Change of Address. Please notify the Secretariat when you move. It is costly and time consuming to replace journals and bulletins that could not be delivered the first time because of an incorrect address.
2003 LSA Election. Ballots to elect a Vice-President/President-Elect for 2003, two Executive Committee members, the Secretary-Treasurer, and the Editor of Language were mailed 1 August along with the dues notices for 2003. If you did not receive this mailing, please contact the Secretariat; the deadline for returning ballots is 1 December 2002.
Committee Nominations. The Secretariat keeps a list of individuals who are interested in becoming members of LSA committees. Please forward your name and the committee you are interested in to the Secretariat (lsa@lsadc.org). Members might also consider making the Secretariat aware of others who would be good committee members. A nominating form is in the inserts of this bulletin.
Web-Based Materials Committee. The Society thanks the following members for agreeing to be part of this newly-formed committee: Janet Dean Fodor (CUNY Grad Ctr), Merrill Garrett (U AZ), Jila Ghomeshi (U MB), Sharon Klein (CSU-Northridge), and Sherman Wilcox (U AZ).
Linguistics
in the Media. The Secretariat keeps a file of articles about linguistics
that have appeared in the media. Members are encouraged to send such items to
the Secretariat.
Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kluwer invites Society members to receive Kluwer
Alert, information on new publications. To sign up, members should consult:
http://www.wkap.nl/kluweralert.
Dissolution of the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee.
In mid-September, the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee (NHRPAC) convened by the Department of Health and Human Services was disbanded. NHRPAC had made considerable progress on the numerous issues facing social/behavioral scientists trying to work within a human protection system devised for mainly biomedical research settings. The group was well on its way to developing guidelines to help institutional review boards assess social/behavioral research involving human participants and had completed reports on issues where clarification of practices was necessary such as public use data files, confidentiality research data priorities, and third parties. In addition, significant progress had been made on complicated questions such as definitions of 'risk' and 'harm'. Although no one is certain if or when another panel will be named, it is likely that the work of this panel will now have no impact on the institutional review process. LSA has signed letters to Secretary Tommy Thompson drafted by the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences and the Consortium of Social Science Associations expressing our serious concern about the sudden disbanding of NHRPAC and urging that the promised reconstitution of NHRPAC include members with strong backgrounds in social and behavioral research.
National Research Council Study of Research Doctorates
In 1995, NRC issued its most recent assessment of doctoral programs at US research universities (http://bob.nap.edu/html/researchdoc/). The rankings assigned by these NRC assessments, however controversial and inaccurate, are highly influential. NRC reports describing and measuring the quality of programs in graduate education have been important for university administrators, faculty and students, policymakers, and funding agencies. Recently, NRC has begun a study to determine whether another assessment ought to be done and, if so, what the methodology of the study should be. As you may recall, the information collected on linguistics programs for the 1995 study was woefully inaccurate and incomplete. As many as 15 (approximately 25%) of the institutions granting PhDs in linguistics were not even included in the study. Lists of faculty members from institutions that were included in the study, which formed the basis for the reputational survey, were seriously inaccurate; 70% contained errors. These errors and omissions as well as other serious problems with the study were noted at the time by the LSA but were not addressed by the survey staff and were not noted in the final report. The LSA believes that NRC needs to hold itself to higher standards in any future study of linguistics doctoral programs and urges you to communicate to your department chair and dean the need to ensure that future survey data are gathered and reported accurately.