As 2014 comes to an end we are excited about continuing to grow the membership of Division I. Division I is a very special division within AERA that brings together a diverse group of researchers who work across the many different professions. Some are attracted to AERA because of the chance to be a part of Division I, but many are only drawn to Division I after years of involvement within AERA.
What does Division I offer?
Nowhere else will you find such a diverse, intellectually stimulating, and friendly group of scholars. Where else can you find research on assessment in law, engineering and medicine? Who else brings together researchers from dental education, teacher education, nursing to discuss the research on the impact of cultural competency education? This is what makes Division I special and it’s the goal of the Membership Committee to make sure everyone in the AERA community knows.
Our current membership (2014) stands at 569. We have 147 members already who have renewed for 2015. We expect most of the rest will also renew (that includes you)! However, we are about to begin an aggressive campaign to get back more than 100 AERA members who have let their Division I membership lapse. In the months to come I will be reaching out to some of you current members to help in this effort.
The Division I Twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/#!/AERADivisionI), which began in 2011, now has 170 followers. This feed will be used to update members on preparations for the 2015 Annual Meeting. Division I also has a LinkedIn page: (http://www.linkedin.com/groups/American-Educational-Research-Association-AERA-3920670), which allows Division I members to network directly with others who are interested in the same areas of education and research. We hope these venues will continue to allow us to recruit new members and provide additional value to those who are already members. We would like to have every Division I member who is on Twitter to follow Division I. We promise, no celebrity sighting tweets!
We also want to use the 2015 AERA Annual Conference in Chicago to help generate new members from the sur- rounding institutions. Reaching out to the local education research community is a great way to bring new faces to AERA and Division I. If you have ideas for outreach projects for Chicago 2015, or any other ideas for increasing membership, please contact me directly. If you work at an institution in the Chicago area, please send me an email if you are interested in being a part of our 2015 local recruitment effort. We are always interested in your ideas for membership and outreach or participation on the Membership Committee.
Together we can share the message about the value of Division I membership and help grow our numbers. I look forward to seeing you all in Chicago in April 2015.
Thank you.
Eugene Anderson, [email protected] Membership Committee Chair