Feb. 9, 2021
Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,
I hope all of you are settling in to the new year. We have heard from many of you with questions about this year’s conference. And we hear your concerns about the safety, logistics, and equity issues involved in meeting in Indianapolis as planned. Although the situation remains fluid and it remains too soon to make final decisions, we want to share the information below, and ask for your help as we consider our options.
Submission Deadline: Extended
Based on your feedback, we’ve decided to extend the submission deadline for panels, papers, and roundtables to March 1. We hope that the extra two weeks will encourage you to take part in our annual conference and give those of you interested in submitting abstracts adequate time to do so.
Conference Planning: Survey
In order to help us to plan for this fall, we need to know more concretely how all of you as of right now envision your participation in the conference. The options open to us in terms of format vary widely in complexity and cost both to the wider membership and the association as a whole. We ask you all to *fill out our survey* by March 1. We will use this information to develop the best possible format for this year.
I know that many of you have missed coming to the GSA and want to return as soon as you feel you can safely. Let me assure you, on behalf of the Executive Council, that we want that too. There are likely to be a lot of new organizational elements that we are going to have to take into consideration, and for which we also have to pay. It has surprised us all just how expensive the technology is that we take for granted in both our professional and personal lives. Ultimately, that will mean that our historically low registration costs will likely have to rise.
We know many of you are already feeling the pinch of canceled travel budgets or are working with no institutional support for conferences. We therefore ask that those who are able please consider donating to the *GSA Community Fund* to help offset cost for colleagues in financially precarious situations. We promise that we’ll do what we can to keep the costs of running the conference as low as we can and keep all of us (as well as the association itself) safe and healthy.
Thank you for your patience with us as we try to find the best and safest way forward. We look forward to hearing from you in the survey.
Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director
and the Executive Council