Same membership portal, New look! For a couple years now, we have been considering moving our membership management to a new system (offered by our conference manager, Podium Conference Specialists), that would have allowed our membership, conference registration, and abstract submissions to be in one portal. Unfortunately, the capabilities of that system simply did not meet our present needs. So after thoughtful consideration, we’re sticking with our current membership management database – Membership Toolkit. However, we did put considerable time and resources into updating our ASB Membership interface to best support you, our members! These include:
- Website updates: We’ve cleaned up the ASB membership webpage to make it easy to find your Member Profile, Membership Number, and ASB Directory access (members-only) through quick links. We’ve also added a summary (with links!) of all your membership benefits!
- Easy access to the ASB Directory (and your membership number!): The member-only directory is a great resource for finding biomechanists for speaking engagements, research collaborations, and more. This year, we added options so that you can link your research web profiles and websites in the Directory. We also made a digital membership card so you can easily get that ASB Membership number for ASB submissions and registrations!
- Expanded demographic questionnaire: We use membership demographics to create programming and resources to best support our members. This year, we added an “additional categories” question which will further support our members, especially those often underrepresented in biomechanics. We have and will continue to respect our members’ privacy with this information, as outlined in our Confidentiality Statement.
- New Disciplinary Category questions: We are considering implementing new definitions for our disciplinary categories. We’re asking two new questions in your profile. The first (“type of work”) asks you to rank the nature of work in which you focus (basic, translational, or clinical sciences, or science-related, non-research focused work). The second (“areas of work”) allows you to select multiple topics within biomechanics that relate to your work. You can read more here on how these categories will be used and why we’re asking them. We welcome your feedback on these categories!
- New member application process: Since 2014, our application process for new members required knowing two existing ASB members to serve as “sponsors” for your application. We received a lot of feedback that this process creates a barrier for entry into our Society, especially for those not already connected with other biomechanists. Thus, we removed the requirement to find sponsors, streamlined our application questionnaire, and we’re now going back to using our wonderful membership committee to review and approve all new members.
- More ways to interact with ASB: Once you’ve paid your membership dues, please consider filling out the following forms:
- ASB Volunteer Interests: indicate your interest in volunteering with ASB.
- ASB Affinity Groups: indicate your interest in joining an ASB Affinity Group.
- Share your Lab Website: let us know if you would like your research lab shared on our ASB Programs and Labs webpage!
Each of these many updates were made possible thanks to amazing work by our ASB volunteers, Executive Board, and Podium support staff. These include our Membership Committee members: Saikat Pal, JJ Wallace, Henry Wang, and Feng Yang (New Member Application Sub-Committee); Jean McCrory, Ke Song, Mathew Varre, and Noah Rosenblatt (Disciplinary Categories Sub-Committee); Tarang Jain, Lisa MacFadden, Maria Pasquale, Shima Jalalian, Tim Burkhart, Michael Harris, Sarah Roelker, Ben Binder-Markey, and Brooke Slavens (Recruitment and Retention Sub-Committee). I also want to thank our ASB Diversity Committee and ASB volunteers for their valuable input on our membership profile updates (Ajit Chaudhari, Chris Wilburn, Alexa Johnson, Stacie Ringleb, Evan Dooley, Sarah Breen, Frankie Wade, and Jonaz Moreno).
I’ll close with an update on our 2023 membership stats and demographics in the figures below. Notably, student membership went up 30% from 2022! I am continuing to track our recruitment and retention of members over the last few years to help the Society focus future efforts in these areas. From 2022 to 2023, we retained 665 of our 1,076 members from last year* (464 regular, 176 students, 23 students who switched to regular members, and 2 who did the reverse). While 287 members from 2022 did not renew in 2023 (150 regular, 137 students), we also had 105 former members rejoin ASB after a gap membership (76 regular, 29 students). An additional 306 new members (77 regular, 229 student) joined last year, so ultimately, we saw a net 13% increase in membership in 2023 (1,076 members*). Our retention is slightly down compared to previous years, but our recruitment this year was outstanding. If you have any suggestions for how the Membership Committee can improve your ASB membership experience, please email me at asbsecretary@asbweb.org.
*Emeritus members not included.
2023 membership demographics (n = 1,093):
