President's Column

Steven Rogelberg

I have so much to say in my first Presidential Column but am under such a tight word count.  Let me start my musings…

I have a presidential theme, Better Together.  I have a set of ambitious aspirations.  I unpack both of these in this short video from the closing plenary (below). If you have a few minutes, please take a look.  I am hoping my view count exceeds 3: me (yes, I watched myself), my mom (Jane), and my wife (Sandy).  I am not counting on my kids to get me to 5.

https://vimeo.com/536815351/93d9516ceb

What I want to spend some time chatting about next is how to make SIOP feel small.  We are nearly 10,000 strong of wonderful people who share a common set of values around working to understand and improve the world of work by promoting individual and organizational health, well-being, and effectiveness.  This is a lot of folks, and SIOP can at times feel quite large.  But, it does not have to feel that way. I want to share two easy paths to make SIOP feel smaller. 

The first way is through volunteering for a committee.  We have over 700 volunteers and really want to include you in this.  When you received the call for volunteering, I hope you found something that could excite you. At the very least, please join the program-reviewing brigade when that notice comes out in the coming weeks; that can feel very rewarding and is so helpful and needed.

Second, there are so many diverse SIOP activities and opportunities that can increase the feelings of smallness. I want to highlight one that I just love.  It is the SIOP Women’s Inclusion Network (WIN) chaired by Vanessa Gaskins. WIN was established as an ad hoc committee in 2017 and a standing committee in 2019—and has accomplished a great deal in their short time. WIN has (a) established an active and wide-reaching social media presence; (b) developed a valuable mentoring initiative for members; (c) conducted a climate survey to understand member experiences of bias, exclusion, and harassment at SIOP conferences in partnership with the CEMA and LGBTQIA+ Committees; (d) developed and received approval to offer a family caregiving grant to facilitate conference attendance; and (e) focused on making awards and the award process more visible to members with the goal of increasing applications from qualified candidates. WIN is always looking for new and fabulous volunteers to join the team. The WIN team is composed of around 30 volunteers, and they have over 900+ members on their very active Facebook group.  I encourage you to join the fun; I did last year. WIN is a winner ☺.  Both of these paths exemplify my hope in my Better Together presidential theme. Hey, did I mention to check out the video link above where I unpack this more—we are up to 5 views.

I want to close with a reflection on one key reason I love SIOP, besides the kind and amazing people who are part of it. I love SIOP because we have the courage to do what almost no other professional organization in the world attempts to do—bring science and practice together under one roof.  It is something we should be so proud of.  It is much easier to segregate the science and the practice, but not us; we try to integrate it for the benefit of all. We do this because we know that we are all better when we work together—better together (see video). It can create messiness and even tension at times, but this means we are trying to do something incredibly special.  I am so proud to be part of team SIOP.

Ok, that was a false close.  I want to close with a bit of gratitude.  As I look forward to taking on the presidency of SIOP and serving our members and our profession, I can’t help but to look backwards as well.  This starts with my graduate school chair, Janet Barnes-Farrell.  Janet, what a pain in the tush I was! I stank at writing, and my ideas and passions were all over the place.  But you were still good at mentoring that mess of me.  I thank you for your support, kindness, friendship, patience, and guidance. 

Ok, I will stop here for now.  Talk to you soon SIOP.