Interest Groups

• What Is a Special Interest Group (IG)?
• What Does an IG do?
• How Are IGs Run?
• Why Should I Care?
  

Q: What Is a Special Interest Group (IG)?
A: IGs offer GSA members and Annual Scientific Meeting attendees the opportunity to meet and work, in interdisciplinary groups, on topics that transcend boundaries of the Society's four membership Sections. GSA currently supports 49  interest groups, spanning a wide range of emerging and cross-cutting issues in gerontology.

IG membership complements section membership in GSA. Most IG members are also members of a GSA section and participate in section activities. Many GSA members belong to more than one IG.

Q: What Does an IG Do?
A: During the Annual Scientific Meeting, each IG receives a time slot and room designated for a business meeting. In addition to catching up and appointing conveners, groups use this time for activities (e.g., round tables; guest speakers; poster sessions; organized discussions) that promote the quality of ideas, research, and dissemination in their area of interest. Also during the Annual Scientific Meeting, IG's may sponsor scientific sessions and posters, pre- and post-meeting workshops and trainings, mini-conferences, and other science and practice-related activities that members have organized over the course of the year.

Between Annual Scientific Meetings, IG members communicate with one another via listservs and other social media around scholarly ideas, potential joint projects, and the activities the IG will sponsor at the upcoming Annual Scientific Meeting.

Q: How Are IGs Run?
A: Each IG selects a convener (or two) who serves a two-year term during which she/he is responsible for organizing and coordinating the group's activities for the upcoming Annual Scientific Meeting. The convener also runs the business meeting, attends the Conveners' Meeting at the Annual Scientific Meeting, and submits timely, annual, required reports (minimal electronic paperwork) to GSA.

IGs coalesce around specific areas of gerontological interest and attain official standing and status by submitting appropriate paperwork to the GSA office.

Potential IGs: For its first three years after GSA approval, a potential IG conducts its business meeting, establishes a core membership, sponsors activities at GSA, and, in the process, refines its mission, attracts members, and establishes relationships with other IGs.  

Informal IGs: As groups of several years' standing, informal IGs develop a sense of the kinds of IG-sponsored scientific presentations that are likely to be accepted at the Annual Scientific Meeting. Group members come to know one another, develop ideas together, and create potential collaborations with other IGs.

Formal IGs:  According to current policy, each Formal IG may sponsor one symposium at the Annual Meeting without submitting the abstract to a Section review process.  Frequently, several IG's choose to collaborate for these symposia.  

Policies for IGs are established by the GSA Council, in consultation with a Society-wide Task Force on Special Interest Groups, comprising members appointed by major GSA constituencies.

Q: Why Should I Care?
A: In a large scientific society devoted to an area of rapidly growing societal importance that is not historically organized in focused academic units, individual scholars may experience themselves as isolated — in their home institutions, and in the large section structure of GSA as well. IGs provide a way for scholars with specific foci (that are often not at the center of mainstream gerontology) to develop scientific relationships with others who share their interests in a specific method, population, aging issue, or problem. These relationships and the collaborations they spawn are an important source of growth for individual scholars, the GSA, and the field of gerontology as a whole.