SRCD President's Update March 2026

Dear SRCD members,

This month, I’d like to share three updates that were the focus of our February Governing Council (GC) meeting. First, we discussed updates from our strategic planning process. Thank you for providing input on the recent member survey. We have also sought input on the plan from SRCD Caucus and Committee chairs, SRCD journal editorial teams, and others with a range of perspectives on the future of SRCD. Some of the themes that have emerged from this process are as follows: 

• SRCD has strong work units and could benefit from more integration across these units;
• We need to become even more transparent in decision-making processes;
• Members have divergent perspectives on whether and to what extent SRCD should be engaged in policy issues;
• Although we have international aspirations, our work is not fully aligned with these aspirations.

This input suggests that as we work to finalize SRCD’s strategic plan, we will need to make some explicit tradeoffs and will need to align our ambitions, structure, and resources. 

Second, we discussed developments in the SRCD Policy Fellowship program that provide challenges in the short-term but opportunities for re-envisioning what is possible moving forward. Until last year, the SRCD Policy Fellowship program included fellows placed in U.S. federal government agencies as well as in Congress and state governments. Because of changes in the federal government, the most recent cohort of fellows did not include any federal agency placements. We learned in February that a major philanthropic funder of the Policy Fellowship program is temporarily redirecting funds to other much-needed activities, which means that we will not have a new cohort of Policy Fellows this year, and that the current Policy Fellows will complete the second year of their two-year fellowship in a modified form. The good news is that we will have full-time fellows active in four states: California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. At our most recent GC meeting, we voted to form a task force that will have the mission of advising on the future of the Policy Fellowship, including its structure, funding, relationships, and public positioning.

Third, we discussed three international efforts that offer opportunities related to SRCD’s global engagement:

• The first of these opportunities is the United States National Committee (USNC) for Psychological Science, which until recently operated as one of the 18 national committees under what was formerly the Board of International Science Organizations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine. The USNC represents U.S. psychologists at the International Union of Psychological Science, collaborates with the 17 other U.S. national committees to learn from them how other disciplines are working toward internationalization, and organizes activities within the United States to advance global engagement.
• The second opportunity for international engagement is a group called Developmental Scientists for Climate Action (DevSCA), which was launched in 2022 to support researchers, educators, and practitioners concerned with the impacts of climate change on human development. The International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development has adopted a mission statement on climate action with the input of DevSCA, and we have an opportunity to do so as well. If SRCD incorporates special interest groups as part of the new strategic plan, it is possible that one of these groups might want to engage on climate action.
• The third opportunity for international engagement we discussed is the International Consortium of Developmental Science Societies, which is a collaboration of 12 organizations that SRCD was instrumental in organizing in 2012. ICDSS was originally formed to facilitate developmental science’s coverage of the full spectrum of human development, to bring developmental science to the design of policies and programs across the globe, and to share approaches to society management issues.

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 February's GC Update
Read January's GC Update