Thoughts on SNL upon being nominated for chair

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I'm honored to have been nominated for the position of Chair for the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL). If you are presented with candidates to vote for in leadership positions, it seems reasonable for you to know what their past involvement in the society is and what their vision for the future includes. I'll try to share both of those briefly, with a caveat: My experience is that leaders are typically most effective when they go in and understand how things currently work before changing a bunch of things (and in group situations, like boards, it's hard or impossible to unilaterally change things, anyway). (Of course, these are my current ideas, which may well evolve over time!)

Background

I started going to SNL as a postdoc in 2009 (the first meeting!). My prior experience included Society for Neuroscience and Academy of Aphasia. I was immediately drawn to the research presented at SNL, which included a better blend of neuroimaging and language research than other conferences. I also benefitted from the chance to meet other people interested in similar things I was (i.e., "networking" but don't call it that).

In 2015 I was elected as the "Meeting Liaison", a position that was subsequently renamed "Program Committee Chair". In that role I helped the 2016 SNL meeting in London (along with the local organizing committee, program committee, and our conference organizers). I also brought to the board the idea of amending the bylaws to formalize a commitment to gender balance in our invited speakers. Prior to 2016, 30% of SNL speakers were women (I know because I counted). At the 2016 meeting 60% of the speakers were women, and we added the following to the SNL bylaws:

Section 6. Speaker gender balance. The program committee chair reports on speaker gender balance annually at the board meeting. The aspiration of the Council is a 50-50 gender balance between male and female invited speakers in symposia and debates in any given 3-year time- window.

(a change which is still there). In the years since the 2016 meeting and bylaws change, speaker gender balance has been much improved.

Since 2016 I have attended the annual meeting several times (though not annually, due in part to having an increasing number of small children at home and COVID). I was glad to be back at SNL in person in 2022.

I have reviewed abstracts for SNL nearly every year since 2009 (I think I missed one year, but it might be two). I am an action editor for Neurobiology of Language, the society journal published by MIT Press.

A potential agenda

In addition to continuing all of the good things the society has been doing, I'd like to think about working on three areas:

  1. Expanding our work in diversity, accessibility, equity, and inclusion. We've made some strides but there is more to do, and the board needs to lead in this regard. Specifically, continuing to broaden the diversity of speakers at the annual meeting and improve support for trainees and ECRs who can benefit from it. We also need a meeting code of conduct! [One approach, which I like, is to have a standing DEI committee to make independent progress on these things. It's unclear to me whether this currently exists.]
  2. Deepening engagement with students and postdocs. I would like to see continued expansion of our support for trainees through social and career development events at the annual conference, and also potentially throughout the year.
  3. Continued innovation around "networking". The society provides a unique opportunity to meet other researchers—something that is valuable at all career stages. I will continue to explore new ways of building lasting relationships across sub disciplines and academic generations that will help all members thrive. It would be great to see this happen not only at the annual meeting, but throughout the year (the recent addition of member-initiated virtual activities is a great step in this direction!).

General approach

  1. Look at what the current board has been doing. Not all of the plans and discussions from board meetings make it to the public, so it's important to first evaluate what is in progress, or has been tried but didn't work, before jumping headlong into new initiatives.
  2. Survey SNL membership. In addition to the annual meeting survey, some targeted surveys assessing how well the society is currently meeting needs and what the biggest priorities are for improvement may be useful.
  3. Learn from peer societies. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; other societies also have smart people thinking about many of these same issues, and we can benefit from their experiments (both failed and successful) as we think about what would work for SNL.

A challenge with a limited board term is that even small changes that get incorporated into the culture (or bylaws) can be more effective in the long run than trying to energetically do a million big things that stop when the current board rotates off. My goal is meaningful long-term benefit, not a one-time cool activity.

Conclusion

I hope this has given you a sense of my background and thinking about SNL, an organization about which I care deeply. If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch and I will do my best to reply. In the olden times I was fairly active on Twitter; since current management took over and started allowing and encouraging hate speech I left. But you can find me on Mastodon (@jpeelle@neuromatch.social)!