August 2005 • Volume 39 • Number 8

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New Office of Electronic Communications Director Darin Eastburn Intrigued by Advanced Technologies’ Role in APS.

Darin M. Eastburn, associate professor of plant pathology in the Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, became the third director of the Office of Electronic Communications (OEC) during the recent APS Annual Meeting in Austin, TX. Eastburn succeeds Jean Ristaino who served as director from 2002 to 2005.

Eastburn is looking forward to his new leadership role, “I think that the Office of Electronic Communications (OEC) is entering a period of transition. In the past, OEC and its predecessor the Electronic Technologies Advisory Group (ETAG) were instrumental in shaping the ways that APS members interact with the society and each other today. I can remember when APSnet was demonstrated for the first time at an annual meeting, and there was a big effort to convince members that a society web page could be really beneficial for them. Now, with the online membership directory, career and placement center, and online journal access, the APSnet site has become the central hub for many of our society’s interactions. The idea of the online journals Plant Health Progress and Plant Health Instructor and the APSnet Education Center were initiated by OEC and ETAG. We can now register for the annual meetings, check job listings, order APS PRESS products, and read APS journal articles online, and none of that was possible just a few years ago. There have been a number of issues that OEC, under the direction of Jim McDonald and Jean Ristaino, has dealt with, including the protection of copyright of electronically distributed materials, the move to electronic manuscript submission and review, the effects of electronic distribution of journals on the viability of paper versions and the financial viability of the society, and more recently the decision to grant free access to all journal articles two years after publication. Many of the projects that were initiated by OEC or ETAG have now matured, and the direct involvement of OEC has diminished as they have taken on a life of their own.”

So what is the future of OEC? According to Eastburn, “Technologies for electronic communications continue to advance, and it will be the role of OEC to evaluate these technologies and determine whether their adoption will benefit the members of our society.
 
We are moving into an era of blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, and wikis. Some of these may be useful for APS members and others not. I think that OEC can play a vital role in evaluating new ways of doing things and looking for ways to make new endeavors possible. At the APS meeting in Austin, we experimented with blogs and RSS feeds. Just to try things out and have a bit of fun, Gary Grove and David Schmale wrote blogs to chronicle their experiences at the meeting (visit http://aps.typepad.com/austin/). The idea was to give those who do not have the opportunity to attend the meetings a chance to hear about what goes on and to show how annual meetings can be very different things to different people. Whether blogs will become an important part of society interactions is not at all certain. We just began to test the waters with this one. However, using RSS feeds to update members on important events or news items is something that we will be looking at seriously. In addition, the APSnet website is continually being evaluated and upgraded to better meet the needs of the society, and OEC can act as a sounding board and evaluator of any potential changes. Not everything we have tried has caught on. The bulletin-board like features of APSnet Interactive have yet to generate a lot of interest among members, who appear to prefer the use of listservs or standard e-mails for group communication. We are currently looking at alternative approaches to electronic group communications to see if we can better facilitate this type of interaction. There are a lot of interesting developments taking place in the world of computer-based communications right now, and I think that it will be very exciting to help the society wade through this interesting mix of possibilities.”

Darin M. Eastburn received his B.S. degree in botany from Humboldt State University in 1981, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant pathology from the University of California, Davis in 1984 and 1986, respectively. He worked as a post-doc for two years with Doug Gubler at UC Davis before joining the faculty of the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Illinois in 1988 as an assistant professor and extension specialist in diseases of vegetable crops. He was promoted to associate professor in 1994, and received the college Faculty Achievement Award for Extension in 1998. During 1998–1999 Eastburn did a one-year sabbatical with David Shew at North Carolina State University, and upon returning to the University of Illinois, he accepted a research/teaching position in the Department of Crop Sciences. His research now focuses on soilborne fungi, primarily those that cause diseases of soybeans and on alternative plant disease control practices. He is responsible for teaching courses on plant pathogenic fungi, professionalism and ethics in the natural sciences, and an undergraduate general-education course, “Plants, Pathogens and People.” He also is involved in several scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects.

Eastburn is active in several facets of The American Phytopathological Society. He is completing a three-year term as the APSnet Features editor, serves on the editorial boards of the APSnet Education Center and Plant Health Progress, and is an ex-officio member of the Office of Public Affairs and Education (OPAE) and the Office of Electronic Communications (OEC). He has served as an associate editor for Plant Disease and as a senior editor for The Plant Health Instructor, as well as a member of several APS committees, including the Teaching, Mycology, Soilborne Diseases, and Illustrations committees and the Electronic Technology Advisory Group.

 

Online Workshop on Methods to Detect Microbial Diversity in Soil

The Scientific Programs Board of the APS is pleased to announce an online workshop to be held from July 15 through September 1, 2005 on Methods to Detect Microbial Diversity in Soil. Many methods exist for the characterization of soil microbial communities. Every approach may not be equally suited to test a particular hypothesis and there are costs and benefits associated with the use of each. Are you using the most efficient method for your objective? Are you getting the most out of your data? Could you delve more deeply by selecting a different method without increasing the cost of the project? Explore these issues with experts in the field and join in a discussion online on this timely topic.

The workshop will be moderated by Dilantha Fernando (Chair, APS Workshops). APS hopes to attract a diverse audience working on soil microbial diversity around the world, and will follow up with a discussion session on Wednesday, August 3, 2005 at the APS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. The workshop will continue online until September 1, 2005. Please visit and learn more about methods in detecting microbial diversity in soil at www.apsnet.org/online/soilmicrobes/
 

Creating a Vision for Plant Pathology

Joyce Loper, USDA ARS, loperj@science.oregonstate.edu

Look into your crystal ball…and what do you see for the future of plant pathology? A diverse group
of APS members came together to develop “A Vision of Plant Pathology in the 21st Century,” a document prepared by the APS ad hoc committee on Plant Pathology Priorities. APS would like to know your vision of the future.

To post your ideas and comments on the document, go to www.apsnet.org/members/vision/. Your comments will help APS revise this vision document to reflect the best thinking of our membership.
 

 
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