In February 2019, SPSSI adopted a strategic plan; the first of six goals was: “Develop the explicit practice of consciously working toward diversity and inclusion in every aspect of the organization and its work.” This June we will be taking an important step to further implement that goal (as we have been doing for the past several years in many ways), at the conference.  

Many SPSSI members (like me) report that our annual conference is a special place where they find their likeminded peers, and feel they belong; of course, this is our hope for everyone! But we have learned that sometimes things do happen at our conference that are not what we wish; and we need to look at those experiences systematically and address them. In 2019 for the first time SPSSI issued a “norms of conduct” policy for our annual conference and all events. This year we are taking steps to make that slightly revised code of conduct more visible to conference participants, and we have developed and will announce the procedures we have begun to use to implement that code. Our goal is to increase people’s experience of our conference as welcoming and inclusive, and to ensure that if interactions occur that are felt to be exclusionary or discriminatory, we have rapid and transparent ways of addressing them. 

So be ready for some new practices at the conference in Denver!  We will be asking conference attendees to sign a document confirming that they are aware of our policy, and we will have signage at the conference reminding people how they can report on both their positive and welcoming interactions and (we hope much more rarely) any negative ones. One of the ways we will all be able to describe interactions is on a new app we have developed for use at the conference. This year will be a “pilot” effort, so please know we cannot be sure things will be completely smooth. Our hope is that after whatever corrections we need to make from this pilot, we will be able annually to assess just how welcoming and inclusive our conference really is, since we all believe that collecting data is the first step toward improving policy. And if it doesn’t prove as welcoming and inclusive as we hope, we will have better understanding of just what we should be doing to make it more so.  

If you have ideas about new practices we should consider, please be in touch with me: abbystew@umich.edu. And I look forward to seeing you in Denver!