SRCD President's Update November 2025
Dear SRCD members,
This month, I’d like to highlight four important updates from the SRCD Governing Council (GC).
First, we are fully engaged in strategic planning. The GC spent a day this month with Common Ground Consulting working on our three-year strategic plan. We devoted time to discussing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for SRCD, as well as how we should measure success as we work toward strategic goals. We will be launching a survey and holding listening sessions in the coming months to gather your input on what strategic directions would be most beneficial for members. By the end of March 2026, we will not only have our new strategic plan in place but also an implementation plan that includes who will be responsible for implementing which aspects of the strategic plan and measurable benchmarks to evaluate whether we are meeting our goals.
Second, we voted to make investments in several member benefits. One of these benefits is in helping with article processing charges in SRCD’s journals to help with the shift to Oxford University Press, whose U.S. institutional agreements differ from Wiley’s, and the NIH’s updated Public Access Policy. We will be sharing application links and additional details about this support program soon. Another benefit is in providing additional travel awards to support attendance at the 2026 special topic meeting “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Childhood and Adolescence: A Global Forum on Development, Health, and Rights” (insert link) to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands that is being co-sponsored by SRCD and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development.
Yet another benefit is that we will be providing additional support to enable members to travel to Washington, DC for future Hill Days to engage in policy advocacy, following from the success of our first Hill Day in July (insert link). Other investments are more behind the scenes, such as in supporting technical bridges between the SRCD member data base and platforms that allow members to apply for awards and engage in other SRCD activities. These investments will improve members’ experiences and support the SRCD staff as they work to provide benefits to members.
Third, we now have a 1-year emeritus member option that we hope will better meet the needs of emeritus members. For many years, emeritus membership was free, but in the interest of being able to reduce membership costs for early career scholars, GC previously voted to institute membership fees for emeritus members, consistent with the practices of many of our peer scientific societies. Originally, emeritus members only had a 2-year membership option, but GC voted to add a 1-year membership option, too. We are grateful for the long-term commitment of emeritus members to SRCD and are working to be sure that emeritus members continue to benefit from engagement with SRCD.
Fourth, the GC voted to approve a new fee structure for SRCD webinars. We regard webinars as an important member benefit, so registration fees will remain unchanged for SRCD members ($5 for most webinars for professional members and free for student members and members from low- and middle-income countries). The dilemma for SRCD is that there are costs associated with hosting webinars, including the webinar platform itself, staff time planning and executing webinars, and honoraria for some presenters. The previous webinar registration fee for non-members was $15. We voted to increase this fee to $25.
For select webinars, we may need to increase registration fees further to cover speaker costs, but in all cases, we will balance the need for SRCD to pay for the webinars with the goal of making them widely accessible to members without excessive costs. We hope the new fee structure achieves that dual goal. Aside from the issue of fees, it’s important to know that if you register for a webinar but are not able to participate live, you will have access to the recording to watch later at your convenience.
In these and other activities, our goal is to increase the benefits of membership in SRCD. If our members are facing challenges, we want to be able to help address those challenges. We also want SRCD to be a place where members can find community and belonging.
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 September's GC Update
