Report of the Executive Director
for the Year ending June 30, 2003
Fiscal Year 2003 (FY03) was a year of great progress for Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. As always, that progress was built upon the outstanding services of our elected and voluntary leaders. The good the Society does as a chapter-based organization is reflected across the nation and around the world by efforts made at the local level. I wish to extend my sincere congratulations and appreciation to all of the chapter leaders of Sigma Xi.
Leadership from our elected leaders has imbued our Society with a sense of purpose and accomplishment. The Executive Committee and Board have served with distinction. I would like to pay special tribute to Dr. Frank Gilmore, Chancellor of Montana Tech of the University of Montana, for his superb service as President of Sigma Xi during FY03. Dr. Gilmore guided the Society through a very challenging but very productive year. Under his aegis the Board and Society made decisions that will positively impact the Society for years to come. He represented the Society with distinction at the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR). He skillfully led the Committee on Strategic Planning as we crafted the goals, vision, and mission for the Society. He also led the Board on the very important decision to go forward with the new Sigma Xi Center. On a personal note, Dr. Gilmore was always available to me to provide me sage counsel as I undertook my new duties with the Society. Thanks to him, FY03 has been a success.
I also wish to extend my appreciation, as well as congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Peter Raven, who assumed the duties of President on July 1, 2003. I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Raven for several months in anticipation of his presidency as we planned the forum for November 2003. I have also had the privilege of watching his insightful input to our strategic planning process. I am confident that Sigma Xi will continue to progress under his strong leadership.
I would also like to extend my appreciation to all the volunteers who have led and staffed the many committees that shape the outstanding programs and services of Sigma Xi. Thanks to you, daily, the Society gains in visibility and esteem within the science and engineering communities.
Introduction
The past fiscal year will be remembered as a special time in the long history of Sigma Xi. The decision by the Board of Directors to adopt a comprehensive strategic plan and to build the new Sigma Xi Center indicate the Society has adjusted to the many challenges confronting not-for-profit organizations and is moving forward boldly. The culture, mission and vision statements of the strategic plan affirm our identify and our strategic direction. Our goals clearly articulate the stepping stones on our journey to our envisioned future. The new Sigma Xi Center will be the tangible manifestation of that plan. It will reflect our proud legacy while providing a venue in which to craft our future.
Membership suffered a small decline in FY03 of 1.67%, compared to a 3.85% decline in FY02. Although this is still a decline, the smaller magnitude is a step in the right direction. FY03 witnessed increased attention to membership, which will pay off in the ensuing years. A membership highlight of FY03 was the activation of the Tarleton State University Chapter. It was my honor to participate in the installation ceremony and visit the university. There I saw scientists and engineers working in a collegial and interdisciplinary manner to address the issues of importance to the citizens of Texas. I believe the efforts of the members of the Tarleton chapter epitomize the companionship that is so important to Sigma Xi.
Sigma Xi members join the Society for the honor but stay for the benefits and opportunities to serve science and engineering that membership offers. Therefore, the strategic plan appropriately reflects an increased focus on member benefits and improved program opportunities for service.
Improved Member Benefits
During FY03 many benefits were enhanced and other new benefits created. For many members, American Scientist magazine is the premier benefit. FY03 was another year of great success for our flagship publication. Its quality was recognized with two silver and one bronze awards from the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP). Silver awards were received for design excellence and general excellence and a bronze award was presented for the feature article "Ethnoclimatology in the Andes." Furthermore, American Scientist Online was launched in the spring, providing a long-awaited resource for members and enhancing Sigma Xi's role in communicating science to the public. Recent articles, book reviews and columns are now presented in full text, complete with illustrations, and complemented by electronic newsletters and online features such as author interviews. The site design chosen by the staff, which now includes an online editor and business manager, was supported by the results of a survey of the magazine's relatively youthful Internet audience, who were eager to read about research and enthusiastic about several proposed features. The site immediately attracted advertisers as well as visitors. Advertising, institutional licensing and sales of discounted books and Sigma Xi merchandise are among the revenue sources that will support the operation and growth of this new free service for members. During this year the Internet Scout Project at the University of Wisconsin ranked our site eighth among the top 100 science sites on the Internet.
American Scientist's editorial and content excellence was reflected by its publication and economic performance measures. Average circulation per issue remained at 90,000 (76% Sigma Xi members, 17% newsstand sales, 7% subscribers) while subscription revenue increased by 15% and advertising revenue was up by 18%. The magazine is currently sold in every state in the United States and in 40 countries. It is available in 97% of all Barnes & Noble bookstores and 90% of all Borders bookstores, as well as many others.
Other benefits were launched in FY03. Sigma Xi Exchange allows active members to submit or read announcements in the following categories: conferences, funding opportunities, internships, job listings, obituaries, and publications. Additionally, in FY03 the Sigma Xi Web site was enhanced to provide not only a new look but also improved navigation and a tool for chapters to create their own sites. It also contains a new international resources page, the companion to our new international e-newsletter.
One of the most exciting developments of FY03 is the development and installation of new data management software that will support all facets of the organization. With a fundamental focus on enhancing service and increasing convenience for our members and chapter leaders, the database will allow for more efficient management and superior tracking of member and chapter information. Additionally, monthly e-mail announcements to about 75% of the membership have heightened visibility and usage of membership services and benefits.
Recognizing that the funding of higher education is problematical for many of our members, the Wells Fargo Capital for Knowledge Program was introduced to offer affordable private education financing with competitive rates. The staff will remain vigilant for other opportunities to provide new and improved quality services for our members.
Programs
Programs that provide service opportunities for our members and chapters were emphasized in the strategic plan. The Society's administrative offices and budgetary processes were reorganized in FY03 to better focus resources on those programs. Five major program areas (education, ethics, health of the research enterprise, public understanding of science and international networking) constitute the Sigma Xi Center programs with Dr. Evan Ferguson, Director, Sigma Xi Center, given accountability for Center program oversight. Each of the programs is led by a designated Manager who also serves as the staff liaison to the Society's committees, which provide direction and subject matter expertise. Each of the Managers has been provided intensive grantsmanship training to facilitate funding procurement in support of their respective program areas. The programs are designed to be facilitated centrally and executed decentrally by the chapters, which may select service opportunities from the Society's suite of programs. The remainder of the administrative staff provides support to the programs, American Scientist magazine, and the governance responsibilities of the Society. The new organization is already paying dividends with a long list of accomplishments for FY03.
Chapters are the backbone of Sigma Xi, and most of the Society's programs have components that engage or support a number of chapters. In addition to developing program opportunities, staff and volunteers have worked hard this year to develop services and resources to support chapter officers and members. Online resources include case studies and 'how-to' instructions for dozens of exceptional chapter programs. Slide shows and new communication pieces have enabled chapter officers to more effectively communicate about the importance of Sigma Xi membership and activities. A "chapter visit kit" has enabled Sigma Xi staff and volunteers to more easily couple chapter visits with other business, resulting in a tripling of chapter visits during FY03. Monthly informational e-mails to chapter officers have replaced the quarterly Intercom.
The program area of education was featured in the past fiscal year. With generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Sigma Xi's 2003 Forum focused on the future of the scientific workforce. The forum was able to attract a wide range of outstanding speakers including Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation; Eamon Kelly, former Chair of the National Science Board; and Richard Freeman of Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The Committee on Diversity contributed time and advice in the preparation of an accompanying history of diversity within Sigma Xi and a resource booklet that lists sources of information and support for efforts to diversify the scientific workforce.
In response to the topic of the 2003 Forum, Sigma Xi was asked to present a position at the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) of the National Academy of Sciences. The November 11-12, 2002 summit was designed to engage a significant number of disparate organizations to demonstrate that the domestic scientific and engineering workforce is not an isolated issue of interest to only a few. The series of presented position statements reflected the substantial community effort that has been devoted to studying the issue and developing potential solutions. By highlighting the similarities and differences in community views, the summit delineated potential boundaries of a political consensus on US policy in this arena. The Society was represented with distinction by President W. Franklin Gilmore.
The National Computational Science Institute Workshops represented another area of service for the Society and its chapters. Sigma Xi has completed the first year of a three-year NSF-funded partnership with the Shodor Education Foundation to provide instruction and logistical support for chapters that are interested in hosting a computational science workshop series at their institutions. Eight chapters have used the program to sponsor workshops on their campuses, with outreach portions of the workshops designed for teachers or the public through local schools and museums.
The purpose of these chapter-customized workshops is to encourage the use of computational tools in undergraduate science and engineering education and to develop an active and supportive community of faculty using and sharing computational tools in the classroom and laboratory.
The Teacher Link Program (TLP) is one of the first major initiatives of the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center (SMT Center) that was launched and funded by the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund last year. The program evolved through an SMT Center partnership with Sigma Xi and the Duke University Center for Inquiry Based Learning. It is supported in part by a $5.3 million National Science Foundation Mathematics Science Partnership grant and will ultimately serve as a pilot for a national program. Forty-three Sigma Xi members were selected to serve as fellows in the TLP. Each fellow will be matched to one or more K-8 teachers, all of whom have been trained on one of nine carefully designed kits. The kits include teaching aids and instructions and have titles such as: balls and ramps, solids and liquids, motion and design, weather systems, planetary science, changes, soils, solutions and pollution, and thrill ride. The TLP fellows will help teachers to teach each of the seven-week, hands-on, minds-on curriculum units through phone calls, email, and an interactive Web site designed for the TLP. At least once a year, fellows and teachers will meet to share their experiences. Fellows will also be kept up to date on local education policy issues and assisted to communicate their ideas to school boards and legislators. Sigma Xi supports this program with the potential goal of replicating similar efforts in other regions where Sigma Xi members are concentrated.
The Society has also turned its attention to the plight of postdoctoral researchers. In the fall of 2002, Sigma Xi, in collaboration with Dr. Geoff Davis, was awarded $355,000 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to design and implement a survey of postdoctoral researchers in several dozen institutions. The goal of the survey is to provide a comprehensive instrument that institutions can use to survey their own postdocs, thereby benchmarking their own practices and policies against those of peer institutions. This project supports the Society's strategic plan by developing a program that (1) supports the health of the research enterprise, (2) enhances the Society's service to early-career researchers and (3) engages Sigma Xi chapters and individual members. As co-Principal Investigators on the grant, Davis will serve as a Sigma Xi Visiting Scholar through the life of the project, which ends in December 2004.
An enduring aspect of Sigma Xi's education program is the establishment of partnerships with other organizations. In the past year Sigma Xi has forged a number of partnerships with organizations that share our interest in improving science and engineering education. These collaborations provide opportunities for our members to participate or assist with worthwhile programs such as Teach for America, to serve as judges for the Academy of Applied Sciences' Junior Sciences and Humanities Symposium, to mentor high school students who are considering science careers, or to take part in discussions about the future of science education with organizations like Project Kaleidoscope and The ReInvention Center, or to develop new curricular materials with organizations such as the Council for Undergraduate Research and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' Science Education for Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) program.
Programs focused on fostering the health of the research enterprise have long been a source of pride for the Society. The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research program has been providing undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences for more than 80 years. In FY03, there were 2,042 grant applications reviewed, a 12.5% increase from the previous year. More than 23% of applications were funded, or partially funded, for a total of $304,110. These small grants often provide the seed money that allows beginning researchers to gather the initial data and experience they need for future funding.
Since 1937 Sigma Xi has presented its Distinguished Lectureships, an opportunity for chapters to host visits from outstanding individuals who are at the leading edge of science. During the fiscal year, 59 chapters were awarded subsidy money to assist in hosting one of the 30 outstanding scientists. Additionally, many chapters host lecturers under their own auspices. The American Meteorological Society, the Society for Risk Analysis and the National Academy of Engineering each provided sponsorship for members of their respective society to serve as Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers.
The Sigma Xi Student Research Conference is held each year in conjunction with the Society's annual meeting. More than 280 undergraduate and high school students from 26 states in North America and abroad attended the November 2002 conference in Galveston, Texas. A poster competition featuring 212 entries was judged by Sigma Xi members, who designated monetary awards for outstanding presentations. Workshops, plenary lectures, exhibitors, and featured guest speaker Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, completed the 2002 program. The success of recent Student Research Conferences, funded in part by a grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, has illustrated the value of a larger role for the conference within the context of future Sigma Xi annual meetings.
Ethics has been the underpinning of Sigma Xi since the Society's inception in 1886. Ethics appropriately continues to receive focus today. The Society's ethics program received national recognition in 2003 by receipt of an American Society of Association Executives' Advance America award.
International programs continue to receive increasing attention. FY03 was a busy one for Sigma Xi's international programs as the final full year of the Packard International Science Networking Initiative. We saw the presentation of the last $2,500 networking awards, several Sigma Xi Ambassador visits, a highly successful training workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia and the inauguration of Sigma Xi's first International Partner, Sigma Xi Georgia. As a pilot program intended to assist groups where the cost of dues in U.S. dollars prohibits the formation of a local Sigma Xi group, the establishment of a Sigma Xi International Partner enables a group to set and collect their own annual dues in their local currency. The future looks bright for the Society's international programs as we take the knowledge and experience gained over the past four years and apply them to conceptualize the next phase in this program area.
During the past year Sigma Xi has coalesced its programs intended to advance the public's understanding of science into one identifiable suite of programs. The Public Understanding of Science programs include "Science in the News," which nearly 10,000 Sigma Xi members receive via email each weekday. The program is meant both to inform members of recent scientific developments and to familiarize them with the manner in which science is represented in the mainstream media. In conjunction with American Scientist Online, "Science in the News Weekly" was launched in May of 2003 building on Sigma Xi's popular daily service. "Weekly" complements the daily service with added perspective by tracking the development of major science stories over the course of the previous week, and by highlighting science coverage appearing over the weekend. More than 2,000 members of Sigma Xi and the interested public already have subscribed to the free service.
The Media Resource Service (MediaResource) continued to assist journalists with their requests for expert context and commentary on science-related stories. MediaResource has strengthened its relationship with the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), providing informational brochures about the service and Sigma Xi to new NASW members.
Partnerships are also a primary means as Sigma Xi's Public Understanding of Science programs branch out to include informal science education efforts. After attending the 7th annual meeting of the International Network for Public Communication of Science & Technology in December 2002, Sigma Xi decided to partner with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to put in a bid to host the group's 2008 meeting in the United States.
Building on the many strengths inherent in the Society's programs and working from the new Sigma Xi Center, Sigma Xi is well positioned for even greater success. As always, the key enabler of that success will be the commitment of the Society's distinguished members and dedicated administrative staff.
Patrick D. Sculley
Executive Director
3 August 2003
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