SRCD President's Update February 2026
Dear SRCD members,
This month, I’d like to highlight three updates from the SRCD Governing Council (GC).
First, we had the opportunity to meet SRCD’s new Director for Policy, Kent Mitchell, and discuss the future of SRCD’s policy initiatives. The Child Policy Hub continues to be central to policy trainings and programs giving SRCD members opportunities to improve evidence-based policymaking. I would encourage you to join the Child Policy Connect community if you are interested in opportunities to respond to questions from policymakers matched to your areas of expertise. These connections are an important part of SRCD’s relationship-based policy strategy. SRCD’s publication Child Policy Nexus also provides an important vehicle for communicating child development research to use in policy decision making, so please consider submitting your work for review.
Second, in the context of discussing SRCD’s new strategic plan that will be released this spring, the GC brainstormed about ways to continue building community within SRCD. One idea is to support topical interest groups or special interest groups initiated by members. The idea would be for these groups to be grassroots efforts in the way that SRCD’s caucuses have been. Members interested in a particular topical issue could propose a community focused on that issue within SRCD. In the coming months, we anticipate being able to provide some financial resources to support these efforts, as well as logistical information, such as how to go about starting such a group. We are looking forward to seeing your feedback from the member survey that is due February 16, and we will carefully consider your suggestions as we work to finalize the strategic plan.
Third, we discussed committee updates, nominations, terms, and chairs. SRCD currently has 16 committees: Awards, Development, Ethics, Equity & Justice, Ethnic & Racial Issues, Executive, Finance, Interdisciplinary, International Affairs, Membership, Nominations, Program, Publications, Policy, Student & Early Career Council, and Teaching. Each committee submits an annual report of activities and requests to the GC, and the GC discusses these updates and requests. We responded to each committee’s update and requests. To provide a little bit of background on logistics of committees, members can nominate themselves or other members to serve on an SRCD committee. The call for nominations typically comes out in the fall, except in the case of unexpected vacancies on committees. Each committee member serves a four-year term. Committees are typically led by two co-chairs. GC discussed the possibility of moving to a model in which each committee would have a chair and a chair-elect, each serving two years in these respective roles, to stagger the timing of leadership transitions in committees. Each committee also has a GC liaison to facilitate communication between the committee and the GC. We will have follow-up conversations about these logistics with the committee chairs. The committee chairs met via Zoom in January to discuss partnerships across committees and will continue to meet quarterly. Be on the lookout for exciting programming in the coming months led by the committees.
Please feel free to reach out to me with questions or suggestions. Thank you for your engagement with SRCD!
Warm regards,
Jen
Jennifer E. Lansford, PhD
SRCD President
Read January's GC Update
