Dear Members of the Society for Economic Botany:
 
It is a great privilege and honor to serve as the SEB President this year especially since this coming year will mark my 20^th anniversary of being a member of our distinguished society.  In addition, I get to practice what I preach.  When I was a graduate student, with the help of Michael Casaus at Cornell, we started the student council and eventually secured a position for a student on the business council.  Since then, I have always encouraged students to take part in the meetings and the governing of the society because, someday, they will be running the society.  
 The summer is flying by so fast and it is already a couple of months since our annual meeting in Pine Mountain, Kentucky.  It was a relatively small meeting and we did miss seeing many of you.  Still, I enjoyed talking with those who attended and we all had a great time listening to exciting research and reconnecting!   We had much fun contra dancing, tasting botanical cocktails, and of course, sharing our research and making new connections. 

One of the special highlights of the meeting included a series of “Teaching Tuesday” workshops on topics such as: Plant Identification, Weaving, Implementing Problem-Based Learning in the Classroom and much more. We were also treated to an inspirational talk entitled “True Confessions of an Itinerant Ethnobotanist” by Tony Cunningham, our 2016 Distinguished Economic Botanist. You can watch an interview with him HERE. Tony gave us a lot to think about as he implied being open to where there is need and where the work takes you as he described his career.  He also reminded us that our discipline is “The Science of Survival.”
 
Due to the generous support of Nature publishing group and anonymous donations from the SEB membership, we were pleased to offer competitive travel grants this year to two young professionals. This is an opportunity and we plan to continue it into the future.  If you would like to support travel grants for students and international members, please contact me. Every donation, no matter the size, can make a real difference in the life of a young scholar!
 
Congratulations to Dr. Jim Howell, recipient of the Charles B. Heiser, Jr. Mentor Award.  This award, chosen by students, spotlights dedicated educators who foster the development of the field by example and through student mentoring.  Chelsea Romulo received the Edmund H. Fulling Award recipient for best oral presentation by a young professional and John de la Parra received the Julia F. Morton Award for best poster presentation by a young professional. The Society is also dedicated to supporting the development of young scientists in the field and the Richard Evan Schultes Research Award is the embodiment of this spirit. This year the award was given to two recipients, Michael Coe and Richard Tate, both with excellent applications! Congratulations to all and many thanks to the awards committees for your careful consideration of the candidates!

We are also pleased to announce the winner of the Klinger Book Award.  Nancy Turner, is being honored for her book, Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge.  Nancy is a distinguished member of SEB and expert in the ethnobotany of the Pacific Northwest.  Her book not only conveys the rich knowledge and tradition of the indigenous people, but is imbued with her genuine enthusiasm and affection for them.
 
If you missed out on the meeting this year, I encourage you to catch up on some of the filmed presentations, which are available HERE. SEB also has an active social media presence, and photos and tweets from the meeting can be found on our Twitter page @SEBotany and with the hashtag #SEBIPUF15. If you are not already doing so, I encourage you to follow us on our pages with Twitter and/or Facebook.

Our Annual Meeting wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of the organizing committee! But, in particular, I want to extend very special thanks to Sunshine Brosi and the SEB organizing committee: Sky Marietta, Geoff Marietta, Adam Brown and Laura Smith; and to the SEB business office staff: Bill Dahl, Heather Cacanindin, Johanne Stogran, and Rob Brandt.
 
There are some exciting election results to share, like we do after every annual meeting.  First, thank you to all of the candidates who ran for election this cycle. Your commitment to the future to SEB and its governance is greatly welcomed and appreciated! Congratulations to our newly elected members of the SEB Council: Gayle Fritz (President-Elect), Nanci Ross (Secretary), Jillian de Gazelle (Member-at-Large) and Zbynek Polesny (Member-at-Large). Congratulations also to the newly elected members of the Student Committee: Alexander O'Neill (student rep-elect) and Sandra Bogdanova (student rep to the council).  Many thanks to our outgoing Council members for their exceptional commitment and service to SEB: Manuel Pardo de Santayana, Renata Söukand, Sunshine Brosi, and John de la Parra.  It has been a joy working with you.

It is my pleasure to announce that our next SEB meeting will be held jointly with II Encontro Hispano Português de Etnobiologia  in Bragança, Portugal, located in the Iberian Peninsula. The conference theme is “Living in a global world: ethnobotany, local knowledge and sustainability.”  Bringing together the European community and a broader international community of scientists and stakeholders, this joint event will create a unique opportunity for individuals and institutions to share experiences and to establish information and collaboration networks, taking advantage of a multicultural, friendly and pleasant environment.  Please make an effort to attend because this is a terrific opportunity to interact with our members on the other side of the Atlantic that we don’t get to often see.  I will look forward to meeting all of you there.  More information on the meeting can be found on the SEB 2017 Annual Meeting website.

As of June, the latest issue of our journal, Economic Botany, is available in print and online. If you haven't explored the fascinating new articles, I encourage you to do so.  Just log in with your SEB log in at www.econbot.org to view current and past issues.
 
It is YOU, the members that make the society and I am grateful to all of you for your outstanding research and continued support for SEB’s work and mission. We need to increase our membership so please continue to be ambassadors for our Society by encouraging students and other colleagues around the world to join us in our mission. Sending a few personal notes of invitation to join to your colleagues and those interested in our work can make a meaningful impact on our membership numbers. I, myself, am personally reaching out to past members and those who have inadvertently let their membership lapse to encourage them to share their valued work with SEB.  A great way to encourage future life-long members is to provide a $10 gift membership to a student at any time.  I also encourage you to share the SEB Student Blog with your students. This is a valuable resource containing extensive lists of funding opportunities, fieldwork equipment recommendations, and a directory of ethnobotany programs are available for SEB Student members. Members-only webinars, mentorship, and other resources will also be coming to the site soon.

I am committed to continuing the excellent work of the business council and our amazing past President, Cassy Quave; and striving to make the Society for Economic Botany more robust and recognized for the exceptional work of its members.  This is where I need your help.  Please join me in realizing these goals and I encourage you to get involved! And don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. I am eager to facilitate your involvement in the Society. We will be appointing committee memberships soon. The full list of committees is available HERE.  Please let me know if you are interested in volunteering for service on a specific committee. In addition to committee service, there are many ways to contribute to the society: you can submit news and notices to the newsletter (which I highly recommend), make suggestions for what you would like to see at future meetings, and make yourself heard by sending any questions, comments, or ideas you would like me consider. Please feel free to contact me or anyone else on council if we can be of assistance or just to say hello.
 
With heartfelt thanks and best regards,

Steven J. Casper
President, Society for Economic Botany


Mission: To foster and encourage scientific research, education, and related activities on the past, present, and future uses of plants, and the relationship between plants and people, and to make the results of such research available to the scientific community and the general public through meetings and publications.