A Letter from President Sharon Collinge
Sharon Collinge speaks at the 2023 Annual Meeting
It’s quite an honor to be elected President of a scientific society, especially one as historic and esteemed as ESA. But when that election happens amid a global pandemic, you do have to wonder what the experience will be like! Fortunately, my term as President saw us returning to a relative level of normalcy while much of the foundational work we did in the preceding years came to fruition.
The highlight of my year as President was being able to participate in so many wonderful events at the Annual Meeting in Portland. From the National Nature Assessment Town Hall with OSTP’s Jane Lubchenco (who was ESA President exactly 30 years before me!) to the wide-ranging activities organized by our Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section and emphasis on how Indigenous knowledge must inform decision-making, I was personally struck by how much of great importance is discussed through our forums, and how much forward momentum we’ve created in becoming a more inclusive society.
I was also very excited to be part of the calls to members for feedback on the National Nature Assessment and National Climate Assessment, both of which led to official ESA comments on those key pieces of federal policy. ESA has been, and must remain, the preeminent voice of ecologists and ecological science in this country—our voice is loudest when it’s collective! That’s why it’s so important to keep up programs like the Graduate Student Policy Award that brings emerging ecologists straight to Washington, DC, to learn about advocacy and get real-life experience on Capitol Hill.
We primarily get out the word about ecology through our journals, critical venues for exploring the frontiers of science—100+ years of publishing the very best, cutting-edge research in ecology and environmental science—and our portfolio continued to not just deliver in 2023, but expanded. We successfully launched Earth Stewardship as our sixth peer-reviewed title in the portfolio, with Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald as EIC. Ecosphere welcomed Sunshine Van Bael as its new EIC shortly thereafter; then, near the end of the year, we brought on Scott Collins as EIC of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment while simultaneously transitioning to an online-only publishing model for that journal.
It’s essential for an ESA President to address current concerns while also looking ahead. Throughout 2023 we continued work on the ESA Future Visioning Project, which we launched in 2022 and released an initial report in the spring, and results were shared with members at the Annual Meeting in Portland. We involved many members in focus groups and one-on-one interviews to achieve a thoroughly representative sample of our community, and the results of that work informed the strategic planning working group led by current President-elect Stephanie Hampton. Having been involved in the entire process and seen the results, I can say that we have much to look forward to in the coming years.
It was an honor to serve you as President—and I look forward to continuing to connect with you through ESA!