Editor’s Column: Looking Forward

./Steven Toaddy

I’m not certain, but I think that those of us who are left are in the process of coming out of this thing. I think that I realized that as I read this issue’s edition of Max Classroom Capacity, strangely.

Where, where next? I’m struck by how much content in this issue of TIP is about both the past and the future but not, refreshingly, the present—I, for one, am tired of the present.

Some examples of those past/future articles—SIOP UN is 10 years old, and boy has it done some amazing things! That work is itself oriented toward the future of our species, and that article serves to inspire and to call me to get involved going forward.

The TIP-TOPics team—in their final issue—provides yet another great resource, this time in terms of where we’ve been and where we can go with surveys. Clever work there, and a resource that I intend to use when teaching my own graduate students. I try but fail to express how impressed I have been with that team; I am grateful to them for their diligence over these past 2 years, and I look forward to seeing them continue to succeed in the coming decades.

On the topic of graduate students, the Foundation piece reports on the impact of graduate student scholarships—how those awards impacted those who received them and how those individuals will go forward in the world and with SIOP to continue to make their own impact felt.

Just one more clear example—the Local I-O Groups piece from this issue gives us the history of the Committee and empowers and encourages us to (if not redundant) start our own local group. The past, the future.

If you read through everything in this issue, perhaps you’ll get into the same mindset as I am—a focus on setting things up for the future, of looking forward and orienting our work toward not just survival but flourishing, toward continuity but also growth. I am inspired to contemplate (and this issue has already helped me) what I can do to help move us toward that future. In my rôle, my greatest opportunity for influence may come in the form of the next cohort of graduate students, who are on their way to begin graduate study.

Hmm.