2006 was a record setting year, and 2007 will bring even more resources and services to NACADA members! 357 members are serving the Association as elected, appointed, and willing volunteers including steering committees, Region chairs, Region conference chairs and committees, Commission and Interest Group chairs, Advisory Boards, Task Forces, Review Board Members, publication authors and editors, Council Members/Division Representatives, and Board Members. In addition, countless others write for Academic Advising Today and the NACADA Journal; serve as presenters at Conferences, Institutes, Seminars, and Webinars, and volunteer during the events to ensure their success. A BIG THANK YOU to all of you and an invitation to others to get involved in your Association! These volunteers are the core of this organization and set the agenda for the work of the Executive Office. And, this year they have quite an agenda for us!
On that agenda this year are numerous events, publications, and management tasks. As Susan states in her column, we will be working closely with the Board and Council to strengthen the foundation documents of this growing organization to ensure its continued growth and development. In addition, there are eight publications in development with two Spring releases - monographs on Advising First Year Students and a Guidebook for New Advising Professionals, the already completed Data-Driven Decision Making National Seminar, Academic Advising Administrators' Institute, and Assessment of Advising Institute; the upcoming Summer Institutes on Academic Advising in Burlington, VT, and Salt Lake City, UT; this year's Annual Conference in Baltimore in October; the new initiatives with the NCAA that include an Advising Student Athletes Institute in Colorado Springs in May and an on-line course already in progress; and our popular and expanding Webinar series. Our pilot series of Webinars has proven quite successful and we have learned a lot about what our members want, so an Advisory Board has been appointed to assist in the development of the Webinars and how we might use this medium to deliver additional services to our members. Add these efforts to our regular work with membership renewals, event registrations, monthly Highlights publication, finance and budget, Clearinghouse maintenance and expansion, responding to member questions, and planning for the future and you can be assured that your Executive Office is keeping busy!
We rely heavily on member comments about what is needed, so if you would like to see a particular topic addressed in some format or have an idea for a new resource that needs to be developed, let us know or convey that information to anyone in a leadership position and ask them to advance it for consideration. Your daily interactions with students provide the best opportunity for identifying issues of concern for you and your colleagues throughout the world and keep NACADA on the cutting edge and THE LEADER in academic advising.
Roberta 'Bobbie' Flaherty, Executive Director National Academic Advising Association (785) 532-5717 nacada@ksu.edu
Cite this article using APA style as: Flaherty, R. (2007, March). From the executive director: Get involved with your association! Academic Advising Today, 30(1). Retrieved from [insert url here]
