Greetings, fellow ESA natural historians, from your new Natural History Section board,
We wanted to update you on some exciting developments concerning our section, and invite your participation.
First off, let us introduce ourselves:
Tom Fleischner, Chair (Natural History Institute)
Lou Weber, Vice-Chair (University of St. Francis)
Andrea Adams, Secretary (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Seabird McKeon, Special Initiatives Coordinator (St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and naturalistpodcast.com)
Sarah Bois, Past-Chair (Linda Loring Nature Foundation)
Our group is committed to the good work of advocating for the essential importance of natural history in ecology, and also to providing resources for natural history-rooted ecologists.
Toward these ends, we’re actively involved in several initiatives:
- Overhauling our Section website – we’re waiting for ESA to finish its own website overhaul, and then our site will be hosted directly through esa.org. We’ll be expanding what’s on there, adding new original art, and more. Stay tuned – we’ll let you know when this is complete.
- Readying to propose two major programs at the 2019 conference in Louisville:
* An “Inspire” session on “Historia Naturalis: Inspiring Ecology” – as some of you know, an Inspire session is a fast-paced, engaging group presentation, where each presenter has only 5 minutes and 20 slides. Several senior ecologists have already signed on; we’re hereby inviting any of our members to propose themselves as presenters. To do so, simply send an email with: a title, and a 1-5 sentence description to: tom@naturalhistoryinstitute.org. This must be received no later than November 7th.
* A full-day field trip exploring forests and streams of the Louisville area the day before the conference
* We’ll also be hosting an informational table, having our annual book auction, and hosting a social gathering at the conference
- The ESA Student Section has invited all other sections to appoint a student representative to be a student liaison. We think this is a fine idea, and invite students to nominate themselves by simply sending an email, to tom@naturalhistoryinstitute.org with your institutional affiliation, and a couple sentences describing your interest in this role. Again, please send this no later than November 7th.
- You’ll be hearing more soon about a couple fun special initiatives we’ll be promoting this year
Finally, a friendly reminder to renew your membership in the Natural History Section when you renew your ESA membership! Besides providing the section with operating funds, it sends a strong message to ESA leadership of the groundswell of support for natural history.
All best,
Tom Lou Andrea Seabird Sarah
