August 4, 2015
Dear Members of the Society for Economic Botany:
It is my great privilege and honor to serve as the SEB President this year! This is an exciting time to be involved with the Society and I look forward to working with you all in contributing to the mission and vision of SEB. I have much news to share here regarding
our recent meeting, elections, awards and future meeting plans. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. I am eager to facilitate your involvement in the Society.
It was wonderful to see many of you at our recent annual meeting in Clanwilliam, South Africa, nestled in the beautiful Cederberg Mountains! This meeting was a tremendous success and marked the first time that SEB has met on the African continent, reaffirming our commitment to engagement with our international members. This was also our first joint meeting with the
Indigenous Plant use Forum. There were
211 attendees from
23 countries that presented
98 papers and
66 posters at our 56
th annual conference, which made for a collegial and truly international exchange of research and ideas.
One of the special highlights of the meeting included a series of “Teaching
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Tuesday” workshops on
topics such as: Intellectual property rights and access and benefit sharing; Interviewing Techniques; Connecting students to ecology through culture; and much more. Another special event during the meeting included a mid-week fieldtrip to see the Rooibos industry up close, with guided tours of the local Rooibos (
Aspalathus linearis) farms and a processing factory. We were also treated to an inspirational talk entitled “The Accidental Botanist” by
Daniel Moerman, our 2015 Distinguished Economic Botanist.
You can watch the DEB talk online HERE.
Due to the generous support of
Nature publishing group and anonymous donations from the SEB membership, we were pleased to offer competitive travel grants this year to four young professionals. Congratulations to:
Sinagabé Korogone,
James Lyles,
Vanessa Mardones and
Laura Smith! This is an opportunity that I would love to see continued in the future as it makes a meaningful impact on scholars who would otherwise be unable to attend the meeting. If you would like to support travel grants for students and international members in the future, please contact me. Every donation, no matter the size, can make a real difference!
The caliber of scientific presentations by both the SEB and IPUF membership was phenomenal, and this was especially true of the student members at the meeting. Congratulations to
Andrew Semotuik, the Edmund H. Fulling Award recipient for best oral presentation by a young professional and to
Sandra Bogdanova, the Julia F. Morton Award recipient for best poster presentation by a young professional. The Society is also dedicated to supporting the development of young scientists in the field and the Richard Evan Schultes Research Award is the embodiment of this spirit. This year’s
recipient of the Schultes award is Annie Virnig. Congratulations to all and many thanks to the awards committees for your careful consideration of the candidates!
This year we lost a dedicated and treasured member of SEB.
Daniel F. Austin served for many years as both the Book Review Editor and the Chair of the Mary W. Klinger Book Award.
Bradley Bennett has written a beautiful tribute to Dan’s work and career in a recent issue of
Economic Botany, which can be accessed either by logging in to your account at
www.econbot.org or directly
HERE.
I would like to thank
Wendy Applequist for taking on the role of Book Review Editor following Dan’s passing, and encourage you to submit books for review in the journal to her. If you are interested in writing a book review for the journal, please contact Wendy. During this period of transition,
selection of the Klinger Book Award recipient has been delayed. We hope to announce the winner later this fall.
If you missed out on the meeting this year, I encourage you to catch up on some of the filmed presentations, which are available
HERE. SEB also has an active social media presence, and photos and tweets from the meeting can be found on our
Twitter page ;@SEBotany and with the hashtag #SEBIPUF15. If you are not already doing so, I encourage you to follow us on our pages with
Twitter and/or
Facebook.
This meeting wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of the organizing committees of both IPUF and SEB! I’d like to extend a very special thanks to our SEB-IPUF liason,
Thomas Brendler; the IPUF organizing committee:
Emmy Reinten,
Ben-Erik van Wyk,
Helen Long,
Gerda de Wet,
Margaret Hulley,
Ashton Ruiters,
Kemi Sobiyi,
Janneke Nortje,
Maponya Lelaka,
Tommy Mabassa, and
Helen de Wet; the SEB organizing committee:
Rick Stepp,
Sunshine Brosi,
Nanci Ross,
Annie Virnig, and
Lisa Philander; and to the SEB business office staff:
Bill Dahl,
Heather Cacanindin,
Johanne Stogran, and
Rob Brandt.
Besides the awards announced at the meeting, we also have some exciting election results to share! First, thank you to all of the candidates who ran for election this cycle. We greatly value your commitment to the future of SEB! Congratulations to our newly elected members of the SEB Council:
Diane Ragone (President-Elect),
Darach Lupton (Council Member-at-Large),
Sonia Peter (Council Member-At-Large) and
Sandra Bogdanova (Student Representative). Congratulations also to the newly elected members of the Student Committee:
Matthew Bondand
Ghita Heidt! Many thanks to our outgoing Council members for their exceptional commitment and service to SEB:
Bob Bye,
Steven Casper,
Nanci Ross and
Annie Virnig.
I am excited to announce that our
next SEB meeting will be held at the
Pine Mountain Settlement School, located in the rural mountains of
Harlan County, Kentucky from
June 5-9th, 2016. It is located 2 hours away from the Tri-Cities Airport in Johnson City, Tenne
ssee (TRI). Shuttles will be available for an additional fee. The conference theme is
Resilience in the Face of Resource Extraction: Ethnobotany and Exploitation. This conference will discuss approaches to protecting biodiversity and cultural traditions in times of economic transition. The coalfields of southern Appalachia embody the tensions between economic and environmental sustainability. Traditional Appalachian culture is deeply connected to the native flora and fauna, yet resource extraction continues to shape the geography and economic future of the region. Stay updated on meeting details by joining the event page on Facebook
HERE. More information on the meeting will be posted on the SEB website later this fall.
The SEB Council has made a commitment to arranging for advance planning of our future meetings and I am pleased to announce that we also have a
meeting site confirmed for 2017 in Bragança, Portugal! This will be an exciting opportunity to engage with our extensive membership in Europe. We are looking for more US-based meeting sites for 2018 and 2019 and we encourage you to submit a proposal for consideration. We have formed a special ad-hoc committee this year tasked with creating a guidance document for preparing meeting proposals and I am happy to share this information with you upon request.
The latest issue of our journal,
Economic Botany, is available in print and online. If you haven't explored the exciting new articles, I encourage you to do so. Just log in with your SEB log in at
www.econbot.org to view current and past issues. We also have exciting news from the journal: our most recent
Impact Factor is 1.20, representing a 66% increase from last year.
Robert Voeks, our Journal Editor, has also been working closely with the Student Committee over the past year and I am excited to announce that he has launched a new initiative aimed at training the generation of reviewers for
Economic Botany. Twelve young professionals (graduate students and post-docs) were selected following a competitive application process to be paired with members of the
Economic Botany Editorial Board. The expected outcomes of this program include detailed feedback for submissions to the journal, a valuable training opportunity for the junior reviewers, and generation of a new group of highly-trained reviewers to contribute to the Journal mission in the future.
Dedicated members are the core of any society, and I greatly appreciate all of your support for SEB’s work and mission. We are in particular need of increasing our membership. Please
continue to be ambassadors for our Society by encouraging students and other colleagues around the world to join us in our mission. Sending a few personal notes of invitation to join can make a meaningful impact on our membership numbers. You can also provide a $10 gift membership to a student at any time. I also encourage you to share the
SEB Student Blog with your students. This is a new resource containing extensive lists of funding opportunities, fieldwork equipment recommendations, and a directory of ethnobotany programs are available for SEB Student members. Members-only webinars, mentorship, and other resources will also be coming to the site soon.
The Society for Economic Botany is what we make of it and I encourage you to get involved! We will be appointing committee memberships soon. The full list of committees is available
HERE. Please let me know if you are interested in volunteering for service on a specific committee. In addition to committee service, there are many ways to contribute to the society: you can submit news and notices to the newsletter, make suggestions for what you would like to see at future meetings and make yourself heard. Please feel free to contact me or anyone else on council if we can be of assistance.
All my best,
Cassandra L. Quave, PhD
President, Society for Economic Botany
Society for Economic Botany Office
PO Box 299 | St. Louis Missouri, 63166
Mission: To foster and encourage scientific research, education, and related activities on the past, present, and future uses of plants, and the relationship between plants and people, and to make the results of such research available to the scientific community and the general public through meetings and publications.