Greetings!

With fall semesters beginning, now is the perfect time to reflect on an excellent meeting in Vancouver. We had an excellent turnout of botanists from all over the world, including 343 students from 36 countries. We hope everyone had an enjoyable meeting and was able to leave with fresh insights into the botanical world.

Botany & Mycology 2009
While memories of the meeting are still swirling in everyone’s heads, we would love to get some feedback concerning how the annual meeting (and the BSA in general) can best serve its student members. If there are any student events that you would like to see in future meetings, let us know. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HELPING PLAN SOME STUDENT LEAD EVENTS..., have any great ideas, even if you think your idea may be a little off the wall, let us know about it and we’ll get YOU involved to ensure it gets done (if it is possible). In fact, it would be great to have a group of us working with students from the Mycological Society in this area.. Also, if there was anything student related at the meeting that you did not like or that you want to make sure we do again next meeting, let us know about that as well. We want your help, email us at - students@botany.org.

Share this one with your friends! BSA President, Karl Niklas created the following clip for his inaugural address - http://www.botany.org/botany-without-borders.php Maybe we can get a plant buzz going on the web... Do you know of any other BOTANICAL clips you'd like to share? Send links in to videos@botany.org and we'll get them noted on the BSA web site. If you have clips you need help to get online, ask Jennifer at the BSA Office for assistance - jpotratz@botany.org.

The new BSA student website will be up and running within the next few months. There will be student forums, blogs, and plenty of opportunities to network with more senior botanists. If you are a student and would like to start a blog on the BSA website about your experiences in graduate school, your research, your field experiences, or any similar topics, send an email to rbrandt@botany.org with a little bit of information about yourself and a paragraph on the potential focus of your blog. More details will come in a future newsletter.

Finally, we’d like to thank Mackenzie Taylor for all of the hard work she has put in over the past two years as the first BSA student representative. In a relatively short period of time, Mackenzie managed to increase student participation within the society by leaps and bounds. It's also important to note that student memerships have more than doubled and we now represent over 25% of the BSA membership.

Thanks for being involved!

Cheers,

Andrew Schwendemann            Jim Cohen
aschwend@ku.edu                    jic24@cornell.edu

Student Representatives
Botanical Society of America
www.botany.org
www.BotanyConference.org
www.PlantingScience.org

Mission: The Botanical Society of America exists to promote botany, the field of basic science dealing with the study and inquiry into the form, function, development, diversity, reproduction, evolution, and uses of plants and their interactions within the biosphere.