It is the time of year when the Biophysical Society is asking you to renew your membership. If you are attending the Annual Meeting coming up in Philadelphia, renewing membership is a no-brainer because of the meeting registration discount. But what if Philadelphia is not in the cards for you this year?
I hope you will renew anyway.
The reason is that membership in the Society is so much more than this one benefit. Membership joins us together and enables us to create something that none of us can create individually, and I hope to persuade you that membership in the Society matters because it provides a collective power, a network of mutual support, and a shared identity.
I’ll take the issue of collective power first. In an era when the scientific enterprise faces unprecedented challenges, the collective functions of the Society are more important than ever. We have stronger influence when we come together to face shared headwinds. This strength in numbers has been especially important this year as we respond to the US federal government’s proposed changes to science funding and scope. By maintaining your membership, your dues support full-time policy staff with experience on Capitol Hill who have expertise in how the sausage gets made in that policy space. Your dues support the Society’s membership coalitions such as Research!America, the Coalition for National Science Funding, the American Institute of Physics, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. These partnerships provide resources and help amplify our voices as we work together on efforts such as letters to Congress and group in-person visits to Capitol Hill.
The Society regularly submits comments on US federal government proposals concerning science policy and funding, and under the guidance of our policy folks, we rallied members to submit comments opposing the Office of Management and Budget’s Proposed Rule on Federal Financial Assistance earlier this summer. The Society submits amicus briefs in support of lawsuits that will benefit our members, and your membership supports legal consultation when needed. If you are inclined to more actively participate in advocacy issues, your membership facilitates your voice being heard through contributions on the Public Affairs Committee. Although only you as an individual can use your power at the voting booth, the Society’s collective voice can draw a larger audience to the issues affecting your scientific lives, and your membership facilitates the sharing of knowledge and experiences that brings unique power.
This shared advocacy of Society membership nurtures the second pillar of membership, which is a network of mutual support. The threat to the future of science is stressful for many of us to say the least. “Misery loves company,” as the saying goes. The psychology field tells us that this emotional resonance is beneficial for our mental health, but the purpose of misery’s company is not to just wallow in the negative. Rather, sharing and validating our concerns exposes us to a wider range of perspectives and solutions. Through the global network enabled by Society membership, we each learn how different institutions and countries address the modern challenges of science. To paraphrase our biophysical understanding of how events happen, the community afforded to us by Society membership lowers the activation barrier for access to this knowledge. The pillar of mutual support further emphasizes the positive and enhances the enjoyment of what motivates many of us, namely discovery of new knowledge and training the next generation.
BPS publications are another way in which Society members support one another. Our flagship publication, Biophysical Journal, enables dissemination of biophysics findings that we can trust because results undergo rigorous review by subject matter experts. We—the members of the Society—make this happen for our greater good. Biophysical Journal further serves science through thematic issues, often organized around impactful Society members, allowing us to honor our scientific thought leaders. Similarly, The Biophysicist is an outstanding publication venue for sharing tools that make our teaching more effective. With the advent of artificial intelligence, we are facing new challenges in pedagogy, and The Biophysicist is an opportunity to showcase new ways to pose and assess learning objectives both in and outside of the classroom. Biophysical Reports is a platform to showcase biophysical methods and provide valuable contributions to the biophysical community. In addition to renewing your membership, I urge you to take advantage of these opportunities to support our community through the Society’s journals.
Finally, our BPS Conferences and Thematic Meetings bring biophysics to scientists around the world. These small Society-sponsored conferences create the kind of environment that can serve as a think tank for emerging areas of science and sow networking seeds for scientists who might otherwise not meet.
The third benefit of Society membership is to provide a shared identity. The important outcome of this is a sense of belonging. Psychologists view belonging as a fundamental human survival need. A colleague of mine once declared that entering graduate school was joyful in part because “she had finally found her people!” And we all smiled because sharing our scientific success with others is the only joy greater than the discovery itself. I hope you will agree that Society members are also your community of people. Through the many leadership and networking opportunities that the Society provides, your membership offers you opportunities to belong to something greater than yourself and to forge new scientific collaborations, if not best friendships. This sense of belonging to a community stimulates our self-esteem, personal growth, and creativity: it makes our science better.
So, my challenge to you this year is not to simply do the calculation of whether you are attending the BPS Annual Meeting this year or whether you have received enough other tangible benefits this year to justify the cost of the membership dues. Think instead about what your membership makes possible. It enables you to support a collective voice more powerful than your own, it nurtures a network of mutual support, and it sustains our biophysics community in which each of us can find our people.
—Karen G. Fleming, President