James Roberts
James Roberts, MD
SRI President, 1996-1997
My presidency was during what was probably one of the last few years of the "old SGI." Many of the founding SGI members were still active. We were still the SGI and despite recurring efforts would maintain this title and title of our journal for several more years. The officers of the SGI were pretty much appointed by the Council. We had a limited membership based on high achievement, and because of that did not have nearly the impact nationally that we do now.
At this time we still had a banquet at which the president roasted various senior SGI members. At the banquet, which was in San Diego, we either instituted or perhaps reinstituted as part of the program a brief presentation by the recipients of the two SGI awards, The SRI Distinguished Scientist Award and The President's Achievement Award. The idea was for these individuals to provide some career advice pointing out what had enabled them to achieve the status that led to their receiving these awards. The recipients were Finn Siiteri and Steve Lye. I had some fun introducing Steve. I showed photos of him with long hair and flowered wide collared shirts as he arrived from England and introduced him as the JOINT HEAD of the Perinatal Research group at the Samuel Lumenfeld Institute.
Goals during my presidency included finding ways to have the SGI influence "politics" both within the specialty and nationally and providing targeted research support for members. Motivation for involvement in the politics of the specialty was that SGI as the major research organization of Obstetrics and Gynecology should work to provide input from the research community for decisions within the specialty. For many years SGI had a symbolic membership on the Liaison Committee for Obstetrics and Gynecology (LCOG) and we attempted to increase our involvement with this by my becoming the representative to this group during my presidency and for several years thereafter. We also felt that reproductive research should be represented on a national stage and formed a Government Affairs Committee headed by Jim Rose. We had a modest surplus (believe it or not) and instituted a small bridge grants and summer grants for trainees to work with SGI members. Another accomplishment during this time was the institution of the office of "President Nominee" to provide the president of the organization to have an additional year on Council.
This was a simpler and a different SGI with far less impact than we have today.