It's been a while!  Below are the minutes from our last meeting.

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TWS Molecular Ecology Working Group Meeting Minutes

October 19, 2015

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Opening Remarks- Emily Latch

-       Introductions

-       Update on membership – as of Sept 2015 roster, we have 53 members.  For this third year of our interim status, we need to have 50 paid members.  Great job getting the word out!

Charter discussion

-     This year, the final year of our 3-year interim status (from Nov 2015-2016), we need to approve our charter.  We will be sending out a draft charter that has been approved by the board, and the members will vote on approval in early 2016.

Facebook Group and Website Update

-       Both are active and looking for content!

-       Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TWSMolEcol?fref=ts (send content to Kristin Brzeski)

-       Website/blog: http://twsmolecularecology.blogspot.com/ (send content to Valorie Titus)

Discussion of future symposia

-       We cosponsored a symposium at this meeting, with the Climate Change Working Group: The Importance of Evolutionary Adaptive Capacity when Preparing for the Impacts of Climate Change

-       Proposals for future symposia: Deadline is Feb 5, 2016

Workshops for future meetings

* Two general ideas: either teach people or have people teach us

            -E-DNA (Valorie Titus)

            -Conservation Genetics (Lisette Waits), Landscape Genetics

            -Bioinformatics (Jim Austin), Software, R

            -Deadline for proposals for workshops at 2016 meeting: Feb 5, 2016

Sara Oyler-McCance is the MEWG representative for the editorial board of The Wildlife Professional.  If you have ideas for articles, or have written an article you would like to submit, please contact Sara.

Reminder for the TWS Social at The Pint on Tuesday at 8:30 P.M.

Committee formed for student awards committee (Jim Austin, Randy DeYoung, Darren Wood).  As we generate funds we would like to consider using them to support students, in their research and/or to travel to meetings.  We established this committee to consider possible options for students awards and how we would administer those award programs.

We also considered the possibility of having future awards for Best Article in Journal of Wildlife Management, Best Student Article related to Molecular Ecology.  We will consider this further in future meetings.

Our interim status is scheduled to end in Nov 2016.  We will petition TWS to become official next year (in our annual report to the Council), in time to be considered by the TWS Council at the 2016 meeting in Raleigh.