the implementation of the OSTP plan. Agencies have been uneven in their progress; NSF has reported that they want at least the final author version uploaded to a preprint server.

Wallace clarified that ESA's new contract with Wiley states only that there will be discussions about the circumstances under which to consider flipping to OA – not a commitment to flip to OA per se. Among the things to consider regarding any flip to OA are issues related to DEIJ, and what the consequences are to flipping given the ESA member base and author base are different. He emphasized ESA takes a ‘high touch’ approach to publishing, and any move to OA will affect the ability to continue as such. Wiley has provided some numbers to jump-start the discussion. Any materials provided by Wiley about a potential switch to OA are prepared by Wiley and are not reflective of the ESA perspective.

The GB then discussed interjournal differences in the ability or potential for going OA, as well as the possibility of waivers and how that affects estimates of APCs.

H. National Nature Assessment and USGS biodiversity and climate assessment – Questions for the Town Hall session (Mize)

Mize summarized actions to date on the NNA, which included a committee appointed by President Collinge to get comments to OSTP of what the vision for the NNA should be. The GB now needs to provide suggestions of what ESA can ask of OSTP and how we can continue to be helpful to them (note that they cannot ask for help, we can only offer it). Next steps include recruiting authors for the various chapters of the NNA.

The GB also discussed a mirror USGS assessment of biodiversity and climate change, the OSTP timing for completing the NNA assessment, and the postelection future of the assessments.

Motion: Ojima motion to approve the ED sabbatical plan put forward by the finance committee. Ramirez seconded. All aye.

President Collinge presiding, meeting called to order at 9:01 AM PDT.

J. Council meeting preview (Meng)

Speaker Meng reminded the GB that the goal of the Council is to serve as a bridge between the members and GB and thanked the ESA staff for assistance in addressing their mandate. The Council has had its first in-person meeting in 2022 and will be having another today. They will be having a session including (1) presentations from President Collinge, Executive Director O'Riordan, and CFO Biggs, and (2) discussions of challenges and priorities identified by chapters in the previous meeting, including engaging, sustaining, and retaining members and support for ECR/Student members. Sections and Chapters will also be sharing overviews of their activities with each other, and some groups will be sharing their successes. There will be discussions of revising governance structures for sections/chapters – currently they have bylaws, but they should all follow ESA bylaws with sections/chapters having organizing protocols. If the Council decides sections/chapters should replace all the bylaws, it will form a Working Group in the Fall to develop mechanisms for doing so and present them in Winter 2024. There will be breakout discussions on the theme of “ESA for all ecologists” led by J. Miller. Finally, new business to be discussed includes the creation of two new sections (Public and Private Sector Ecologists (petition with 200+ signatures) and Women in Soil Ecology (100+ signatures)) and the election of the next speaker.

Council members commented on the importance of the sections and chapters to ESA and the value of the Council as a conduit for information, President Collinge ended by thanking Speaker Meng for her hard work and dedication.

K. Corporate donations policy (Collinge/O'Riordan)

President Collinge informed the board that the last policy on corporate donations was developed in 2003 and revised in 2006. The CFO and ED then reviewed the history of the original policy and the original procedures when evaluating potential corporate contributions.

The GB discussed how potential donors would be evaluated and the acceptance of gifts from companies, how to generate lists of companies with whom contributions would be accepted. Gift agreements can be used as a means of deciding with whom to work, and differences in how different types of gifts would be evaluated (e.g., sponsorship of reception vs scholarships vs. endowments). There was consensus that there is no need for a list of potential donors, but rather to evaluate potential gifts on a case-by-case basis. President Collinge will refer the policy to the Finance Committee, asking them to recommend a new policy for approval by the GB.

President Collinge introduced the Editors and thanked them for their work, creativity, and commitment to the ESA, and noted how closely they are working to make the ESA publication enterprise stronger in the face of change.

The GB and Editors discussed topics ranging from APCs to journal operations to the editor's philosophy of “no article left behind”. They also discussed the concern of a potential hybrid model, the role of submissions from China, the potential for APCs that differ by article category and journal, ensuring journal quality in the face of increasing publications numbers, and the maintenance of journal reputation in light of increasing prevalence and prominence of predatory journals. Finally, the new chair of the publications committee (AD) emphasized that the issues discussed have also been the subject of discussion by the publications committee, which serves as a go-between for the EiCs, ESA staff, the Publications Director, and the membership. She wanted everyone to know that the Committee is always open to hear more and answer questions about any topic related to publications.

M. Wrap-up/action items include:

President Collinge and ED O'Riordan summarized some of the action items identified during the GB meeting: the finance committee review of the guidelines for corporate donations, the formation of a Strategic Planning Working Group, a discussion of membership types, new procedures electing members of the BPC, a potential shift in the dates of the fiscal year, and finalizing of the EiC transition for Frontiers (which will require board approval of the offer).

Bruna moved to adjourn. Cid seconded. All aye.