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Who is Your Community
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Who is Your Community
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Segment:0 .
SAM BURRELL: Hi, everyone. We're live. I'm going to do a bit of chatting at the minute, just while people are coming in, to introduce everybody, and say hello and welcome you all to the session. Thanks for joining us, and welcome to Society Street's second webinar. Last month, we held a webinar on conferences and meetings, a topic which has been on many people's minds.
SAM BURRELL: And the recording that is available. We'll put the URL for that up at the end of the session for you to have a quick look at. We also, since then, have held two roundtable discussions rising from the webinar that we had last time, which were really successful. So we think we might do that again this time. So if there's lots of chat and lots of questions, there will be an opportunity for smaller groups to convene after this webinar to discuss about some of the things that we raise.
SAM BURRELL: We are running this webinar series because we had planned an in-person conference in March that didn't go ahead. And this session was meant to be our opening session for the in-person conference that we were going to be holding in March, which we didn't manage to do. But we're holding this webinar instead.
SAM BURRELL: We felt that this was a really important topic, to start exploring exactly who it is that societies are seeking to serve, and whether what they're doing is pretty much fitting nicely with that community that they're trying to serve. So we thought-- we appreciate that every society serves more than one group, if you like, but we felt that it was worth particularly looking at what early career researchers and practitioners might be wanting, and thinking about-- from, and thinking about from their learned societies.
SAM BURRELL: That's the topic for today. Welcome, everybody. Hopefully everybody who wanted to join is now logged in properly. Let me just drive this presentation. I will allow the speakers to introduce themselves in just a moment. But before I do that, I just wanted to say thank you very much to our sponsors, who were originally sponsoring the in-person conference but have been really supportive of us moving to online and helping us to continue to run these webinars, which means that it's freely available for you guys to attend.
SAM BURRELL: So we're very grateful to all of those sponsors. You can see them up there. Our gold sponsors are Wiley and Elsevier, and our other sponsors have been Advantage, Atypon, Cactus, Consort Strategy, Capital Media, AJE, Renew Consultants, ALPSP, and Silverchair. So thank you to all of them. And then a couple of housekeeping points before we get going.
SAM BURRELL: There's a chat panel. For those of you that it came up automatically, it will be on the right-hand side of your screen. If you can't see the chat panel, there should be either a blue or gray box in the bottom right-hand side of your screen that you can click on and it'll bring up the chat function. We're not going to be opening mics to attendees, but we really want people to join in and ask questions.
SAM BURRELL: Aside from anything else, the way we've structured these questions-- this session is assuming that you guys have got things to say that we can draw on. So, please, don't be shy. Chat in the chat function. We've got moderators that are helping us to pull questions in so we can bring it into the discussion.
SAM BURRELL: So the idea is, is that we can have you guys inputting to the conversation, as well. Originally, we were going to invite 10 people to our in-person conference to join small discussion groups, but clearly, that's not happening. However, we're very, very pleased to have Brie and Rose joining us. I'll let them introduce themselves in just a second. A brief introduction.
SAM BURRELL: I'm Sam Burrell. I'm the program chair for Society Street. And in my spare time, I'm also a consultant with Renew Consultants. And we work with learned societies on a bunch of strategic projects. So this is an area that we're really interested in, is looking at missions of societies and how they serve their communities.
SAM BURRELL: And with that, I'm going to ask Brie and Rose to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their work, and their areas of interest, and why they thought they might come and talk to us about this. Brie, do you want to kick us off?
BRIE HAUPT: Can do. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to this webinar. I am Brie Haupt. I am a professor of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Virginia Commonwealth University. My research areas tend to revolve around crisis communication, cultural competence, and community resilience.
BRIE HAUPT: I've also started verging into non-profit organizations, as well. My perspective comes from a tenure track-- first year. So it's been quite a first year, as you can imagine. But first year on the tenure track, having to make sure to engage in research, and to network, and to really build those connections now to really make some impactful research that can impact our communities and help their resilience levels.
BRIE HAUPT: That's my perspective that I'm coming from. And I'm very excited to talk about associations, because I love them.
SAM BURRELL: Rose?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Thanks. It's really great to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. I'm Rose Hendricks. I am a Civic Science Fellow, and I work at the American Society for Cell Biology. My role is to actually work across many different societies to lead the development of a collaborative framework to better support researchers who engage, in various ways, with diverse audiences.
ROSE HENDRICKS: So through advocacy, and science communication, and through community science and participation-- collaboration with communities. I earned my PhD in cognitive science about three years ago from UC San Diego. Kind of come at it from the perspective of a relatively early career researcher who also works across these various organizations in the field of civic engagement.
SAM BURRELL: I'm going to kick you off with quite an open question, which is, how would you describe your relationship with either a learned society or, generally, academic associations right now? So kind of center you in relation to associations and societies.
BRIE HAUPT: Mhm. I'll go ahead and start. Mine really started in my PhD program. My mentor, who's very much connected to a lot of our professional and national associations, was saying that those were the platforms to start networking, to be able to build collaborative relationships for research, to even brand yourself as an individual within the research and the teaching realm, and even just what your expertise area is going to be.
BRIE HAUPT: It's kind of this way to enhance your reputation, and enhance that network that's so needed for researchers to make it to tenure, because that's a struggle. I also have a relationship, now, in that I'm part of several organizations. One specifically has given me a lot of ability to grow. I'm now a board member for one of the sections, editor for their newsletter, and it's been opening up a lot more opportunities than I would have ever had if I hadn't already been part of that organization.
BRIE HAUPT: That's pretty much my relationship with associations, and I see them as being very vital to the success of even-- tenure track or non-tenure track researchers in each field and discipline.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Wow. That is so helpful for me to hear, from a early faculty perspective. Because my relationship with societies is quite different, because I work with them. And I think about them, actually, all day, every day. I think of societies as agents of change-- that they have a lot of potential to help bridge the relationship between science and society in the future.
ROSE HENDRICKS: In part because they've got a lot of clout and history, and they have huge, amazing, robust communities of researchers with so many skill sets, and perspectives, and backgrounds. That's what I'm especially excited about, is how societies can leverage all of those things in order to really encourage real positive shifts in how we think about science in society-- in the broader society today.
ROSE HENDRICKS:
SAM BURRELL: I want to ask a quite difficult question now. Sorry.
ROSE HENDRICKS: All for it.
SAM BURRELL: Well, no, I just think that-- there's two things that I picked out from what you both have said. Is, very clearly, there's a point about the import-- there's two really important things. One of them is around networking, relationship-building, and community. But I also want to pick up, Rose, on your point there about being agents of change. And I wonder-- you mentioned that it's really important because they're well-established organizations.
SAM BURRELL: Do you see a tension there between the requirement to be an agent of change and the fact that they're established organizations? And do you see that playing out in any way that?
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's a great question. My first thought is, yes. I see a tension there, and that's OK. I think being well-established, in some ways, kind of means status quo. And a recognition of areas in which an organization does perpetuate status quo, it's the first step in thinking kind of critically about, what is it that we don't want to represent the status quo on?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Where do we want to actually be agents of change? And that is not to say that everything based on history or status quo we need to toss out, by any means, but rather that, when we reflect on the fact that, with long histories, and embedded in the history and culture and science-- which has many of its own inequities and similar-- that, yeah, there are opportunities to pivot.
BRIE HAUPT: I also have seen a little bit of a tension in terms of-- within my community right now, there's been a lot of riots for the Black Lives Matter movement and everything, and for justice. And so I do see a tension with professional organizations and societies trying to find that balance between what their role is for the community and being able to strategically state their position on these topics while also not alienating or somehow potentially causing a negative impact to their own reputation or operations as an organization.
BRIE HAUPT: I would say that's kind of where I see a lot of tension, at least right now, with these organizations and being agents of change. However, the ones that I've seen that have made a statement, and have been transparent, and have provided resources, even if they're not connected to the issue, if they have something that's still relevant, and they're still marketing that and stating to their members-- and even nonmembers-- that there's access to this information source than the greater knowledge base, I think that's been a really good move on their part, versus some that I've seen that haven't really said anything.
BRIE HAUPT: And people have been wanting them to really pull out and say, what can you do for us? What can you help us do right now, with all of us needing more information? We need more support to be able to move forward. Because it's been quite a unique year, 2020. I don't know if everyone's done with it.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I mean, I saw something really interesting that I tweeted from the Society Street account. I think it was yesterday. I think it was-- SFN had put out a tweet about Black Lives Matter and what could they be doing for that community, kind of engaging with the issue and going, so, what can we be doing? And there was a response that went, look inwards.
SAM BURRELL: Look at what you're doing within your own society. It was quite-- I mean, I think it should be. I'm not saying that's wrong. But it's quite a hard road. And I actually spotted it because SFN themselves tweeted that response, which I thought was great. They just went, we kind of said, what can we do? And somebody came back quite strongly.
SAM BURRELL: And rather than ignoring it or pretending it hadn't happened, they then went, look, here's some stuff. Building on that-- I mean, we could spend all day talking about how societies respond to Black Lives Matter. I'd like to include it, but broaden it out a bit more. Let's go to something that might be easier, which is, what have you seen societies do, or what societies have you been engaged with that you think have done things-- have really supported early career researchers well?
SAM BURRELL: Because there's quite a lot of that stuff that they don't do well. But let's maybe spend a couple of minutes on, what do you think societies can do, are doing, have done? Examples of good stuff.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I can just start. Because I think building on this Black Lives Matter conversation is that taking a stand on issues of injustice is one way that societies are supporting early career researchers. I'm really wary of over-generalizations, but I think a lot of us have noticed that, particularly, younger people are really intolerant of injustice and are going to be-- if they're not already-- unwilling to join organizations that perpetuate that injustice.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And so really doing the work in ensuring that the society is advancing equity and justice is an investment in the future of your membership. That's one big thing. And, I mean, there are also lots of very tangible things that I have seen, some that are unique to this moment, where we're dealing with a pandemic-- and so out of labs, and thinking a lot about, OK, different researchers are having different-- there are different consequences of that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: If you're out of the lab, but you can just pick up your experiments after, that's one thing. If you're out of the lab, and now your data are ruined, and you have to redo a lot of years of work, that's different. If you can go and do computer modeling instead, that's also very different. If you're a parent, if you're a caretaker, and on and on, right?
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think that societies who have advocated for universities to take more flexible approaches are thinking about their evaluation and assessment during this time is a great way to use societies' clout. And then, I think, leveraging their own resources in this moment-- I've seen a lot of additional professional development programming, and community building, and online communities to help people who maybe are disconnected from their research to still engage with their community and continue to keep building their skills and their interest in their fields.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Those are a few things that I think are particularly timely, but also relevant outside of a pandemic.
BRIE HAUPT: I have a few things, too, just from logistics, that I've seen in terms of these associations and how they're trying to balance their own budget deficits during this time as well as provide resources. Some things that I've seen have been being able to give trial periods for nonmembers to be able to access archived webinars, to be able to access webinars in general-- making them free, not have a fee attached to them. I've also seen some who have been good about, if you do your renewal of your fees, your membership dues, that it actually will pay for two years versus one-- if that's their renewal process.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been helping a lot, as many universities, especially mine-- we are in a $50 million deficit. We're trying to figure out ways to cut our budgets without cutting staff or faculty members. Some of that is reducing travel costs. You have to be very specific about where your funds that you actually get are going to be allocated. So knowing that my one organization can-- I can pay for two years of membership is great to me, versus one that's still having a very high fee, even for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: Sometimes they'll do a reduced fee for early careers versus longtime members, which I think is a pretty nice, stacked approach. I've also seen some that have been able to reach out, and they ask, how can we help you? Even just having that question going out into Twitter, or Facebook, or just email-- of, what resources would you like to see from us during this time? We'll gather them together and we'll make sure that we're distributing.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been a really good-- especially in this time-- strategy to show that they're still relevant, that they also still want to engage with their membership and support them-- especially for early careers, because we don't have a lot of money. Some of us don't even know how to get into these associations. So having those emails of, this is how you can be part of us, even in this time, this is what you can do.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been a really good move.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I so agree, Brie. [AUDIO OUT] Yeah, go ahead.
BRIE HAUPT: Oh, no, you blanked out a little bit. Sorry.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Oh. I was saying, I'm so glad you brought that up. Another thing that I think we can think about is, with the move to largely virtual conferences, generally, the rates have been quite a bit lower-- plus, there are no travel costs. And I think that that also provides an opportunity to be more inclusive, especially to early career researchers, but to many others who also can't do the travel. I think one thing we might want to think about as we move forward-- and eventually, when it becomes safer, again, to travel-- is that, how can we actually keep some of the inclusivity that's resulted from this need going forward, to continue supporting these researchers?
SAM BURRELL: I'm going to go to a question that we've just had sent over to us, which is a really good one, which is, do the speakers feel like early career society members, both in formal leadership roles and not, do they have a meaningful voice in the direction of these organizations? Do you think that younger voices are well represented? I'm going to guess this is quite an open question. But do you think that they are well-represented?
SAM BURRELL: Should they be better represented? I mean, I was quite interested by your opening statement, Brie, about how you knew immediately that you were given the advice [INAUDIBLE] really important for your professional advancement.
BRIE HAUPT: Yes. [INAUDIBLE]
SAM BURRELL: There's still a relevance, so is that still-- how does that work in the governance?
BRIE HAUPT: There is if it's done with intention and strategy. And the reason I say that is, my mentors in my PhD program were very intentional about getting me connected early on. Unfortunately, as I've gone to some conferences, I've seen some PhD students who are about to become early careers, or even those who are still within their first one to three years of their career, that still have no idea how to get connected. They don't have someone that's able to say it.
BRIE HAUPT: And those societies aren't necessarily making it clear to understand how to engage. So there there's a lot-- it's a very complex question. I think, also-- some societies, I think, are a little bit more open to it. And there's this-- oh, this is going to be-- so there's this tension I've seen it with the well-established names in fields, and the balance between wanting to still acknowledge their insights and their involvement, but also still provide room and space for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: I've seen some societies that don't really do that. They tend to almost see early careerists as still being beneath or inferior, or that they still have to prove themselves, versus giving them a chance to do it within the confines of a society and giving them that professional development and those opportunities, whether it's becoming part of different sections, eventually becoming a board member, becoming part of committees, those types of things.
BRIE HAUPT: I think there are some who are able to market those, and be able to connect to those early careers to give them those opportunities and that voice, and some that aren't. And it's because of how they view early careerists more than how they view the more established, reputable names that everybody tends to know.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I agree. One rule of thumb for me is, if you're in a position of wondering if early careerists have a strong enough voice in your society, then they probably don't. And the approach there is to change it. As a graduate student, I did have the opportunity to serve as a non-voting member of like society's board. I was the only one, and I was it was the first time they had ever done that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: But that was a great step for me. And I did have a voice, particularly in lots of issues that pertained to early careerists. I think that is an example of how you take a step. And then you think more about, how do we increase that from one early careerist who does not get to vote to actually having kind of a say in decision-making processes? And then the other piece of that is, listening, as board members and other leaders, is so powerful.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And there's just no substitute for it. And sometimes you need to ask, and then be willing to take time and set down, of course, your defensive impulses-- which we all have-- to respond to those comments.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, really wanting this on the agenda for Society Street was driven by, in the last 12 months, I have two examples of clients who shall remain nameless. But on both occasions-- one of them, the youngest member of their board is 69. And the other one, they were very excited to me to meet one member of their board who was really, really young and radical.
SAM BURRELL: And I was like, wow, yay! Got a really young-- but he was 50. I'm radical. And, I mean, I'm nearly 50, so I've got nothing wrong with-- being 50 is fine. But I was suddenly like, oh, your definition of young is not actually the same as mine. And I think the point is that-- well, one of you said, I can't remember which one-- about, if you think there's a question about what you're involving early careerists enough, then the answer is, you're not.
SAM BURRELL: You need to be doing more. I think that's a really good question. Yes. [INAUDIBLE]
ROSE HENDRICKS: Could I just add one thing, Sam, to that-- is, particularly given that early careerists probably make up a really large proportion of the membership-- especially thinking about, if we include graduate students and undergraduates in that-- we know that there are so many of them. And they are your future membership. I think that it's just such a clear value proposition that rethinking the balance of those things could really provide a lot for societies.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And I also want to add a comment too. I think also there's an assumption going, even in our conversation, about early careerists and age being correlated. And that's not necessarily the case, either. So she may be an early careerist at 50 versus an early careerist at 25, 26, 27. So I like that-- at least, the strategies, hopefully, in this conversation, can still engage with early careerists as the overarching umbrella despite age or anything like that.
BRIE HAUPT: Because I do see that-- that ageism kind of comes out even in some of my associations, where-- oh, you can only be this age to be considered an early careerist. And it's like, well, if your career is restarting after years of being in another career, you're still considered an early careerist. And you still need support and assistance and guidance of learning how to navigate the society, and how you can really engage with them, and how you can get the most out of them.
BRIE HAUPT: It's that idea of, whatever you put in, you give out. But if they don't know how to even put in their energy, then they can't get anything out of it.
SAM BURRELL: Mhm. OK. Because we're picking up on questions that other people are asking us, I think there's some interest in the comment that you made right at the top, Brie, about personal branding. Because I think-- I wrote it down, as well, actually. I was taking notes when you were talking. I went, oh, wow, that's really interesting. And you were talking about, the advice that you'd been given was that societies can help with marketing yourself and developing your brand.
SAM BURRELL: And actually, I think you even talked about exploring what it is that your research might end up being about. So can you talk a bit more about that, and kind of how societies could help with that?
BRIE HAUPT: Right. OK, so one mentor specifically sat me down, being a woman and faculty, and she was like, I need to have this conversation with you, because many women in faculty don't. And it's that you are a brand. You are something to market, and you're worthy of that. Because one thing that we've been seeing is that many-- sorry if I'm going to offend, but many men in the field are very easily able to say, this is what they've done, and not get any pushback for it by being able to provide their successes and accolades.
BRIE HAUPT: She said, OK, so you need to look at yourself as a brand as a product. What do you want to be known for when it comes down to 5, 10 years within your tenure process? You may have a lot of different interest areas, but you need to be able to pick societies that give you connection to the people who have made names in those fields that you want to be known for, and that maybe you can even make connections with.
BRIE HAUPT: And then also being able to brand yourself as a unique individual that can still contribute to the disciplines that you've been in. Every time someone asks me, what are your research areas, it's crisis communication, cultural competence, community resilience. Those are my three brands. And so I need to make sure that whatever roles I pick within a society match up with those brands and give me insights and how to get in.
BRIE HAUPT: The board member position I have is for a section on emergency and crisis management. It was this idea-- she even helped me, too. She's like, you need to apply for this board member position. Don't be scared because you're not on tenure track yet, or that you're not in the "right position," or maybe it's not, you think, the perfect time. Just apply, and you never know. And I ended up getting it, which was amazing.
BRIE HAUPT: I still, weirdly, can't believe it. But I'm there. It's this idea that, by even using that, I'm being branded in this section. And then also being in charge of roles for our social media and our newsletters. I'm being branded as a communications person, so that connects me to my crisis communication. It's finding all of these strategic pieces and positions that I can put myself in so that people start getting to know my name.
BRIE HAUPT: And so when I go to any conferences or anything and I see, there's my board memberships, this is one I'm a part of, these are the journals that I'm now an editorial board member of, then that means that I'm starting to make that name for myself. And it's working. It's weird, but it's working. Having people reach out to you because of your discipline when you're still in your one year, two years, is kind of strange.
BRIE HAUPT: And you're like, oh, I am the expert. And you have to believe that you are and push that out there. Yeah. Branding yourself. It's very important.
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's such an interesting framing. And I would say it's true beyond faculty and outside the university, as well. And I think that's another thing to really strongly consider when thinking about early career researchers. And I include grad students and postdocs in that, as well. Is that many of them will not opt to pursue faculty lines. And they are-- but they could be potential members beyond that point, as well.
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's not necessarily been the tradition for most societies, but it certainly is an option. And it's, again, a huge potential pool of people who could stay engaged with the discipline and the community with each other. I think thinking a little bit more about what it means to brand yourself for options that are in faculty career, and then providing those kinds of services.
ROSE HENDRICKS: When board members are almost or exclusively academics, it's going to be hard to make big shifts in that direction. But that's also a choice. I think that the board has-- and thinking about, how do you support, also, really positive transitions and really positive cultural narratives about the opportunities that are not necessarily academic? That's another area where I think there's a huge opportunity for conversations.
BRIE HAUPT: I agree. And I do think that some societies do better at allowing more of the practitioner voices and the researcher voices to come forward versus the academics. It's almost that idea of, how do you even give early careerists a way to examine society so they see which one best fits them, and which one is going to be a to stay relevant for them, help them with their professional development, help them with their networking, and just their overall success in their field, regardless if it's faculty your research or practitioner, whichever niche area that they're in.
SAM BURRELL: I've got another great question for you guys which I'm really pleased with, because actually, it's going to be a question that I was going to ask, but I didn't have to because someone else has asked it now, which is the following. I'm curious about what things a learned society might offer which are valued the most and what else, as learned societies, we could do. And then networking is clearly key. What about other things?
SAM BURRELL: Access to knowledge, resources, discounts for conferences, opportunity to be nominated for medals and awards, professional recognition. Could we rank the benefit of a society in importance, and are there any that have been mentioned? I mean, I think-- I get the impression from you guys that networking is the most important one, but I might be wrong.
SAM BURRELL: And I wasn't going to ask that question, which is, do you think societies generally do enough in each of those areas?
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's such an awesome question. I am not confident that there is a "one size fits all" answer to this. And I think asking your membership is the way to find out what's most valued to your early careerists. But that aside, I will speak from my own intuition and experience that I think-- particularly right now, but really, always-- financial pressures are really hard for early careerists. And so anything you can do to alleviate those are huge.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Networking is also helpful, particularly, as I said before, when it's to facilitate really thinking about various opportunities. I even think that people who go on to pursue faculty jobs should also have exposure to people who have pursued other tracks. And that might just make them more understanding of the path they're choosing and help us all make more informed decisions.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Another thing that I think is super valuable-- and I would be really interested to see if members feel the same way-- is for universities to, again, use that clout that they've built up-- I'm sorry, societies to use the clout they built up in the fields to really encourage universities to be more flexible and supportive of various kinds of valuable activities. In particular, I work a lot, as I said, with engagement and thinking about researchers who, for example, collaborate with communities.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Many university promotion and tenure processes are pretty rough on that. They might count that as service and not research, or it might count as not rigorous because communities were involved, when in reality, a lot of times, those have some of the most real impacts. I think universities have a role to play in-- sorry, societies have a role to play in making sure that universities are supportive too.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And that's something that societies can do on behalf of early careerists, and all researchers.
SAM BURRELL: Mhm. Brie?
BRIE HAUPT: I don't know if I can really give an order of importance. I think they all have their own unique level of importance. It really depends on the person who's engaging in a society. But something that I would also say, including that lists-- financial discounts, yes. Very much very nice right now. Even just having it reduce fee to access archived webinars or whatever it is-- just something that gives a little alleviation on the finances at the moment.
BRIE HAUPT: But when I speak about networking, I also think there's this facet-- and it comes to me more in conferences, which are now virtual, so it's kind of finding a space for that engagement and dialogue. But it's support. It's a support network. When you go in and you're able to connect with people in your field who are also early careerists who are dealing with that stress of just being in a very analytical, very critique-driven world, it's really nice to be able to have other people to engage with to say, oh, I'm experiencing this and you are too.
BRIE HAUPT: One thing that I really appreciated with, at least, one of my associations-- one of my societies-- is that they've released some self-care webinars recently, just because of the fact that there's a lot of webinars out there about how to deal with changing research, financial security and stability right now in a time of uncertainty, justice issues. But then what about also societies saying that we care for you as an individual and as a person?
BRIE HAUPT: Are you taking your emotional and your physical-- and that well-being as being part of it. And still being able to be productive in this time. Because many of us rely on that productivity to still have a job at the end of the day. All of those aspects, I think, are important. And then just realizing, again, that, as a society, as an association, you are also the support for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: You give a knowledge base, but you also give a platform, hopefully, for people to present, and to receive critique, and to really fine-tune their skills to network, to find those people that they can connect with on a deeper level that can move them forward, as well. But seeing yourself as being almost in a relationship with these early careerists. Are you really giving to them?
BRIE HAUPT: And are they giving back to you in a way that you're both growing together versus growing apart?
SAM BURRELL: Which actually links quite nicely to one of the next questions I've got up here, which is about-- the chat have been discussing having early careerists on boards and editorial boards. And the question is, is how do we mentor early careerists and prevent them from feeling under-qualified at that level? Or is that concern unfounded?
BRIE HAUPT: Oh, it's a big concern. I would say, for me, the only reason that I even put my name in a lot of the places I did is because my mentor was very big on, just try it. The worst thing they say is no. So they say no. At least it gives you something to practice and to try and see if it works. And you never know if it hits. And luckily, things have been hitting lately.
BRIE HAUPT: I'm part of a really big journal now. They have an early career editorial board program. That's what they started to try and get early careerists to be part of the editorial board to learn about it and become more in that process. I think that would be an interesting take for some of our societies to say, here's our early career board member positions. These are focused on bringing in people that are still within those however years you want to say-- one to three or one to five years-- within their career.
BRIE HAUPT: And I think it's just marketing that. Sometimes even marketing-- it could be someone who was an early careerist and who took that chance, having them speak. They can say, from their own personal experiences, I didn't think that I was qualified. I was unsure of what to do, but I still tried, and this is actually the outcome. This didn't work out, but this one did.
BRIE HAUPT: And so having a video, even, or something along those lines, to have that conversation and say, just try it. You never know. What is it, Nike, "Just do it?" Start, maybe, #justtryit. And see what happens when early careerists are able to put in those positions. And market those positions to early careerists and say, you're qualified if you're within this one- to three-year range in your career, one- to five-year range.
BRIE HAUPT: And see what happens.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I love that response. And when you mentioned mentoring, I think of a lot of things. And I think that that is another huge area we actually haven't touched on. It goes a lot farther than even just mentoring to encourage society participation. But a lot of the other things we talked about, like you mentioned mental health and well-being.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And mentors have such a huge impact on that. And I think mentoring is something that we often think comes naturally. And the reality that I'm learning is that it's something that really has to be learned. There are strategies and things that are counter-intuitive that need to be learned. I think that-- sorry I kind of brought it into the question in this way.
ROSE HENDRICKS: But investing in mentoring training. Training to make sure that mentors at all levels are really doing the best that they can. Because I do believe that many are trying the best they can, but they need the tools to really execute. I think that's another thing that will have effects for all areas of early career success, including, certainly, encouraging involvement in the societies-- but beyond that, as well.
SAM BURRELL: Then I'm going to do a mean one-- sort of mean. Which is-- again, we talked about in our pre-webinar conversation-- is, do you have concerns-- do we have concerns-- that younger people don't see the value of being members of societies? We talked about the whole-- just a pr?cis for everyone else who wasn't party to our conversation before we joined the webinar. With about the joining, and paying membership dues, and what the value is, and how that translates into a monetary exchange, if it does.
SAM BURRELL: Do you want to kind of start unpacking some of-- that's a lot there, but start unpacking some of that?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I can share one experience I had last fall that really has stuck with me, as I was at an event that was about science communication and public engagement. And in one room was staff from a number of societies. In another room was graduate students from those same societies. In the morning, I was with the staff, and they were talking so much about all the things that they do try to do to support this, and how they communicated to their members, and it's really kind of frustrating, sometimes, that especially their grad students aren't taking advantage.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And then at lunch, when I moved over to the other group, the grad students were like, I wish they had this, and I wish they had that. And I was like, oh, actually, I just heard this morning that they do have that. And they were like, why don't they tell us? And I don't fault either side, because I completely understand how this dynamic unfolds. But I think it does speak to, traditional ways of conveying the value of societies and communicating that value maybe need to be revisited and thought about, both with a level of, kind of, what is that value?
ROSE HENDRICKS: And maybe that needs to be reframed a little bit further for newer researchers. And then yeah, as I said, how do you really articulate that in maybe a different way that that hasn't been before? And that's really challenging. And I don't have the answer to that. But I do think that thinking about that kind of experience and that there is a disconnect here, and acknowledging that, might help us convey-- because I feel really confident there's so much that is of value to early careerists.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Just to be clear, it's not, how can societies make up something? It's, how do they convey the value that really is already there to these researchers that are eager for support?
ROSE HENDRICKS: I would agree. I think I've seen-- so there have been some associations that I was a member of for maybe a year and then I stopped. Because, for me, they didn't ever really state how relevant they were in today's world as a society and an organization, what they were doing-- that agent of change kind of language. What are they doing for the faculty, for researchers, for practitioners?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Where is their area of giving back to their communities? And then even just that idea of the relevance, and how can they help you with their professional development? A lot of times, I see these marketing strategies where it's an email, and it has these bullet points of, with membership, you get da, da, da. But sometimes that doesn't connect. It doesn't actually convey all of what a society is doing. The ones that I have appreciated more is when there's-- I'm more of a visual person.
ROSE HENDRICKS: So if there is a video that says, I'm the early careerist, and I joined the society two years ago, and already, this and this has happened-- or being able to create your own hashtag on Twitter. It's taking these marketing strategies and putting intentionality behind them. And also just explicitly stating what the society does for the people, and their value, and their relevance, what their reputation is within the world.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Why would I want to go to someone whose reputation is very low versus a society who has a high reputation because they've done so much for their membership and so much for their communities? I think that there is that kind of disconnect there. And I always think of, too-- so from crisis communication background, in emergency management, you never want to distribute a message that's above a sixth grade reading level, because you want people to be able to understand and comprehend what you're saying.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I've seen some societies that are just talking above their level, talking above the level of the early careerists, and saying things that aren't relevant to them in their point of career right then. So not saying to just all of a sudden discuss, in sixth grade language, all of your messages. But like Rose said, asking your membership, how can we convey to you our value, our relevancy, our reputation, and what we can do for you?
ROSE HENDRICKS: What language specifically would connect with you? Even just doing a little study of a few select people to say, what speaks to you? And have a few drafts of messages and see what really calls out to them. One association that I'm a part of is really great at that. They really just kind of come in with new tools, Twitter. They have campaigns. They have polls.
ROSE HENDRICKS: They have so many different things to engage people for all of the levels of careerists that they have, because they're learning to speak their languages.
SAM BURRELL: I've got two great questions here. I'm going to ask the easier one first. And the easier one, possibly, is, we've been talking about what societies might be able to do for early career researchers and practitioners. Does that go the other way? What can early careerists bring to societies? And can they be the catalyst for re-energizing societies, do you think?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Wow, that was the easy question.
SAM BURRELL: There's a really engaged, chatty lot out there, guys. You're doing a great job of keeping us on our toes.
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's such a great question. Absolutely, I think early careerists have a lot to bring to societies, one being that, so long as they do-- their voices are represented in various ways, I think they do offer great perspectives on what it looks like to be forward-thinking in terms of, maybe, ideas that the three of us haven't yet shared, or different takes on them, as well.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I think that many of them are really eager to do that-- just from what I see in terms of university involvement or engagement online. Twitter certainly had some really animated conversations about ways that we can change [INAUDIBLE] the culture going on. Yes, absolutely.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think they also bring a lot of different skills, as well, thinking about different forms of media. And I'm very involved in the science communication community, and graduate students also have an appetite for communicating in creative ways, and to diverse audiences, that I think is very strong right now. Finding ways to leverage a lot of those interests, and skill sets, and competencies could add so much to societies, I think.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. I definitely agree. I think they bring that different perspective, too, because-- if we're thinking of early careerists in younger-- in age terms, how they've grown up is different than those of the older demographics that you'll have in your society. Being able to showcase the fact that they have a different perspective, and those different skill sets and viewpoints, and being able to merge that in with those older generations who also lived through times that the younger just haven't, I think that's where there's this beautiful conversation that can happen between those groups.
BRIE HAUPT: I also think, logistically, if you're not really focusing on early careerists, trying to get them in, your organization isn't going to be around much longer. Because your membership is just slowly-- this is going to sound morbid, but it's going to die off. If you only have 50 or up, and you're not getting anyone in younger, and you're going around, then in decades, all of a sudden, the society isn't functioning as well as it could.
BRIE HAUPT: Realizing-- and not necessarily catering to those populations, because you also don't want to forget the other demographics that you have. But if you're able to find a way to provide forums for those conversations to come together, and provide opportunities for early careerists to become part of boards and everything, then you're slowly going to get those to happen, and be able to maybe find new strategies to help the long journey of your organization as a whole as it continues to grow-- and hopefully grow-- I mean, increase in its membership, too.
ROSE HENDRICKS: One thing, thinking about the idea of the board position or others, is that then, also, the early careerists tell their peers about experiences they're having. It does have a lot of ripple effects that are productive, I think. And to me, one of the keys is making sure that they're not tokenized. [INAUDIBLE] Oh, yeah, this is our early [INAUDIBLE].. Or, here, why don't you do our Twitter, because we don't like to do that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think there really needs to be a lot of authentic asking and listening. And also, then, providing the opportunity for the early careerists to change the way you do things. They can't take over your Twitter account and do it exactly as you have been doing it. That's not empowering at all. I think when societies create new opportunities like that, I think they should be really ready for their assumptions to be upended.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And also, Rose-- you made me think of, too, it's almost like-- societies do tend to have to have this business mindset, obviously. Because they have to think about financial stability of their organization. So if they're not communicating with early careerists and seeing what they need, it's almost like getting a bad Yelp review or a bad review.
BRIE HAUPT: And if that negative reputation is getting out there, it's so much harder to build it back up to a positive. If some societies are having that issue where they're not having new membership coming in that's considered that early careerist category, reach out to those ones that declined membership and ask, why did you choose not to join us? We want to know. Maybe, within that conversation, you could figure out ways to fix that reputation, or even realize that maybe you think you're coming off a certain way, and you're not.
BRIE HAUPT: How can you show them how you truly are, and your value, and all of those different aspects, in a way that they're seeing it, and it's being reflected within your society, as well?
SAM BURRELL: I've got a great comment before I move on to our difficult question. The great comment is that there's been some conversation on chat about whether societies dare delegate responsibility to early careerists. And there's a nice comment here says, shouldn't they just take the plunge and trust them? Which I like.
BRIE HAUPT: Have the conversation. [INTERPOSING VOICES]
SAM BURRELL: It's true, right?
BRIE HAUPT: It really is. I know, for me, there was-- I heard some background conversation about some of that. Actually, I shouldn't have heard it, but I did. About that whole-- oh, well, they're not as seasoned. They're not as, blah, blah, blah. And already, you're putting limits on this group that you haven't even engaged with. To already say that, it's like you find yourselves as superior to that group.
BRIE HAUPT: If you're superior to that group, then they're never going to want to come in, because they're going to feel that. For early careerists to have a voice, even just-- there are some very-- I think some people fear the stereotypical early careerist that comes in and tries to change everything. And it's just a stereotype. There are some who can really bring their skill sets in to help the organization survive and to grow.
BRIE HAUPT: And you do have to take that chance and that trust. But you would have to trust any new person that comes into your role, right? If they have those skill sets, and if they have that motivation, let them. And then you help mold them and realize, this is how you operate. This is your professional development. We're going to show you how to do this.
BRIE HAUPT: So, yes. Take the dive. Take the plunge.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. And if they want to change some things, I think it's important--
BRIE HAUPT: Be open to it.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. It's probably not bad. I think, yeah, there's definitely open conversation [INAUDIBLE]---- but before inviting early careerists, so you're prepared to engage well with them-- and then when they come on. And talk about, where are the bounds? Where you're comfortable going, and what are you not comfortable changing, and why? And then negotiate that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I mean, I think that's how we move forward.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And also, think of-- conflict is not a negative situation. That conflict that may happen between board members, committee members, society membership groups, whatever you want to categorize them as, can lead to really productive and fruitful outcomes for the organization, as well. I've also seen that-- where it's like, oh, well, it may go badly, so we're not going to do it. You don't know that yet.
BRIE HAUPT: You're speaking into existence something that hasn't occurred. Give it a chance and see where that conflict, and those conversations, and that dialogue goes.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I mean, I think if there's no conflict or tension, that might be an issue. Because it sometimes means a lot of things are getting stifled and pushed away. I totally agree. I think, embrace healthy tension and conflict management.
SAM BURRELL: I'm keeping half an eye on the time. And I've saved a really difficult question to be our last question. You'll have about a minute and a half to answer this one, and it's the most difficult one of the day. No, I'm kidding. It's all talk. It will be our last question. And I won't expect you to solve this problem just like that. But the question is, what is it that society-- or have you any ideas of what societies might be able to do to help early careerists do networking right now during the pandemic?
SAM BURRELL: Bringing us right back to the immediate, and what can we do today? Have you seen anything? Have you thought of anything? Have you--
BRIE HAUPT: I have a funny idea. I mean, you can have a virtual happy hour. Why not have a wine and whine? And people drink wine-- or they don't drink. They don't have to. But they can just discuss what's going on within the quarantine and within themselves. And so you could have, maybe, happy hours, or those get-together times revolved around specific concepts.
BRIE HAUPT: It's almost like that brown bag lunch kind of situation. A little less formal than a webinar or whatnot, but it's just, every Friday, click us here on Zoom, or whichever platform you have. And let's have some conversations, and have someone who can moderate those conversations. I think that's another way to handle it. That's the one that comes to mind, because my friends and I do a lot of wine and whining as we're trying to figure out and have these-- in our careers, and being hold in some ways, and how do you be productive?
BRIE HAUPT: Those are conversations that early careerists are trying to have. Because for me, as a faculty member, I have to also-- remember, I have tenure. Even though, yes, my first year on the clock, I have a pandemic, I have community riots, I have a lot going on in my field, I still have to research. I still have to do good teaching.
BRIE HAUPT: I still have to do service. So finding that balance while also giving myself freedom to breathe during this time has been a conversation I have with many people. So why not have that conversation within the society itself?
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's fascinating. I think another fortunate thing is that many early careerists are quite comfortable with various forms of technology. I've seen a lot of great use of that so far. I've seen some Slack workspaces. Slack tends to be a favorite of a lot of us. Also, the online communities that you already have-- amping up some of the activity on those. The organization I work for, ASCB, has done some Ask Me Anything threads where they invite a speaker on a topic and people can ask questions.
ROSE HENDRICKS: They have a lot of other resources and discussion questions that leaders of the society and engaged volunteers are contributing, to have a lot of dialogue going on there. And I think that those thing-- oh, and then Twitter is, of course, the scientist's favorite place to write their concise, punchy thought. I think encouraging conversations there, that really does turn into networking. As shallow as it might seem at first glance, people can really engage in conversations that they sustain afterwards, I think, through all of those various platforms.
BRIE HAUPT: I also have another idea. Something that I almost think would be a really good strategic move that I haven't seen yet, at least from my side, is to get an email from my association to say, hey, how are you doing? As if it's actual, personal email, just saying, hey, how are you? How can we support you during this time? I think we've kind of had that mentioned. But in the form of a personal email to their work email or to their personal, whichever one that they signed up with.
BRIE HAUPT: Just to say, our society's thinking about you right now. And so we would like to engage you in another way, even if it's just, hey, how are you? How can we help?
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. It's the personal-- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
BRIE HAUPT: It is.
SAM BURRELL: --acknowledging the whole person, thing.
BRIE HAUPT: Right now. Yes.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. Right. Well, I am going to take a couple of minutes to wrap up, to say, thank you so much to you two for coming to join me in this conversation, to all of our attendees who've been busy, busy, busy on chat and asking lots of questions, which has been great. So thank you, you guys, for generously giving us your time. And thank you to everybody who came and joined and chatted. We will-- actually, I could put some slides up here.
SAM BURRELL: We will-- bear with me a second. I've got another slide. There we go. Thank you for joining us. This session has been recorded and it will be transcribed, and it will be available at the URL that's up there. We've got more webinars coming up. We've got one in July on how societies can think holistically about their content.
SAM BURRELL: And then the one for September-- we take a break in August. The one for September is revisiting the topic of change that we did in March, because obviously that was just when everything shut down. And we had two great speakers, and so we thought we'd get them back to talk in six months' time about what else has changed and how things are going. We'll be in touch with everybody once the recording's ready. We'll invite anyone who has a burning question, who wants to discuss this further, to a roundtable discussion.
SAM BURRELL: That will be in your email inbox. And thank you so much, everybody, for coming along. And thank you, especially, to Brie and Rose. Thanks, guys. That was really fun. We'll say goodbye now. And the chat will be open for another couple of minutes, and then the whole thing will close. So thanks again for your time.
SAM BURRELL: Thanks, everybody.
BRIE HAUPT: Thank you.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Thank you.
Segment:0 .
SAM BURRELL: Hi, everyone. We're live. I'm going to do a bit of chatting at the minute, just while people are coming in, to introduce everybody, and say hello and welcome you all to the session. Thanks for joining us, and welcome to Society Street's second webinar. Last month, we held a webinar on conferences and meetings, a topic which has been on many people's minds.
SAM BURRELL: And the recording that is available. We'll put the URL for that up at the end of the session for you to have a quick look at. We also, since then, have held two roundtable discussions rising from the webinar that we had last time, which were really successful. So we think we might do that again this time. So if there's lots of chat and lots of questions, there will be an opportunity for smaller groups to convene after this webinar to discuss about some of the things that we raise.
SAM BURRELL: We are running this webinar series because we had planned an in-person conference in March that didn't go ahead. And this session was meant to be our opening session for the in-person conference that we were going to be holding in March, which we didn't manage to do. But we're holding this webinar instead.
SAM BURRELL: We felt that this was a really important topic, to start exploring exactly who it is that societies are seeking to serve, and whether what they're doing is pretty much fitting nicely with that community that they're trying to serve. So we thought-- we appreciate that every society serves more than one group, if you like, but we felt that it was worth particularly looking at what early career researchers and practitioners might be wanting, and thinking about-- from, and thinking about from their learned societies.
SAM BURRELL: That's the topic for today. Welcome, everybody. Hopefully everybody who wanted to join is now logged in properly. Let me just drive this presentation. I will allow the speakers to introduce themselves in just a moment. But before I do that, I just wanted to say thank you very much to our sponsors, who were originally sponsoring the in-person conference but have been really supportive of us moving to online and helping us to continue to run these webinars, which means that it's freely available for you guys to attend.
SAM BURRELL: So we're very grateful to all of those sponsors. You can see them up there. Our gold sponsors are Wiley and Elsevier, and our other sponsors have been Advantage, Atypon, Cactus, Consort Strategy, Capital Media, AJE, Renew Consultants, ALPSP, and Silverchair. So thank you to all of them. And then a couple of housekeeping points before we get going.
SAM BURRELL: There's a chat panel. For those of you that it came up automatically, it will be on the right-hand side of your screen. If you can't see the chat panel, there should be either a blue or gray box in the bottom right-hand side of your screen that you can click on and it'll bring up the chat function. We're not going to be opening mics to attendees, but we really want people to join in and ask questions.
SAM BURRELL: Aside from anything else, the way we've structured these questions-- this session is assuming that you guys have got things to say that we can draw on. So, please, don't be shy. Chat in the chat function. We've got moderators that are helping us to pull questions in so we can bring it into the discussion.
SAM BURRELL: So the idea is, is that we can have you guys inputting to the conversation, as well. Originally, we were going to invite 10 people to our in-person conference to join small discussion groups, but clearly, that's not happening. However, we're very, very pleased to have Brie and Rose joining us. I'll let them introduce themselves in just a second. A brief introduction.
SAM BURRELL: I'm Sam Burrell. I'm the program chair for Society Street. And in my spare time, I'm also a consultant with Renew Consultants. And we work with learned societies on a bunch of strategic projects. So this is an area that we're really interested in, is looking at missions of societies and how they serve their communities.
SAM BURRELL: And with that, I'm going to ask Brie and Rose to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their work, and their areas of interest, and why they thought they might come and talk to us about this. Brie, do you want to kick us off?
BRIE HAUPT: Can do. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to this webinar. I am Brie Haupt. I am a professor of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Virginia Commonwealth University. My research areas tend to revolve around crisis communication, cultural competence, and community resilience.
BRIE HAUPT: I've also started verging into non-profit organizations, as well. My perspective comes from a tenure track-- first year. So it's been quite a first year, as you can imagine. But first year on the tenure track, having to make sure to engage in research, and to network, and to really build those connections now to really make some impactful research that can impact our communities and help their resilience levels.
BRIE HAUPT: That's my perspective that I'm coming from. And I'm very excited to talk about associations, because I love them.
SAM BURRELL: Rose?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Thanks. It's really great to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. I'm Rose Hendricks. I am a Civic Science Fellow, and I work at the American Society for Cell Biology. My role is to actually work across many different societies to lead the development of a collaborative framework to better support researchers who engage, in various ways, with diverse audiences.
ROSE HENDRICKS: So through advocacy, and science communication, and through community science and participation-- collaboration with communities. I earned my PhD in cognitive science about three years ago from UC San Diego. Kind of come at it from the perspective of a relatively early career researcher who also works across these various organizations in the field of civic engagement.
SAM BURRELL: I'm going to kick you off with quite an open question, which is, how would you describe your relationship with either a learned society or, generally, academic associations right now? So kind of center you in relation to associations and societies.
BRIE HAUPT: Mhm. I'll go ahead and start. Mine really started in my PhD program. My mentor, who's very much connected to a lot of our professional and national associations, was saying that those were the platforms to start networking, to be able to build collaborative relationships for research, to even brand yourself as an individual within the research and the teaching realm, and even just what your expertise area is going to be.
BRIE HAUPT: It's kind of this way to enhance your reputation, and enhance that network that's so needed for researchers to make it to tenure, because that's a struggle. I also have a relationship, now, in that I'm part of several organizations. One specifically has given me a lot of ability to grow. I'm now a board member for one of the sections, editor for their newsletter, and it's been opening up a lot more opportunities than I would have ever had if I hadn't already been part of that organization.
BRIE HAUPT: That's pretty much my relationship with associations, and I see them as being very vital to the success of even-- tenure track or non-tenure track researchers in each field and discipline.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Wow. That is so helpful for me to hear, from a early faculty perspective. Because my relationship with societies is quite different, because I work with them. And I think about them, actually, all day, every day. I think of societies as agents of change-- that they have a lot of potential to help bridge the relationship between science and society in the future.
ROSE HENDRICKS: In part because they've got a lot of clout and history, and they have huge, amazing, robust communities of researchers with so many skill sets, and perspectives, and backgrounds. That's what I'm especially excited about, is how societies can leverage all of those things in order to really encourage real positive shifts in how we think about science in society-- in the broader society today.
ROSE HENDRICKS:
SAM BURRELL: I want to ask a quite difficult question now. Sorry.
ROSE HENDRICKS: All for it.
SAM BURRELL: Well, no, I just think that-- there's two things that I picked out from what you both have said. Is, very clearly, there's a point about the import-- there's two really important things. One of them is around networking, relationship-building, and community. But I also want to pick up, Rose, on your point there about being agents of change. And I wonder-- you mentioned that it's really important because they're well-established organizations.
SAM BURRELL: Do you see a tension there between the requirement to be an agent of change and the fact that they're established organizations? And do you see that playing out in any way that?
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's a great question. My first thought is, yes. I see a tension there, and that's OK. I think being well-established, in some ways, kind of means status quo. And a recognition of areas in which an organization does perpetuate status quo, it's the first step in thinking kind of critically about, what is it that we don't want to represent the status quo on?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Where do we want to actually be agents of change? And that is not to say that everything based on history or status quo we need to toss out, by any means, but rather that, when we reflect on the fact that, with long histories, and embedded in the history and culture and science-- which has many of its own inequities and similar-- that, yeah, there are opportunities to pivot.
BRIE HAUPT: I also have seen a little bit of a tension in terms of-- within my community right now, there's been a lot of riots for the Black Lives Matter movement and everything, and for justice. And so I do see a tension with professional organizations and societies trying to find that balance between what their role is for the community and being able to strategically state their position on these topics while also not alienating or somehow potentially causing a negative impact to their own reputation or operations as an organization.
BRIE HAUPT: I would say that's kind of where I see a lot of tension, at least right now, with these organizations and being agents of change. However, the ones that I've seen that have made a statement, and have been transparent, and have provided resources, even if they're not connected to the issue, if they have something that's still relevant, and they're still marketing that and stating to their members-- and even nonmembers-- that there's access to this information source than the greater knowledge base, I think that's been a really good move on their part, versus some that I've seen that haven't really said anything.
BRIE HAUPT: And people have been wanting them to really pull out and say, what can you do for us? What can you help us do right now, with all of us needing more information? We need more support to be able to move forward. Because it's been quite a unique year, 2020. I don't know if everyone's done with it.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I mean, I saw something really interesting that I tweeted from the Society Street account. I think it was yesterday. I think it was-- SFN had put out a tweet about Black Lives Matter and what could they be doing for that community, kind of engaging with the issue and going, so, what can we be doing? And there was a response that went, look inwards.
SAM BURRELL: Look at what you're doing within your own society. It was quite-- I mean, I think it should be. I'm not saying that's wrong. But it's quite a hard road. And I actually spotted it because SFN themselves tweeted that response, which I thought was great. They just went, we kind of said, what can we do? And somebody came back quite strongly.
SAM BURRELL: And rather than ignoring it or pretending it hadn't happened, they then went, look, here's some stuff. Building on that-- I mean, we could spend all day talking about how societies respond to Black Lives Matter. I'd like to include it, but broaden it out a bit more. Let's go to something that might be easier, which is, what have you seen societies do, or what societies have you been engaged with that you think have done things-- have really supported early career researchers well?
SAM BURRELL: Because there's quite a lot of that stuff that they don't do well. But let's maybe spend a couple of minutes on, what do you think societies can do, are doing, have done? Examples of good stuff.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I can just start. Because I think building on this Black Lives Matter conversation is that taking a stand on issues of injustice is one way that societies are supporting early career researchers. I'm really wary of over-generalizations, but I think a lot of us have noticed that, particularly, younger people are really intolerant of injustice and are going to be-- if they're not already-- unwilling to join organizations that perpetuate that injustice.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And so really doing the work in ensuring that the society is advancing equity and justice is an investment in the future of your membership. That's one big thing. And, I mean, there are also lots of very tangible things that I have seen, some that are unique to this moment, where we're dealing with a pandemic-- and so out of labs, and thinking a lot about, OK, different researchers are having different-- there are different consequences of that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: If you're out of the lab, but you can just pick up your experiments after, that's one thing. If you're out of the lab, and now your data are ruined, and you have to redo a lot of years of work, that's different. If you can go and do computer modeling instead, that's also very different. If you're a parent, if you're a caretaker, and on and on, right?
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think that societies who have advocated for universities to take more flexible approaches are thinking about their evaluation and assessment during this time is a great way to use societies' clout. And then, I think, leveraging their own resources in this moment-- I've seen a lot of additional professional development programming, and community building, and online communities to help people who maybe are disconnected from their research to still engage with their community and continue to keep building their skills and their interest in their fields.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Those are a few things that I think are particularly timely, but also relevant outside of a pandemic.
BRIE HAUPT: I have a few things, too, just from logistics, that I've seen in terms of these associations and how they're trying to balance their own budget deficits during this time as well as provide resources. Some things that I've seen have been being able to give trial periods for nonmembers to be able to access archived webinars, to be able to access webinars in general-- making them free, not have a fee attached to them. I've also seen some who have been good about, if you do your renewal of your fees, your membership dues, that it actually will pay for two years versus one-- if that's their renewal process.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been helping a lot, as many universities, especially mine-- we are in a $50 million deficit. We're trying to figure out ways to cut our budgets without cutting staff or faculty members. Some of that is reducing travel costs. You have to be very specific about where your funds that you actually get are going to be allocated. So knowing that my one organization can-- I can pay for two years of membership is great to me, versus one that's still having a very high fee, even for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: Sometimes they'll do a reduced fee for early careers versus longtime members, which I think is a pretty nice, stacked approach. I've also seen some that have been able to reach out, and they ask, how can we help you? Even just having that question going out into Twitter, or Facebook, or just email-- of, what resources would you like to see from us during this time? We'll gather them together and we'll make sure that we're distributing.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been a really good-- especially in this time-- strategy to show that they're still relevant, that they also still want to engage with their membership and support them-- especially for early careers, because we don't have a lot of money. Some of us don't even know how to get into these associations. So having those emails of, this is how you can be part of us, even in this time, this is what you can do.
BRIE HAUPT: I think that's been a really good move.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I so agree, Brie. [AUDIO OUT] Yeah, go ahead.
BRIE HAUPT: Oh, no, you blanked out a little bit. Sorry.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Oh. I was saying, I'm so glad you brought that up. Another thing that I think we can think about is, with the move to largely virtual conferences, generally, the rates have been quite a bit lower-- plus, there are no travel costs. And I think that that also provides an opportunity to be more inclusive, especially to early career researchers, but to many others who also can't do the travel. I think one thing we might want to think about as we move forward-- and eventually, when it becomes safer, again, to travel-- is that, how can we actually keep some of the inclusivity that's resulted from this need going forward, to continue supporting these researchers?
SAM BURRELL: I'm going to go to a question that we've just had sent over to us, which is a really good one, which is, do the speakers feel like early career society members, both in formal leadership roles and not, do they have a meaningful voice in the direction of these organizations? Do you think that younger voices are well represented? I'm going to guess this is quite an open question. But do you think that they are well-represented?
SAM BURRELL: Should they be better represented? I mean, I was quite interested by your opening statement, Brie, about how you knew immediately that you were given the advice [INAUDIBLE] really important for your professional advancement.
BRIE HAUPT: Yes. [INAUDIBLE]
SAM BURRELL: There's still a relevance, so is that still-- how does that work in the governance?
BRIE HAUPT: There is if it's done with intention and strategy. And the reason I say that is, my mentors in my PhD program were very intentional about getting me connected early on. Unfortunately, as I've gone to some conferences, I've seen some PhD students who are about to become early careers, or even those who are still within their first one to three years of their career, that still have no idea how to get connected. They don't have someone that's able to say it.
BRIE HAUPT: And those societies aren't necessarily making it clear to understand how to engage. So there there's a lot-- it's a very complex question. I think, also-- some societies, I think, are a little bit more open to it. And there's this-- oh, this is going to be-- so there's this tension I've seen it with the well-established names in fields, and the balance between wanting to still acknowledge their insights and their involvement, but also still provide room and space for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: I've seen some societies that don't really do that. They tend to almost see early careerists as still being beneath or inferior, or that they still have to prove themselves, versus giving them a chance to do it within the confines of a society and giving them that professional development and those opportunities, whether it's becoming part of different sections, eventually becoming a board member, becoming part of committees, those types of things.
BRIE HAUPT: I think there are some who are able to market those, and be able to connect to those early careers to give them those opportunities and that voice, and some that aren't. And it's because of how they view early careerists more than how they view the more established, reputable names that everybody tends to know.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I agree. One rule of thumb for me is, if you're in a position of wondering if early careerists have a strong enough voice in your society, then they probably don't. And the approach there is to change it. As a graduate student, I did have the opportunity to serve as a non-voting member of like society's board. I was the only one, and I was it was the first time they had ever done that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: But that was a great step for me. And I did have a voice, particularly in lots of issues that pertained to early careerists. I think that is an example of how you take a step. And then you think more about, how do we increase that from one early careerist who does not get to vote to actually having kind of a say in decision-making processes? And then the other piece of that is, listening, as board members and other leaders, is so powerful.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And there's just no substitute for it. And sometimes you need to ask, and then be willing to take time and set down, of course, your defensive impulses-- which we all have-- to respond to those comments.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, really wanting this on the agenda for Society Street was driven by, in the last 12 months, I have two examples of clients who shall remain nameless. But on both occasions-- one of them, the youngest member of their board is 69. And the other one, they were very excited to me to meet one member of their board who was really, really young and radical.
SAM BURRELL: And I was like, wow, yay! Got a really young-- but he was 50. I'm radical. And, I mean, I'm nearly 50, so I've got nothing wrong with-- being 50 is fine. But I was suddenly like, oh, your definition of young is not actually the same as mine. And I think the point is that-- well, one of you said, I can't remember which one-- about, if you think there's a question about what you're involving early careerists enough, then the answer is, you're not.
SAM BURRELL: You need to be doing more. I think that's a really good question. Yes. [INAUDIBLE]
ROSE HENDRICKS: Could I just add one thing, Sam, to that-- is, particularly given that early careerists probably make up a really large proportion of the membership-- especially thinking about, if we include graduate students and undergraduates in that-- we know that there are so many of them. And they are your future membership. I think that it's just such a clear value proposition that rethinking the balance of those things could really provide a lot for societies.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And I also want to add a comment too. I think also there's an assumption going, even in our conversation, about early careerists and age being correlated. And that's not necessarily the case, either. So she may be an early careerist at 50 versus an early careerist at 25, 26, 27. So I like that-- at least, the strategies, hopefully, in this conversation, can still engage with early careerists as the overarching umbrella despite age or anything like that.
BRIE HAUPT: Because I do see that-- that ageism kind of comes out even in some of my associations, where-- oh, you can only be this age to be considered an early careerist. And it's like, well, if your career is restarting after years of being in another career, you're still considered an early careerist. And you still need support and assistance and guidance of learning how to navigate the society, and how you can really engage with them, and how you can get the most out of them.
BRIE HAUPT: It's that idea of, whatever you put in, you give out. But if they don't know how to even put in their energy, then they can't get anything out of it.
SAM BURRELL: Mhm. OK. Because we're picking up on questions that other people are asking us, I think there's some interest in the comment that you made right at the top, Brie, about personal branding. Because I think-- I wrote it down, as well, actually. I was taking notes when you were talking. I went, oh, wow, that's really interesting. And you were talking about, the advice that you'd been given was that societies can help with marketing yourself and developing your brand.
SAM BURRELL: And actually, I think you even talked about exploring what it is that your research might end up being about. So can you talk a bit more about that, and kind of how societies could help with that?
BRIE HAUPT: Right. OK, so one mentor specifically sat me down, being a woman and faculty, and she was like, I need to have this conversation with you, because many women in faculty don't. And it's that you are a brand. You are something to market, and you're worthy of that. Because one thing that we've been seeing is that many-- sorry if I'm going to offend, but many men in the field are very easily able to say, this is what they've done, and not get any pushback for it by being able to provide their successes and accolades.
BRIE HAUPT: She said, OK, so you need to look at yourself as a brand as a product. What do you want to be known for when it comes down to 5, 10 years within your tenure process? You may have a lot of different interest areas, but you need to be able to pick societies that give you connection to the people who have made names in those fields that you want to be known for, and that maybe you can even make connections with.
BRIE HAUPT: And then also being able to brand yourself as a unique individual that can still contribute to the disciplines that you've been in. Every time someone asks me, what are your research areas, it's crisis communication, cultural competence, community resilience. Those are my three brands. And so I need to make sure that whatever roles I pick within a society match up with those brands and give me insights and how to get in.
BRIE HAUPT: The board member position I have is for a section on emergency and crisis management. It was this idea-- she even helped me, too. She's like, you need to apply for this board member position. Don't be scared because you're not on tenure track yet, or that you're not in the "right position," or maybe it's not, you think, the perfect time. Just apply, and you never know. And I ended up getting it, which was amazing.
BRIE HAUPT: I still, weirdly, can't believe it. But I'm there. It's this idea that, by even using that, I'm being branded in this section. And then also being in charge of roles for our social media and our newsletters. I'm being branded as a communications person, so that connects me to my crisis communication. It's finding all of these strategic pieces and positions that I can put myself in so that people start getting to know my name.
BRIE HAUPT: And so when I go to any conferences or anything and I see, there's my board memberships, this is one I'm a part of, these are the journals that I'm now an editorial board member of, then that means that I'm starting to make that name for myself. And it's working. It's weird, but it's working. Having people reach out to you because of your discipline when you're still in your one year, two years, is kind of strange.
BRIE HAUPT: And you're like, oh, I am the expert. And you have to believe that you are and push that out there. Yeah. Branding yourself. It's very important.
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's such an interesting framing. And I would say it's true beyond faculty and outside the university, as well. And I think that's another thing to really strongly consider when thinking about early career researchers. And I include grad students and postdocs in that, as well. Is that many of them will not opt to pursue faculty lines. And they are-- but they could be potential members beyond that point, as well.
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's not necessarily been the tradition for most societies, but it certainly is an option. And it's, again, a huge potential pool of people who could stay engaged with the discipline and the community with each other. I think thinking a little bit more about what it means to brand yourself for options that are in faculty career, and then providing those kinds of services.
ROSE HENDRICKS: When board members are almost or exclusively academics, it's going to be hard to make big shifts in that direction. But that's also a choice. I think that the board has-- and thinking about, how do you support, also, really positive transitions and really positive cultural narratives about the opportunities that are not necessarily academic? That's another area where I think there's a huge opportunity for conversations.
BRIE HAUPT: I agree. And I do think that some societies do better at allowing more of the practitioner voices and the researcher voices to come forward versus the academics. It's almost that idea of, how do you even give early careerists a way to examine society so they see which one best fits them, and which one is going to be a to stay relevant for them, help them with their professional development, help them with their networking, and just their overall success in their field, regardless if it's faculty your research or practitioner, whichever niche area that they're in.
SAM BURRELL: I've got another great question for you guys which I'm really pleased with, because actually, it's going to be a question that I was going to ask, but I didn't have to because someone else has asked it now, which is the following. I'm curious about what things a learned society might offer which are valued the most and what else, as learned societies, we could do. And then networking is clearly key. What about other things?
SAM BURRELL: Access to knowledge, resources, discounts for conferences, opportunity to be nominated for medals and awards, professional recognition. Could we rank the benefit of a society in importance, and are there any that have been mentioned? I mean, I think-- I get the impression from you guys that networking is the most important one, but I might be wrong.
SAM BURRELL: And I wasn't going to ask that question, which is, do you think societies generally do enough in each of those areas?
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's such an awesome question. I am not confident that there is a "one size fits all" answer to this. And I think asking your membership is the way to find out what's most valued to your early careerists. But that aside, I will speak from my own intuition and experience that I think-- particularly right now, but really, always-- financial pressures are really hard for early careerists. And so anything you can do to alleviate those are huge.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Networking is also helpful, particularly, as I said before, when it's to facilitate really thinking about various opportunities. I even think that people who go on to pursue faculty jobs should also have exposure to people who have pursued other tracks. And that might just make them more understanding of the path they're choosing and help us all make more informed decisions.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Another thing that I think is super valuable-- and I would be really interested to see if members feel the same way-- is for universities to, again, use that clout that they've built up-- I'm sorry, societies to use the clout they built up in the fields to really encourage universities to be more flexible and supportive of various kinds of valuable activities. In particular, I work a lot, as I said, with engagement and thinking about researchers who, for example, collaborate with communities.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Many university promotion and tenure processes are pretty rough on that. They might count that as service and not research, or it might count as not rigorous because communities were involved, when in reality, a lot of times, those have some of the most real impacts. I think universities have a role to play in-- sorry, societies have a role to play in making sure that universities are supportive too.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And that's something that societies can do on behalf of early careerists, and all researchers.
SAM BURRELL: Mhm. Brie?
BRIE HAUPT: I don't know if I can really give an order of importance. I think they all have their own unique level of importance. It really depends on the person who's engaging in a society. But something that I would also say, including that lists-- financial discounts, yes. Very much very nice right now. Even just having it reduce fee to access archived webinars or whatever it is-- just something that gives a little alleviation on the finances at the moment.
BRIE HAUPT: But when I speak about networking, I also think there's this facet-- and it comes to me more in conferences, which are now virtual, so it's kind of finding a space for that engagement and dialogue. But it's support. It's a support network. When you go in and you're able to connect with people in your field who are also early careerists who are dealing with that stress of just being in a very analytical, very critique-driven world, it's really nice to be able to have other people to engage with to say, oh, I'm experiencing this and you are too.
BRIE HAUPT: One thing that I really appreciated with, at least, one of my associations-- one of my societies-- is that they've released some self-care webinars recently, just because of the fact that there's a lot of webinars out there about how to deal with changing research, financial security and stability right now in a time of uncertainty, justice issues. But then what about also societies saying that we care for you as an individual and as a person?
BRIE HAUPT: Are you taking your emotional and your physical-- and that well-being as being part of it. And still being able to be productive in this time. Because many of us rely on that productivity to still have a job at the end of the day. All of those aspects, I think, are important. And then just realizing, again, that, as a society, as an association, you are also the support for early careerists.
BRIE HAUPT: You give a knowledge base, but you also give a platform, hopefully, for people to present, and to receive critique, and to really fine-tune their skills to network, to find those people that they can connect with on a deeper level that can move them forward, as well. But seeing yourself as being almost in a relationship with these early careerists. Are you really giving to them?
BRIE HAUPT: And are they giving back to you in a way that you're both growing together versus growing apart?
SAM BURRELL: Which actually links quite nicely to one of the next questions I've got up here, which is about-- the chat have been discussing having early careerists on boards and editorial boards. And the question is, is how do we mentor early careerists and prevent them from feeling under-qualified at that level? Or is that concern unfounded?
BRIE HAUPT: Oh, it's a big concern. I would say, for me, the only reason that I even put my name in a lot of the places I did is because my mentor was very big on, just try it. The worst thing they say is no. So they say no. At least it gives you something to practice and to try and see if it works. And you never know if it hits. And luckily, things have been hitting lately.
BRIE HAUPT: I'm part of a really big journal now. They have an early career editorial board program. That's what they started to try and get early careerists to be part of the editorial board to learn about it and become more in that process. I think that would be an interesting take for some of our societies to say, here's our early career board member positions. These are focused on bringing in people that are still within those however years you want to say-- one to three or one to five years-- within their career.
BRIE HAUPT: And I think it's just marketing that. Sometimes even marketing-- it could be someone who was an early careerist and who took that chance, having them speak. They can say, from their own personal experiences, I didn't think that I was qualified. I was unsure of what to do, but I still tried, and this is actually the outcome. This didn't work out, but this one did.
BRIE HAUPT: And so having a video, even, or something along those lines, to have that conversation and say, just try it. You never know. What is it, Nike, "Just do it?" Start, maybe, #justtryit. And see what happens when early careerists are able to put in those positions. And market those positions to early careerists and say, you're qualified if you're within this one- to three-year range in your career, one- to five-year range.
BRIE HAUPT: And see what happens.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I love that response. And when you mentioned mentoring, I think of a lot of things. And I think that that is another huge area we actually haven't touched on. It goes a lot farther than even just mentoring to encourage society participation. But a lot of the other things we talked about, like you mentioned mental health and well-being.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And mentors have such a huge impact on that. And I think mentoring is something that we often think comes naturally. And the reality that I'm learning is that it's something that really has to be learned. There are strategies and things that are counter-intuitive that need to be learned. I think that-- sorry I kind of brought it into the question in this way.
ROSE HENDRICKS: But investing in mentoring training. Training to make sure that mentors at all levels are really doing the best that they can. Because I do believe that many are trying the best they can, but they need the tools to really execute. I think that's another thing that will have effects for all areas of early career success, including, certainly, encouraging involvement in the societies-- but beyond that, as well.
SAM BURRELL: Then I'm going to do a mean one-- sort of mean. Which is-- again, we talked about in our pre-webinar conversation-- is, do you have concerns-- do we have concerns-- that younger people don't see the value of being members of societies? We talked about the whole-- just a pr?cis for everyone else who wasn't party to our conversation before we joined the webinar. With about the joining, and paying membership dues, and what the value is, and how that translates into a monetary exchange, if it does.
SAM BURRELL: Do you want to kind of start unpacking some of-- that's a lot there, but start unpacking some of that?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I can share one experience I had last fall that really has stuck with me, as I was at an event that was about science communication and public engagement. And in one room was staff from a number of societies. In another room was graduate students from those same societies. In the morning, I was with the staff, and they were talking so much about all the things that they do try to do to support this, and how they communicated to their members, and it's really kind of frustrating, sometimes, that especially their grad students aren't taking advantage.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And then at lunch, when I moved over to the other group, the grad students were like, I wish they had this, and I wish they had that. And I was like, oh, actually, I just heard this morning that they do have that. And they were like, why don't they tell us? And I don't fault either side, because I completely understand how this dynamic unfolds. But I think it does speak to, traditional ways of conveying the value of societies and communicating that value maybe need to be revisited and thought about, both with a level of, kind of, what is that value?
ROSE HENDRICKS: And maybe that needs to be reframed a little bit further for newer researchers. And then yeah, as I said, how do you really articulate that in maybe a different way that that hasn't been before? And that's really challenging. And I don't have the answer to that. But I do think that thinking about that kind of experience and that there is a disconnect here, and acknowledging that, might help us convey-- because I feel really confident there's so much that is of value to early careerists.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Just to be clear, it's not, how can societies make up something? It's, how do they convey the value that really is already there to these researchers that are eager for support?
ROSE HENDRICKS: I would agree. I think I've seen-- so there have been some associations that I was a member of for maybe a year and then I stopped. Because, for me, they didn't ever really state how relevant they were in today's world as a society and an organization, what they were doing-- that agent of change kind of language. What are they doing for the faculty, for researchers, for practitioners?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Where is their area of giving back to their communities? And then even just that idea of the relevance, and how can they help you with their professional development? A lot of times, I see these marketing strategies where it's an email, and it has these bullet points of, with membership, you get da, da, da. But sometimes that doesn't connect. It doesn't actually convey all of what a society is doing. The ones that I have appreciated more is when there's-- I'm more of a visual person.
ROSE HENDRICKS: So if there is a video that says, I'm the early careerist, and I joined the society two years ago, and already, this and this has happened-- or being able to create your own hashtag on Twitter. It's taking these marketing strategies and putting intentionality behind them. And also just explicitly stating what the society does for the people, and their value, and their relevance, what their reputation is within the world.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Why would I want to go to someone whose reputation is very low versus a society who has a high reputation because they've done so much for their membership and so much for their communities? I think that there is that kind of disconnect there. And I always think of, too-- so from crisis communication background, in emergency management, you never want to distribute a message that's above a sixth grade reading level, because you want people to be able to understand and comprehend what you're saying.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I've seen some societies that are just talking above their level, talking above the level of the early careerists, and saying things that aren't relevant to them in their point of career right then. So not saying to just all of a sudden discuss, in sixth grade language, all of your messages. But like Rose said, asking your membership, how can we convey to you our value, our relevancy, our reputation, and what we can do for you?
ROSE HENDRICKS: What language specifically would connect with you? Even just doing a little study of a few select people to say, what speaks to you? And have a few drafts of messages and see what really calls out to them. One association that I'm a part of is really great at that. They really just kind of come in with new tools, Twitter. They have campaigns. They have polls.
ROSE HENDRICKS: They have so many different things to engage people for all of the levels of careerists that they have, because they're learning to speak their languages.
SAM BURRELL: I've got two great questions here. I'm going to ask the easier one first. And the easier one, possibly, is, we've been talking about what societies might be able to do for early career researchers and practitioners. Does that go the other way? What can early careerists bring to societies? And can they be the catalyst for re-energizing societies, do you think?
ROSE HENDRICKS: Wow, that was the easy question.
SAM BURRELL: There's a really engaged, chatty lot out there, guys. You're doing a great job of keeping us on our toes.
ROSE HENDRICKS: It's such a great question. Absolutely, I think early careerists have a lot to bring to societies, one being that, so long as they do-- their voices are represented in various ways, I think they do offer great perspectives on what it looks like to be forward-thinking in terms of, maybe, ideas that the three of us haven't yet shared, or different takes on them, as well.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I think that many of them are really eager to do that-- just from what I see in terms of university involvement or engagement online. Twitter certainly had some really animated conversations about ways that we can change [INAUDIBLE] the culture going on. Yes, absolutely.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think they also bring a lot of different skills, as well, thinking about different forms of media. And I'm very involved in the science communication community, and graduate students also have an appetite for communicating in creative ways, and to diverse audiences, that I think is very strong right now. Finding ways to leverage a lot of those interests, and skill sets, and competencies could add so much to societies, I think.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. I definitely agree. I think they bring that different perspective, too, because-- if we're thinking of early careerists in younger-- in age terms, how they've grown up is different than those of the older demographics that you'll have in your society. Being able to showcase the fact that they have a different perspective, and those different skill sets and viewpoints, and being able to merge that in with those older generations who also lived through times that the younger just haven't, I think that's where there's this beautiful conversation that can happen between those groups.
BRIE HAUPT: I also think, logistically, if you're not really focusing on early careerists, trying to get them in, your organization isn't going to be around much longer. Because your membership is just slowly-- this is going to sound morbid, but it's going to die off. If you only have 50 or up, and you're not getting anyone in younger, and you're going around, then in decades, all of a sudden, the society isn't functioning as well as it could.
BRIE HAUPT: Realizing-- and not necessarily catering to those populations, because you also don't want to forget the other demographics that you have. But if you're able to find a way to provide forums for those conversations to come together, and provide opportunities for early careerists to become part of boards and everything, then you're slowly going to get those to happen, and be able to maybe find new strategies to help the long journey of your organization as a whole as it continues to grow-- and hopefully grow-- I mean, increase in its membership, too.
ROSE HENDRICKS: One thing, thinking about the idea of the board position or others, is that then, also, the early careerists tell their peers about experiences they're having. It does have a lot of ripple effects that are productive, I think. And to me, one of the keys is making sure that they're not tokenized. [INAUDIBLE] Oh, yeah, this is our early [INAUDIBLE].. Or, here, why don't you do our Twitter, because we don't like to do that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: I think there really needs to be a lot of authentic asking and listening. And also, then, providing the opportunity for the early careerists to change the way you do things. They can't take over your Twitter account and do it exactly as you have been doing it. That's not empowering at all. I think when societies create new opportunities like that, I think they should be really ready for their assumptions to be upended.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And also, Rose-- you made me think of, too, it's almost like-- societies do tend to have to have this business mindset, obviously. Because they have to think about financial stability of their organization. So if they're not communicating with early careerists and seeing what they need, it's almost like getting a bad Yelp review or a bad review.
BRIE HAUPT: And if that negative reputation is getting out there, it's so much harder to build it back up to a positive. If some societies are having that issue where they're not having new membership coming in that's considered that early careerist category, reach out to those ones that declined membership and ask, why did you choose not to join us? We want to know. Maybe, within that conversation, you could figure out ways to fix that reputation, or even realize that maybe you think you're coming off a certain way, and you're not.
BRIE HAUPT: How can you show them how you truly are, and your value, and all of those different aspects, in a way that they're seeing it, and it's being reflected within your society, as well?
SAM BURRELL: I've got a great comment before I move on to our difficult question. The great comment is that there's been some conversation on chat about whether societies dare delegate responsibility to early careerists. And there's a nice comment here says, shouldn't they just take the plunge and trust them? Which I like.
BRIE HAUPT: Have the conversation. [INTERPOSING VOICES]
SAM BURRELL: It's true, right?
BRIE HAUPT: It really is. I know, for me, there was-- I heard some background conversation about some of that. Actually, I shouldn't have heard it, but I did. About that whole-- oh, well, they're not as seasoned. They're not as, blah, blah, blah. And already, you're putting limits on this group that you haven't even engaged with. To already say that, it's like you find yourselves as superior to that group.
BRIE HAUPT: If you're superior to that group, then they're never going to want to come in, because they're going to feel that. For early careerists to have a voice, even just-- there are some very-- I think some people fear the stereotypical early careerist that comes in and tries to change everything. And it's just a stereotype. There are some who can really bring their skill sets in to help the organization survive and to grow.
BRIE HAUPT: And you do have to take that chance and that trust. But you would have to trust any new person that comes into your role, right? If they have those skill sets, and if they have that motivation, let them. And then you help mold them and realize, this is how you operate. This is your professional development. We're going to show you how to do this.
BRIE HAUPT: So, yes. Take the dive. Take the plunge.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. And if they want to change some things, I think it's important--
BRIE HAUPT: Be open to it.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. It's probably not bad. I think, yeah, there's definitely open conversation [INAUDIBLE]---- but before inviting early careerists, so you're prepared to engage well with them-- and then when they come on. And talk about, where are the bounds? Where you're comfortable going, and what are you not comfortable changing, and why? And then negotiate that.
ROSE HENDRICKS: And I mean, I think that's how we move forward.
BRIE HAUPT: Right. And also, think of-- conflict is not a negative situation. That conflict that may happen between board members, committee members, society membership groups, whatever you want to categorize them as, can lead to really productive and fruitful outcomes for the organization, as well. I've also seen that-- where it's like, oh, well, it may go badly, so we're not going to do it. You don't know that yet.
BRIE HAUPT: You're speaking into existence something that hasn't occurred. Give it a chance and see where that conflict, and those conversations, and that dialogue goes.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Yeah. I mean, I think if there's no conflict or tension, that might be an issue. Because it sometimes means a lot of things are getting stifled and pushed away. I totally agree. I think, embrace healthy tension and conflict management.
SAM BURRELL: I'm keeping half an eye on the time. And I've saved a really difficult question to be our last question. You'll have about a minute and a half to answer this one, and it's the most difficult one of the day. No, I'm kidding. It's all talk. It will be our last question. And I won't expect you to solve this problem just like that. But the question is, what is it that society-- or have you any ideas of what societies might be able to do to help early careerists do networking right now during the pandemic?
SAM BURRELL: Bringing us right back to the immediate, and what can we do today? Have you seen anything? Have you thought of anything? Have you--
BRIE HAUPT: I have a funny idea. I mean, you can have a virtual happy hour. Why not have a wine and whine? And people drink wine-- or they don't drink. They don't have to. But they can just discuss what's going on within the quarantine and within themselves. And so you could have, maybe, happy hours, or those get-together times revolved around specific concepts.
BRIE HAUPT: It's almost like that brown bag lunch kind of situation. A little less formal than a webinar or whatnot, but it's just, every Friday, click us here on Zoom, or whichever platform you have. And let's have some conversations, and have someone who can moderate those conversations. I think that's another way to handle it. That's the one that comes to mind, because my friends and I do a lot of wine and whining as we're trying to figure out and have these-- in our careers, and being hold in some ways, and how do you be productive?
BRIE HAUPT: Those are conversations that early careerists are trying to have. Because for me, as a faculty member, I have to also-- remember, I have tenure. Even though, yes, my first year on the clock, I have a pandemic, I have community riots, I have a lot going on in my field, I still have to research. I still have to do good teaching.
BRIE HAUPT: I still have to do service. So finding that balance while also giving myself freedom to breathe during this time has been a conversation I have with many people. So why not have that conversation within the society itself?
ROSE HENDRICKS: That's fascinating. I think another fortunate thing is that many early careerists are quite comfortable with various forms of technology. I've seen a lot of great use of that so far. I've seen some Slack workspaces. Slack tends to be a favorite of a lot of us. Also, the online communities that you already have-- amping up some of the activity on those. The organization I work for, ASCB, has done some Ask Me Anything threads where they invite a speaker on a topic and people can ask questions.
ROSE HENDRICKS: They have a lot of other resources and discussion questions that leaders of the society and engaged volunteers are contributing, to have a lot of dialogue going on there. And I think that those thing-- oh, and then Twitter is, of course, the scientist's favorite place to write their concise, punchy thought. I think encouraging conversations there, that really does turn into networking. As shallow as it might seem at first glance, people can really engage in conversations that they sustain afterwards, I think, through all of those various platforms.
BRIE HAUPT: I also have another idea. Something that I almost think would be a really good strategic move that I haven't seen yet, at least from my side, is to get an email from my association to say, hey, how are you doing? As if it's actual, personal email, just saying, hey, how are you? How can we support you during this time? I think we've kind of had that mentioned. But in the form of a personal email to their work email or to their personal, whichever one that they signed up with.
BRIE HAUPT: Just to say, our society's thinking about you right now. And so we would like to engage you in another way, even if it's just, hey, how are you? How can we help?
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. It's the personal-- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
BRIE HAUPT: It is.
SAM BURRELL: --acknowledging the whole person, thing.
BRIE HAUPT: Right now. Yes.
SAM BURRELL: Yeah. Right. Well, I am going to take a couple of minutes to wrap up, to say, thank you so much to you two for coming to join me in this conversation, to all of our attendees who've been busy, busy, busy on chat and asking lots of questions, which has been great. So thank you, you guys, for generously giving us your time. And thank you to everybody who came and joined and chatted. We will-- actually, I could put some slides up here.
SAM BURRELL: We will-- bear with me a second. I've got another slide. There we go. Thank you for joining us. This session has been recorded and it will be transcribed, and it will be available at the URL that's up there. We've got more webinars coming up. We've got one in July on how societies can think holistically about their content.
SAM BURRELL: And then the one for September-- we take a break in August. The one for September is revisiting the topic of change that we did in March, because obviously that was just when everything shut down. And we had two great speakers, and so we thought we'd get them back to talk in six months' time about what else has changed and how things are going. We'll be in touch with everybody once the recording's ready. We'll invite anyone who has a burning question, who wants to discuss this further, to a roundtable discussion.
SAM BURRELL: That will be in your email inbox. And thank you so much, everybody, for coming along. And thank you, especially, to Brie and Rose. Thanks, guys. That was really fun. We'll say goodbye now. And the chat will be open for another couple of minutes, and then the whole thing will close. So thanks again for your time.
SAM BURRELL: Thanks, everybody.
BRIE HAUPT: Thank you.
ROSE HENDRICKS: Thank you.
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