Greetings -
I, too, hope everyone’s summer is proceeding well. While many attended the Annual Meeting, we know that many did not have that opportunity. It was a great meeting overall with value being derived from many sources. Keynote speakers, ignite sessions and think tank sessions among others were well received.
A couple of items make this meeting particularly noteworthy. First, 24% of attendees were there for the first time. This translates to over 80 individuals. These are new members or existing members new to the Annual Meeting who give us great hope for our future. The premier education and networking event for our field benefits from a continuously expanding set of participants. These new members expressed high levels of overall satisfaction with the meeting thus are likely to return. While many have come to prior meetings, we get new individuals joining each year to reap the benefits of the meeting.
Second, 37% of attendees defined themselves as “faculty” as opposed to program director/chair, dean, of other professional category. The perception that the Annual Meeting is of value only to those in academic administration is clearly not true. The active participation by those with primarily teaching and research roles demonstrates that there is value to all of our members. We strive to generate this type of value to all members and are pleased with the success.
Naturally, you also provided us with comments including 113 comments on what was most useful (networking at the top) and 85 ideas about how to make future meetings even better. Overall, 63% indicated that you plan to return next year in Kansas City and 32% indicated “not sure.” Only 5% indicated no. These are strong, positive results in our opinion. The only major detractor was the quality of the hotel and meeting space and that was not too bad (average of 3.98 on a 5 point scale).
Did you know that at this point 64.9% of attendees this year came with a professional colleague from their Program/Department? Further, 28.9% attended with between two and four colleagues and 11.7% attended with five or more colleagues. Compared to last year, slightly more attended alone this year but fewer attended with two or more colleagues.
As I suggested precisely a year ago, we have observed three primary mechanisms to realize value from the Annual Meeting:
- Obtain knowledge – the keynote presentations and the educational content sessions are rich with information salient to our work efforts.
- Provide knowledge - a huge number of you participate directly in developing and delivering the educational content. The effort involved in conducting an educational session and preparing a poster creates great value and during the delivery, participants will question and challenge you to extend your knowledge base even further.
- Network– a value expressed by many is the annual opportunity to meet with colleagues from sister programs around the country and the world during presentations, sessions, posters, breaks, receptions and free time. This enables you to share ideas, practical experiences and establish partners in the future.
A fourth mechanism is less obvious and needs some explanation. The Annual Meeting provides outstanding opportunities to have coffee or other liquid refreshment with the colleagues you work with day to day. This aspect of networking enables you to interact outside of the stresses and distractions of the office. You can easily discuss the presentations of the day and the educational content in your program’s context and even apply that content to your strategic needs. The ideas from the presentations and educational sessions are fresh in your mind and should have stimulated your thinking broadly. You and your fellow program faculty have the shared experience and the ready opportunity to formulate operational plans before you return to the office and forget the details of the ideas presented.
To echo Christy Harris Lemak’s comments regarding the Board, in a highly transparent fashion staff, too, are eager to listen, engage in planning and support the Board’s actions. Your part in this is active engagement. Those attending the meeting experienced the value of that engagement, but there are other ways to benefit. Primarily, participate in a Faculty Forum or the Open Forum or come to another meeting we sponsor (Leaders Conference in March or the Undergraduate Workshop in November).
We hope to see you soon or at least next June in Kansas City