Dear Div. 25 members,
I hope this issue of the Division 25 Recorder finds you well as we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and ever so gradually resume normal activities—perhaps while also pondering health equity, information literacy, gender inequalities, and other issues related to human behavior that the pandemic has brought to the forefront.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought some challenges to Div. 25, but it also brought opportunities. To start with the challenges, it was particularly disappointing to miss the opportunity to showcase our outstanding 2020 and 2021 award recipients in person at the APA convention. The APA convention provides a unique opportunity to promote stellar examples of behavior analysis research and make our award winners’ names known to a broader audience than that which typically attends behavior analysis conferences. Of course, we still get to showcase the winners at the virtual APA convention, but I am sure that many of you will agree with me it’s just not quite the same.
Another challenge was that the pandemic substantially increased the professional and personal workloads of many of us division leaders, as I am sure it did too for many of our other members. For me as president, it particularly affected my ability to spend time engaging with APA and with other divisions as needed to strengthen our division’s presence and influence. On the more positive side, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted our division to step into virtual space to conduct business, and in doing so, we were able to involve more members in our activities. The fact that many of our division activities occur at the APA convention has long limited opportunities for our division members to participate because, let’s face it, the vast majority of our members do not attend APA regularly if at all. Let me interject that if you have never been to APA, it’s totally worth it, at least you don’t have BACB® CEUs to worry about—in addition to the Div. 25 part of the program (obviously my favorite part!), the larger program always has a phenomenal selection of talks and other events of relevance to our science and practice. That said, most of us do have to prioritize when it comes to deciding which conferences to attend, and most of our members probably have other conferences at the top of their priority lists. The transition of the 2020 APA convention (and ultimately, the 2021 convention as well) to virtual format ended up permitting us to host two back-to-back virtual events that normally would have occurred at the in-person convention, but instead, could be made open to all members whether or not they attended the convention.
First, we were glad to be able to honor our 2020 awards winners with an award ceremony held via Zoom and streamed live on our Facebook page. The winners were presented by their award nominators and went on to give a brief synopsis of their convention presentations. The event was open to members and non-members alike, very well attended, and overall, a successful and moving ceremony. We are greatly indebted to our award chair, Tara Fahmie, and our 2020 program coordinator (now president-elect!), Bethany Raiff, for making this happen! Our 2021 award winners will be similarly honored with a ceremony, so please attend!
Second, we held our 2020 business meeting virtually, permitting all members to attend. It may not have been quite as big a hit as the award ceremony, but gave us the opportunity to engage with members we wouldn’t have seen at the convention. The 2021 business meeting will be virtual as well, and we’d love for as many of you as possible to attend so that we can update you on our activities and make you aware of opportunities to get involved with Div. 25. Moving forward, I fully expect Div. 25 will continue to engage in virtual activities accessible to members who do not attend the APA convention.
For other updates on division activities over the past year, in early 2020 we completed revisions of our bylaws that were brought to a membership vote and passed in July 2020. The primary purpose of these much-needed revisions was to update the bylaws for consistency with current practices, current technology, and APA recommendations. The biggest change that you will see as a member is that the amended bylaws permit electronic voting on issues that need to be brought to our membership, which will make it easier for us to quickly settle issues that require membership vote (you will start seeing some of these come your way soon!), as well as easier for our members to participate in decision-making. Another major change was that the term of the president was extended to 2 years instead of 1. As I had agreed to serve a second year if the amendment passed, it was tempting to secretly hope it wouldn’t, but I ended up being very glad to have another year to work on division business, seeing how my original term was sort of lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving forward, this change will increase continuity in division activities and give our future leaders more time to plan and achieve initiatives.
Since last year, Div. 25 has also successfully completed the process of restarting its fellows program, resulting in our first fellows appointment after a hiatus being approved by the APA in January 2021. Congratulations to our new Div. 25 fellows: Kevin Arnold, Rick Bevins, Kimberly Kirby, Kimberly Kirkpatrick, James S. MacDonall, Freddy Paniagua, John Roll, and William Stoops. Thanks to Jim Mulick for chairing the Fellows Committee and to Liz Kryszak for working with the APA to get the appointments approved.
Our other recent activities have also been primarily focused on improving division infrastructure and communications in hopes of engaging our membership, recruiting new members, facilitating leadership transitions, and facilitating the activities of future leaders. We have worked on increasing social media activity (thanks to Social Media Committee Chair Erich Grommet!), taken preliminary steps to increase student involvement in the division (You will hear more about this soon), and are currently working toward the establishment of an electronic archiving system. Last but not at all least, our Executive Committee recently approved the establishment of an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee that will be charged with making recommendations to council regarding issues of EDI in the science of behavior analysis, broadly speaking. My sincere thanks to Nataila Baires and Emily Baxter for agreeing to be the first co-chairs of our EDI committee.
As my term as division president nears its conclusion, I want to thank our Executive Committee, committee chairs, and others with active roles in Div. 25 for volunteering their time to ensure behavior analysis remains represented within the APA. It has been a pleasure to work with all of you.
Best wishes,
Anna Petursdottir