Happy summer, everyone!
Preparations are underway for what I hope will be an enjoyable and educational conference in San Diego in September. Thanks to our local hosts Lisa Lamont at San Diego State University and Mike Smith at UC San Diego for their hard work. If you haven’t been to San Diego before, I would encourage you to take some time before or after the conference to explore the city. The weather is almost always nice and there’s much to see and do (and great beer and wine!).
Kathy Rankin has done a wonderful job of collecting an oral history of WAML as part of our 50th Anniversary celebration. The transcripts of her interviews have been appearing in the Information Bulletin throughout the last year, and one more is in the works. She interviewed several longtime WAML members both through written correspondence and through recorded conversations. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, I would encourage you to do so. A big thank you to Kathy for her hard work on this. It is an invaluable record of our organization and our profession.
The Executive Board has been working on several projects, which you will hear more about at the conference. WAML volunteers have been working for over ten years to put together official policies and procedures for the organization, and we are hoping to finally complete this work by September.
Also, we had thought that we had followed the correct procedures to bring Texas into our Principal Region and to extend the treasurer’s term to three years. However, according to the bylaws we need to present the amendments at a business meeting and then have a ballot vote of the entire membership rather than a hand vote of those present at the business meeting. So we will be doing that in September.
We are also developing procedures that should streamline the transfer of responsibilities each summer following the WAML election. With so much of our organization being computer-based, there are more and more systems and accounts to manage.
WAML is also unveiling what I hope will help out our organization in planning conferences and archiving presentations. We have a new conference website that is hosted by WAML rather than the host institution. The upcoming conference will be presented on the website’s main pages, while the previous conference’s pages will be moved to the ‘past conferences’ section. Presentations will be stored in our archive at Stanford University and links will be provided on that conference’s web page. This should reduce the burden on our hosts, help us archive our content and also assist the treasurer, as we can reuse the registration page each year that is already linked to our bank account.
Finally, I want to thank Kim Durante for her service on the board these last three years and welcome Susan Powell as the incoming Vice President. And thank you to Phil White for his great job as President. We’re glad to have you for another year as Past President. Also, congratulations to Julie Sweetkind-Singer on her second term as Secretary. She really helps us stay organized and on track. And Bruce Godfrey does a wonderful job as treasurer. Along with all of our appointed positions and committee members, as well as our Information Bulletin staff (and new editor – thanks, Chrissy Klenke!), these folks put a lot of time and effort into keeping our organization running. This is no small feat, because everyone is busy with regular jobs. A big thank you to all of you! It is a pleasure to work with you and be a part of this organization.
See you in San Diego!
Tom
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