Dear NCME Colleagues:
In volatile and difficult times, we on the board of NCME continue to be heartened by our community's resounding support of its members and the NCME Mission. This extraordinary response has enabled us to broaden our support of member attendance to our upcoming annual meeting in Denver later this month and beyond.
Last month, our Board of Directors contributed their personal funds to create 12 $1000 travel grants for affected members to attend our annual meeting this month. This has since been more than matched by contributions from individual members and organizations, including a substantial contribution from NBME and a significant grant from the Spencer Foundation. Altogether, we have more than $50,000 in funds to support participation at our annual meeting, and counting.
We have already granted registration fee waivers and Travel Grants to a number of presenting members who have lost their positions or travel funding due to cuts by the U.S. executive branch. This includes presenting graduate students who had documented direct funding loss due to these continuing cuts.
Ongoing generosity from NCME members and supporting organizations means that we are able to broaden eligibility for travel support. We now encourage applications from members in these categories:
- Any NCME member whose ability to participate in the Annual Meeting has been negatively affected by U.S. executive branch cuts, regardless of whether the member is a presenting author or not.
- Any graduate student who is presenting a paper or eBoard and lacks full travel support, whether there is a direct relationship to U.S. executive branch cuts or not.
We are taking these actions because we continue to believe that ongoing executive branch cuts to federal measurement-related positions and funding represent a threat to our measurement mission. Thanks to the generosity of our community, we can also waive the need for presenting graduate students to document direct effects from federal cuts. This is helpful, because these cuts are having negative effects on funding in higher education that are indirect and difficult for our graduate students to document clearly. Our community's support enables us to invest directly in the scholarship that higher education institutions enable, particularly the graduate students who represent the future of our field.
We encourage all eligible members to use this existing request form to request travel support and, if applicable, registration fee waivers. Your in-person attendance at our meetings adds vitality to our science, scholarship, and service. NCME meetings are where many of us first met, identified career pathways, learned new skills, established reputations, sparked collaborations, and felt a sense of community. If you were on the fence about attending, let this community support be a reminder that you should join us. If you were attending but unable to stay an extra day or worried about expenses, let this community support extend your stay or ease your concerns.
We will continue to review and approve requests while funds remain available. We also welcome additional contributions to those who are inclined. Any contributions to our Mission Fund with the comment “to support NCME members” will be earmarked for use at the Annual Meeting or our fall conference on Artificial Intelligence in Measurement in Education (AIME-Con).
It is an honor to serve such a vibrant and caring community.
On behalf of the NCME Board of Directors,
Andrew Ho, President
Rich Patz, Executive Director
National Council on Measurement in Education
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