Hello SIG members,

We are honored to be given the opportunity to facilitate the work of our SIG as Co-Chairs this year!  Amy and Janet enjoy a shared past when we worked on our doctorates together at the University of Northern Iowa under the tutelage of Deb Gallagher and Chris Kliewer.  Since then we have been mentored by many of you in the DSE community as friends and colleagues.  We have been happy to act on the agenda we collectively set for ourselves at the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia and hope to have accomplished our goals by the next meeting in Chicago.

We have been working with our team of officers on the various projects of which we would like to briefly outline here; a more detailed report will be shared in the forthcoming Fall Newsletter.

1. Ibby and Jessica are busy working on the Program development for the conference in Chicago.
   
   
2. Kathleen has maintained our finances, including the payment to the Australian hosts for the Second City Conference.
   
   
3. Amy met with the Graduate students in our SIG and they’ve set up a listserve.
   
   
4. Julia is continuing her work on making the conference accessible by bringing the White Paper to life.

Last, please also remember to recruitment others to our SIG and remember to renew your membership! We want to remind everyone that the AERA is paying attention to our numbers: “the continuation of SIGs depends on quantitative and qualitative assessments of their healthy and vital metric.” 

Sincerely, 

Janet and Amy