For more than 50 years, the Missouri Botanical Garden has hosted the Annual Systematics Symposium. Seven or so well-known scientists are invited to St. Louis to talk to an audience of about 400, including numerous undergraduates and graduate students. Most of the audience comes from colleges and universities within a five-hour drive of St. Louis but there are usually people here from about 35 states. They come to hear a progress report on what is happening in various areas of plant and animal biology, namely how these organisms are classified and how we study their relationships with one another. The talks are published in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and they have become a useful teaching tool. NSF funding, which has already supported 50 of the 52 symposia, is used to pay the travel and housing costs of the speakers, a portion of the secretarial costs, and a portion of the publication costs of the proceedings. There is a mix of male and female speakers, with the aim of matching the gender ratio of the audience if at all possible. The audience usually arrives on a Friday, the talks take place on Saturday, and people depart on Sunday. This year, there are demonstrations of computer software on the Sunday morning of the symposium weekend.
For numerous members of the audience, the Systematics Symposium is their first exposure to systematics (the study of classification and relationships of organisms) on a grand scale. They get to meet scientists from a wide array of schools, to arrange internships, to choose mentors for graduate work, and to develop future working relationships. They also get their first chance to visit one of the major plant collections in the world and to use a world-class botanical library. For some of the younger speakers too, the Systematics Symposium is a major turning point in their academic careers. Many members of the audience teach at smaller schools and colleges and the symposium is their chance to meet and talk with colleagues with similar scientific interests, to strike up new collaborations, and to meet with potential graduate students and interns. Altogether, the Systematics Symposium is a major catalyst of scientific interaction in the center of the nation.
