SciTech News, May 2005
Notes from the Chair
Engineering Division
Mary Steiner, Chair
May 2005 Sci-Tech News
In late January, Marcia Rodney and I participated in the SLA Leadership Summit in Tampa, representing the Engineering Division and Aerospace Section. In February, I posted a recap of some of the meeting highlights to the SLA-ENG discussion list, but for those of you who missed that, following are some selected excerpts that may be of interest. Note that the Leadership Summit is evolving into a professional development opportunity for all members of SLA, not merely for the Division and Chapter leaders, so I would encourage you to consider attending future meetings. It’s also a great reason to head somewhere warm for those of us stuck in cold places in the middle of Winter!
Approximately 250 attendees enjoyed an inspiring talk given by keynote speaker Gary Heil from the Center for Innovative Leadership (www.cfil.com). We had an opportunity to hear from a number of candidates running for the SLA Board, and the winners have now been announced at http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/governance/bodsection/0405bodcand/0405bodelect.cfm. Various association-level award winners were also recognized, as detailed at http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/awardsrecognition/awardsrecipients/index.cfm.
SLA is developing an online learning environment which will provide SLA members with many opportunities for education and professional development, such as earning advanced degrees from participating partner universities, continuing education courses, virtual seminars, professional coaching, leadership/management training, and more. Chapters and Divisions may have a presence in this environment to offer their own online learning programs, and can link to/from their own web sites. We’ll be hearing more from SLA Headquarters about this.
The Association is moving its current governance year, July 1 – June 30, to coincide with the fiscal year, January 1 – December 31. The primary advantage is for financial reporting reasons. Another advantage is that newly elected officers just starting out will receive valuable training early in their terms at the January Leadership Summit. This change will take effect starting with January 1 – December 31, 2007. It was recommended that Division officers normally serving through June 30, 2006 extend their term by 6 months to end December 31, 2006 instead. The SLA Annual Conference will continue to be held in the June timeframe as per usual.
The SLA association-level Board introduced a new streamlined way of running the board meetings and their regular business throughout the year. The Board and invited speakers proceed through the agenda, with visitors able to offer comments and ask questions during the “Public Discussion Forum”. The Board also wants to make sure there is more transparency to the general membership of what the Board and Headquarters do.
The Board of Directors referred a proposal for dues restructuring, discussed in the Joint Chapter/Division Cabinet, back to the Finance Committee for reworking. Note that any dues restructuring is a Board level decision, not a general membership decision. However, the Board is sincerely interested in members’ feedback about any dues restructuring.
The Finance Committee motioned and the Board passed that two votes on SLA Bylaws be taken by the membership at the Toronto conference: 1) to allow electronic voting of the membership (it seems in consultation with counsel this may now be possible at the Association level), and 2) to remove the 12% cap on dues increases.
Included in this issue of Sci-Tech News is a combined Toronto conference “dance card”, listing the programs for the Divisions that contribute to this newsletter. We hope it will be useful to you, as there are many exciting programs to keep track of. Remember also the handy web site the Toronto Chapter has put together, which includes tips regarding international travel: http://www.sla.org/toronto/2005/.
Planning for the 2006 Annual Conference in Baltimore has begun. Starting with this particular conference, SLA is forging ahead with new formats and more strategic programming. For example, the opening general session will be Sunday evening, the SLA Annual Business Meeting will be Tuesday, and the closing general session will be Wednesday midday. Division partnering is strongly encouraged, particularly amongst divisions that may not traditionally pair up, so as to foster innovative new programming. The conference theme is “Where Tradition and Transformation Converge”. For more information, or to suggest ideas for the conference, please contact Division Chair-Elect Kathy Nordhaus (k-nordhaus@raytheon.com) or Aerospace Section Chair-Elect Marcia Rodney (mrodney@ball.com).
Membership Chair Cheryl Hansen has been keeping us informed of new members in the division, and this issue features Teresa Novitski. We’ll have an opportunity to meet Teresa in Toronto.
Cheryl also chairs this year’s Nominating Committee (herself, Heidi Porth, Sara Tompson, and Stephanie White), which recently oversaw the Spring election of Division Chair-Elect and Treasurer. Many thanks go to the committee and the candidates who agreed to run for positions. The results are in—congratulations to Don Welch for Chair-Elect and Suzanne Cristina for Treasurer! Because of the change in SLA’s fiscal year as noted above, Don will serve as Chair-Elect starting at the Toronto conference and then through the end of 2006, moving on to Chair for 2007 and Past Chair for 2008. Suzanne’s term as Treasurer will also begin in Toronto and go through the end of 2007.
Since this is my final column in Sci-Tech News as Chair, I would like take this opportunity to thank the entire Engineering Division Advisory Board for all their hard work and dedication this past year--particularly Dave Hook, Sara Davis, Randy Reichardt, and Michael White for all their help with conference planning and fundraising, Jeanne Trimble for completely overhauling our web site, Janifer Holt for overseeing our awards programs, and Cheryl Hansen for her wise guidance in many areas. It has been a rewarding experience to serve the SLA Engineering Division, and I look forward to seeing many of you soon in Toronto.
With warm regards,
Mary
maryds@seas.upenn.edu
(215) 898-8170
http://www.sla.org/division/deng/
