Volume 22, Number 4 November 2011 SfAA President’s Column By Merrill Eisenberg [
[email protected]] University of Arizona he SfAA Board met in Denver on October 15-16, and I am happy to report that all is well with your Society! We are coming up on our T75 th birthday in 2016, but we are nowhere near ready for retirement! In fact, we are very busy planning for “Beyond 75”. We’ve come a long way since our founding in 1941, when, as John Bennett recalled in his SfAA Oral History interview, “…we regarded this as a kind of cult formation. That is, I think our attitude was, ‘Well, so what’s all the fuss about?’ It should be applied, you know; it should have some mix… do Merrill Eisenberg something that has relevance for the world, for… for men, for humans…’” Our first annual meeting was held in 1941 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The entire group of attendees fit into one room and less than 10 papers were presented. Among the presenters were Margaret Mead, William F. Whyte, and Eliot Chapple. Today, the SfAA is almost 3000 members strong. Approximately 10% of our members reside outside of the US, in 47 different countries. Thirty percent of our members are students. Approximately 2000 people attend our meetings in a "good" year and hundreds of papers, presentations, workshops, roundtables and panels are held. We've come a long way from our cultish ancestors! Looking “Beyond 75” we recognize our changing world and what that means for applied social science and for our Society.