April 21, 2023
OFFICER REPORTS
Report from Marin Pilloud, President of Dental Anthropology Association
Welcome everyone! I am one year into my term as president of the DAA. I have been off to a slower start than expected owing to having a difficult past year due to a family death. And, I am sorry to have missed last year’s meeting – but, am so happy to be back here in person in my hometown!
I want to start off by thanking the officers for all their work over the past year and I thank you all for being here and for continuing to be members.
We are working to improve and grow the association. We are hoping to do more outreach
through videos, publications, and growing the website and social media presence.
We are hoping to start a new award, which we will vote on at the end of the meeting.
And, I am really hoping that we can create a robust ethical code within the organization.
If you have any interest in helping in any of these efforts – please reach out to me or any of theofficers here today and we can get you involved.
Report from Kathleen Paul, Secretary of Dental Anthropology Association
As of this month, we currently have 133 members (based on payment of dues). Of the active membership, 42 (32%) are students and 91 (68%) are faculty, instructors, or dental professionals. Fifty-eight of these individuals are new members as of 2022. I will note that our recent membership count is 317, which includes 184 memberships that have lapsed since 2020 (93 since 2022, alone). I think this is a noteworthy statistic, because 2020 was the first year that the AABA meetings were either canceled or moved to a remote/hybrid format due to COVID-19. As I mentioned previously, without in-person events occurring during the remote meeting years, I believe there was a sharp decline in active membership. I should also note that we have only been systematically monitoring membership status since I assumed this role in fall of 2021. Prior to that, many non-active members were included in the total count; this might be one reason for the two-year decline in membership. It is possible counts were artificially inflated prior to 2021.
To encourage members to maintain their active status, in 2022 I began sending reminders to individuals with expiring dues to renew their memberships. I have kept email addresses for those recently lapsed subscribed to the DAA Mailchimp campaigns. Using this list, I will send out a mass reminder once or twice a year to renew expired memberships, usually before DAA events.
Over the last few years, we have provided a virtual attendance option for the workshops, and, surprisingly, very few of the Zoom attendees were dues-paying members—almost none, actually. We have been fairly relaxed about the membership requirement for virtual attendance, but we may consider a stricter policy in future years to encourage folks to maintain active membership.
I am open to suggestions on recruitment and retention strategies, however! If you have ideas, please feel free to share. The same goes for email communications from the Association (more, less, earlier reminders about renewal, a quarterly newsletter, etc?). I would also like to know if those who have donated to the association would like me to send out a document prior to tax season listing the date and amount of their contribution at the start of the calendar year. I could work with Christina to do this for tax year 2023, if that would be helpful.
Since the last meeting, the officers have met three times (once in November, once in December, and once in April) to discuss Association business and to organize meeting activities. Additionally, Christina and I check in with each other on a monthly basis to ensure that membership/donation records match incoming funds. For this reason, all information on accounts and spending will be presented in the Treasurer’s report.
Report from Christina Nicholas, Treasurer of Dental Anthropology Association
As of 4/20/23, the DAA reserves sit at $23,659, an increase from 2022. From April 2022 to April 20, 2023, DAA spent a total of $2407.69, while bringing in $5958.50, for a net of $3550.81. Costs incurred include AABA-related costs, DAJ journal charges, CrossRef charges, fees to host our website, fees associated with our online payment system, and the 2022 Dahlberg prizes (2). Income included membership fees, donations, and Bone Clones royalties ($2646.30). Christina and Amelia Hubbard, the past Treasurer, worked to have Christina added to the Chase accounts in 2022. Moving forward, Christina would like to differentiate general operating funds and Dahlberg funds into separate sub-accounts (all funds are currently commingled) and work with the officers to identify spending priorities as well as potential avenues for revenue.
Report from Rebecca George, Executive Board Member of Dental Anthropology Association
My role this year has been to support the other officers in their tasks, as well as assistingwith organizing the workshop. I book the room in coordination with Burke and Associates andset up the registration links (19 in-person attendees of the 25 registrants; 120+ Zoom registrants).
I also assist the student prize committee and generally just try to be helpful in this role throughout the year.
Report from Diana Malarchik, Communications Officer of Dental Anthropology Association
Our Facebook page currently has 2,240 active members. Our FB page does seem to be getting more interest, and we do have specific questions you have to answer to become a member, which seems to be helping to limit bots!
Our Twitter has 1,174 members, and we seem to have less engagement within Twitter, though since we mostly post announcements this seems par for the course.
To help encourage more involvement, I would like to remind our members that we have two ways to highlight people or projects. There are two google forms (pinned posts at the top of the FB page) and one is a researcher highlight. I have done examples using our DAA officers - so please check those out to see what they are like. You can fill them out to introduce yourself to our community, nominate students, etc. I would like to see more professors and leaders fill them out. It is nice to start seeing faces with the names that pop up in our discipline.
We also have a google form for student work! I would like to have each of our winners (if the are comfortable posting about themselves on our closed group) fill them out and show off their incredible projects. This is a great way to show off posters, photos from a podium, or outreach events we have worked on.
So please use these links! I know we are all busy, but it is a great way to share who we are and what we do in a closed group where we all love teeth!
Report from Dori Kenessey, Student Member of Dental Anthropology Association
We have merged all previous networking events (Let’s Do Lunch, Speed Networking, Social Hour) into a single, two-hour long event under “DAA Networking and Social Hour” This year’s DAA Networking and Social Hour is held at Wonder Aleworks. A portion of the event will be dedicated to playing tooth-themed trivia as an alternative to our regular networking events. The rest of the event is available for networking among attendees
Currently preparing a resource for the DAA website in which current DAA faculty members contact information, specialty and institutional affiliation will be advertised.
To facilitate collaboration among DAA members sharing research interest
To help students searching for programs with a dental anthropology focus (or component) when they are applying for graduate school
If you are interested in advertising your program through this resource and you aren’t a DAA member, please renew your membership
I will contact active members to get their permission to advertise their program and them as an academic
I will contact lapsed members to renew their membership if they are interested in advertising their program and themselves as an academic
Thinking about a mentorship program that would allow cross-institutional collaboration. This could help expand the network of dental anthropology students beyond faculty members at their institution
Pairing based on shared research interests
Would be nice if faculty volunteering to mentor could bring in their mentee on a project they are working on to strengthen their relationship and provide academi support (through publications and research experience gained) to the mentee)
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Report from Toby Hughes and Rebecca George, Co-Editors of Dental Anthropology
I was appointed the co-editor of the journal towards the end of last year, having served as the editorial assistant under Marin editorship for 6 years. Between our last business meeting and December 2022, no issues had been published, and article submissions/production fell behind, with articles not always being assigned to reviewers, reviews not being conducted, decisions not being sent out to authors, etc. With Marin’s assistance, we were able to release an issue in February. We are currently on track to release a second issue this year with two articles undergoing final revisions, one awaiting a second initial review, and another article just being sent out for initial review. In 2022 as a whole, there were only 10 submissions - 2 were accepted, 6 were rejected (with 4 being editorial rejections), and 2 submissions pulled before review due to the delays. Our acceptance/rejection rates are off as a result of the delays, but the journal - since switching to our online platform - has an overall acceptance rate of 56% with a 38% rejection rate; the other 6% is a mix of article submissions not being completed or being pulled prior to review.
I am currently handling submissions and assigning reviewers. I have accepted an editorial assistant to aid in the final production of manuscripts. I will also be accepting applications for an entirely new editorial board within the next month. I am looking to expand the diversity of the editorial board, include multiple avenues of expertise, and am seeking early career and doctoral candidates to fill the editorial board. This will help to ensure the people on this editorial board will be engaged and can utilize their experience towards promotion and future career paths. More information on applying will be posted across our social media outlets and an email will be sent out to DAA members very soon. As a whole, we as an organization have to continue to submit quality articles, encourage our students to submit, and step up in terms of availability to review articles I’d rather you tell me no than agree to do a review and never complete it. If you don’t have an account with our journal, please make one and fill out your expertise so we can make sure articles are getting reviewed by the right people. If you are not willing to be a reviewer, please edit your profile to reflect that. The journal is getting back on track. Marin began an application for SCOPUS at the end of her tenure as editor and has agreed to continue pursuing this application. This will aid in getting an impact factor. I will continue to find ways to make this journal a place we want to publish in as a field.
Report from James Watson, Outgoing Chair of Workshop Committee
This year’s workshop successful workshop “Tooth Crown and Root Morphology” was led by Dr. Richard Scott and Tatiana Vlamincq-Mendieta. This was a hands-on workshop with 25 in-person and 35 online attendees.
The option of the online platform for the workshop over the last few years has been important for conducting outreach overseas, and that may be a reason to include this option in future years. Donovan Adams will take over this role next year.
Report from Christine Lee, Chair of Election Committee
Nothing to report - Christine will be stepping down this year
Report from Cathy Willermet, Chair of Student Prize Committee
2022-2023 Student Prize Committee report:
• The Christy G. Turner II/Cambridge University Press prize was evaluated virtually this year. It was opened to students who submitted a dental anthropology-related poster accepted via peer review at any professional meeting from March 2022-April 2023.
Applicants submitted a .pdf of their poster and a three-minute video walk-through presentation. The nice thing about this format is that we can open it to more students, and we can see all presentations, which was hard to do sometimes in person.
Winners will receive $100 book credit provided by Cambridge University Press. Once again we thank our friends at Cambridge University Press for their continued support of this prize.
This year we have two winners:
o Julianne R. Stamer, Arizona State University, Oral Disease at Al-Qinifab, Sudan: Reassessing the Saso and Kondo (2019) Method
o Emily Moes, University of New Mexico, Sex Differences in the Relationship between Fluctuating Asymmetry in Deciduous Teeth and Environmental Temperature during Gestation
The Albert A. Dahlberg Prize is awarded annually to the best student paper submitted to the Dental Anthropology Association. Dr. Dahlberg was among the first modern researchers to describe variations in dental morphology and the endowed fund continues to support student research. We encourage our members to donate to the Albert A. Dahlberg Fund to continue this prize. The winner of the Dahlberg Prize will receive a cash award, a one-year membership in the Dental Anthropology Association, and an invitation to publish the paper in Dental Anthropology, the journal of the Association.
o This year, we award the Dahlberg Prize to two student co-authors, Panagiota Bantavanou and Elissavet Ganiatsou from the Democritus University of Thrace, for their paper An Investigation of Enamel Hypoplasia and Weaning through Histomorphological Analysis and Bayesian Isotopic Mixing Models.
Congratulations, everyone!
New business - vote on new award:
Innovation in Dental Anthropology
This award aims to recognize the contributions of a career scholar in dental anthropology. The innovation must be within the last 10 years of the nomination of the award. Individuals will be recognized for pushing the discipline in exciting and ethical directions, which can include teaching, research, mentorship, outreach, service. To be eligible for the award individuals must be current members of the Dental Anthropology Association and be nominated by current Dental Anthropology Association members. Nomination letters can be sent to the President of the Dental Anthropology Association by 1 February. Nomination letters must be no more than 2 pages long and should detail the innovations of the nominee and their impact on the discipline of dental anthropology through ethical research and conduct. The president will appoint a review committee to review nominations based on innovation, impact on the field, and ethical practice. The winner will be announced at the annual business meeting held each year in conjunction with our partner organization, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.
BUSINESS MEETING MINUTES 4/21/2023
RENO, NEVADA – PEPPERMILL RESORT - TUSCANY 9 CONFERENCE ROOM
I. Call to Order, Marin Pilloud: 8:45 PM
II. Approval of Agenda
III. Approval of 2022 Business Meeting Minutes
IV. Officer Reports (see details above)
A. Marin Pilloud, President
B. Kathleen Paul, Secretary
1. Suggestion made to increase accessibility of email image/document attachments (text reader options for PDFs)
2. Suggestion made to send out additional reminders to lapsed members
3. Suggestion made to add another button to website to pay for multiyear memberships and pay for other members (i.e., students)
C. Christina Nicholas, Treasurer
D. Executive Board Member, Rebecca George
E. Communications Officer, Diana Malarchik
F. Student Member, Dori Kenessey
V. Committee Reports
A. Journal Co-Editors, Toby Hughes & Rebecca George
1. Suggestion made to broaden reviewer pool
2. Issues with emails getting lost or sent to spam
B. Outgoing Workshop Committee Chair, James Watson
C. Outgoing Election Committee Chair, Christine Lee
D. Student Prize Committee Chair, Cathy Willermet
1. 2023 CG Turner II/CUP Prize
2. 2023 Dahlberg Prize
VI. New Business
A. Innovation Award Voting (see details above)
1. Motion made and seconded to vote on new award
2. Motion unanimously passed
3. Nominations will be due by February 1, 2024
VII. Announcements
A. Congratulations to Dr. Emma Lagan!
VIII. Adjourned, Marin Pilloud: 9:29 PM