Rebounding Together: SIAM’s Membership Milestones in 2024

This time last year, I shared that 2023 was the first year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to see an increase in SIAM membership numbers [1]. To keep this momentum going throughout 2024, our staff focused on growing and strengthening the SIAM member community this past year. Here, I would like to highlight some noteworthy membership accomplishments and explain their impacts.

SIAM activity group (SIAG) memberships are rebounding after three challenging years. Conference attendees can join the corresponding SIAG for free as a perk of SIAM membership, and student members can join two SIAGs for free; SIAM staff and SIAG officers made great efforts to advertise these benefits in 2024. This work seems to have paid off, as SIAG involvement—especially among students—rose last year.

SIAG membership also grew thanks in part to SIAG officers’ engagement with their members. For example, SIAM’s newest SIAG on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion held its first virtual business meeting and organized several minisymposia at the 2024 SIAM Annual Meeting, which took place in Spokane, Wash., last July. Additionally, five SIAGs held webinar series in 2024, and more than 10 in-person SIAM conferences (some of which were co-located) offered opportunities for members to connect with a wide variety of SIAGs.

SIAM currently has 16 sections in different geographic regions—11 within North America and five across other continents—with a 17th section approved for New England. The Northern and Central California Section of SIAM, which was founded in 2023, held its inaugural conference in October 2024, and many sections reported record or near-record attendance at their annual meetings last year. Section memberships are both free and automatic for any current SIAM members who live or work in the geographic area of the section in question. To become involved with a SIAM section, simply attend a section activity or contact the section officers in your locality.

In 2024, all 16 sections launched new communities on SIAM Engage: SIAM’s online platform where members can network and share information about future meetings and career opportunities. Many members utilize the platform to promote upcoming events, webinars, job openings, postdoctoral positions, and more throughout the year, so be sure to join Engage if you have not yet done so.

SIAM also created an Engage community for student chapter officers in 2024, providing a space to brainstorm and share success stories. We added 13 new student chapters in 2024 and saw overall student membership grow for the second year in a row, which is a positive sign that SIAM membership is actively recovering from the drop during the pandemic. SIAM student chapters provide participants with invaluable opportunities to develop relationships with other students and faculty members outside of the classroom, communicate ideas and research, learn about career prospects, and hone their leadership skills.

As a reminder, most students can join SIAM for free! Full-time students are eligible for free membership if they are graduate students at a SIAM Academic Member institution, involved with a SIAM student chapter, or nominated by any regular SIAM member. Free student membership offers all of the same benefits as regular student membership (which only costs $25.00 per year), except that free student members cannot vote in SIAM elections and only receive SIAM Review in its electronic format. Moreover, nonmember students who take part in SIAM programs will also find that membership is now included with their participation in most cases.

To make it easier for all new members—both students and nonstudents—to join SIAM, we have begun to bundle membership with conference registration. SIAM staff continue to simplify other processes by which individuals can become members as well. Furthermore, SIAM offers discounts to certain populations to make SIAM membership more accessible. For instance, early-career researchers benefit from a 50 percent discount off the price of regular membership for the first three years after graduation, and a 25 percent discount for the fourth and fifth years. People who reside in developing countries can join SIAM for $15.00 annually with an outreach membership. Finally, members of other industrial and applied mathematics societies with which SIAM has signed agreements qualify for reciprocal membership, which comes with a 30 percent discount.

Would you like to help ensure the continued growth of the SIAM community in 2025? All members can support both SIAM and our profession in the following ways:

• Nominate two students for free membership in 2025. All regular SIAM members can nominate two students each year!
• Encourage recent graduates in your circles to join SIAM and take advantage of the early-career membership discount.
• Select the auto-renew option at my.siam.org so you don’t forget to renew your membership at the end of the year. Doing so eliminates renewal reminders and ensures continued access to important benefits like discounts on journals, books, and conferences; participation in SIAGs and Engage; and more. Simply check the “auto-renew” box when you renew online, and your membership will automatically renew at the end of the year.

Returning to pre-pandemic membership levels is an ongoing priority at SIAM, which means that membership growth will continue to remain a focus of the Society in 2025. I encourage you to help us strengthen the SIAM community in the new year by nominating one or more student members; volunteering; joining a SIAG; conversing on Engage; attending a webinar, conference, or section meeting; and subscribing to SIAM newsletters and journals. If you have questions about how to get involved or make the most of your membership, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our membership team at membership@siam.org.

References
[1] White, P. (2024, January 22). A year of growth and learning at SIAM. SIAM News, 57(1), p. 11.