Biophysical Society Bulletin | January 2020

President’s Message

Report fromCouncil The Council is the governing board of the Biophysical Society, and it meets four times each year —

suggested symposia submissions for the 2021 Boston meet- ing, and Council members contributed to some initial brain storming about the sessions and speakers. Having reviewed numerous proposals, the Thematic Meet- ings Committee and the BPS Conferences Committee Chairs both brought forward recommendations for events in 2021. Council provided feedback for the organizers to ensure strong, unique programming as well as geographic and gender diversity and gave preliminary approval for several of these excellent small meetings in 2021. The afternoon began with two proposals from our Publica- tions Committee. The first proposal was for launching a new online-only open access journal with the primary goal of offering our members and authors options for where and how they publish their biophysics research. Council had extensive, thoughtful discussion on how this would fit in our communi- ty and will continue these discussions. The first step will be defining the scope (we discussed many ideas!) to make sure this new journal complements Biophysical Journal (BJ) and The Biophysicist . We expect to have updates on this potential project after the Annual Meeting. The second proposal from our Publications Committee was to engage a public relations/marketing firm to help us communi- cate the role and value of BJ to our Society. We have published an editorial in Biophysical Journal and articles in the BPS Bulle- tin on this topic earlier this year, but feedback from members and Editorial Board Members indicate that we still need to communicate about this much more effectively. Council con- curred with the need for better communication, although we did not reach a consensus about how to best accomplish this goal. The BPS staff will be working on a request for proposals to help us explore how to do this. The last portion of the afternoon was spent on Society finances. Council reviewed the financial audit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019. We are transitioning our fiscal year accounting cycle to the calendar year as of January 1, 2020, so we also had a presentation of the 2020 budget. We are certain that discussions about the audit and budget might sound very boring to many people. However, Council debate is usually quite active, as the financial details provide insight into the health of the Society and help us decide how to move forward with various programs and projects. As always, all members are welcome to review the Society finances each year at the business meeting, which takes place on Tuesday morning at the Annual Meeting. During the finance portion of the meeting, Council also considered and approved a proposal from the Membership

twice at the Annual Meeting, once in the spring and once in the fall. One of Council’s goals is to increase transparency, share information, and provide insights on Council activities to our membership. The July/August issue of the BPS Bulletin

David. W. Piston

contained a summary of the Spring Council meeting. Continu- ing with those goals, this column provides an overview of the fall Council meeting that took place on November 2, 2019, in the Society office in Rockville, Maryland, USA. A packed agen- da guided hours of robust conversation including thoughtful deliberations, points of unanimous consent, and spirited, but respectful, disagreement. Morning agenda items included updates and recommenda- tions from two task forces that Council created in June. The Task Force on Sexual Harassment presented a revised Code of Conduct and recommended an online tool for reporting harassment at BPS events. Council unanimously approved the revised Code and the implementation of the reporting tool. Both of these changes reaffirm our commitment to preventing and addressing harassment in our community and to becoming an inclusive Society with safe and welcoming events, and both will be in place in advance of the Annual Meeting in San Diego. Toward this commitment, we are also continuing to have the necessary conversations and training needed to prepare Society leadership to best support all of our members. The second task force provided a review of the BPS Bylaws, and put forth a recommendation to expand BPS voting rights to student members. This change supports one of our central strategic goals of Supporting the Next Generation of Biophys- icists. Council unanimously approved this recommendation, and we look forward to student participation in the next BPS election! The Annual Meeting, Thematic Meetings, and BPS Confer- ences were another large part of the morning agenda. Our 2020 Program Chairs provided an overview of the abstract programming that occurred the day before Council met, along with an update on the overall planning. Council provided input about the special symposium on sexual harassment that is scheduled for early Sunday evening. We also discussed the National Academy of Science town hall regarding the up- coming report on the state of biophysics, Subgroup Saturday, and other special events planned for San Diego. The 2021 Program Chairs were present and reported on the member

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