Vol. 40, No.2, April 2011
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Notes from the Inside
NSF Awards HSS Travel Grant
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The International Year of Chemistry
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Notes from the Inside
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News
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In Memoriam
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Member News
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Yanked From the Margins
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How Science, Policy, Gender, and History Meet each Other Once a Year
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Donors List Calendar Year 2010
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Jobs, Conferences, Grants
After some months of anxiety regarding the status of the Society’s latest application for travel grants for graduate students, independent scholars, and recent PhDs to attend the annual meetings, I was delighted to learn that the National Science Foundation has funded this important grant. The anxiety — a byproduct of these types of appeals and the fact that our prior grant had expired — was intensified by the talk of severe budget cuts in the history of science at NSF. That the panel and NSF chose to fund this latest application speaks to the many supporters and friends we enjoy in the field.
The new grant marks a departure in several ways from earlier travel grants, which have been a vital part of HSS meetings since the mid 1990s. As an accommodation to the budget crisis in the US, the grant’s duration was reduced from 5 to 3 years (for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 conferences) and, most significantly, only those who are US citizens or who are attending US schools are eligible. (This is an unfortunate development that we hope we can correct, in part, by raising money for non-US scholars to attend our conferences.) The biggest change, though, is the expansion of the grant to include other academic societies. Earlier grant iterations involved 4 Societies: HSS, PSA, SHOT, and 4S. This new version expands the list to 7 societies: HSS, PSA, SHOT, the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), and the International Society for the Psychology of Science and Technology (ISPST). (I had hoped to include the American Association for the History of Medicine but NSF will not fund AAHM in this way.) The main reason for the expansion was to foster closer ties with these groups, many of which are familiar to our members. I know the officers and/or presidents of all but one of these organizations and have been impressed by the work that they do. I was able to meet with officers from PSA, ISHPSSB, and HOPOS in Montréal to explore some of the collaborative features of the grant and came away from that meeting with a new enthusiasm for working together. As disciplinary boundaries increasingly blur, this type of collaboration will become all the more important to the history of science.
Application forms for the travel grants will become available on the HSS website, shortly after the publication of the preliminary program (only those participating in the program are eligible). Applicants to the other societies’ conferences will need to contact the individual societies for information about their grants. HSS will provide administrative oversight for all of the grants, including the annual audits, standardization of forms and procedures, reimbursement of the societies, annual reports, etc. It should be noted, and with emphasis, that the direct costs associated the administration of these grants are not covered entirely by the grant itself. In fact, the grants would not be possible without your membership in the HSS and from the generous support of the Executive Office by Notre Dame. We view such administrative oversight as a courtesy to the profession, a courtesy that would not be possible without your membership and support.
Thank you for your membership in the HSS.
- Jay Malone, HSS Executive Director