Welcome to Fiscal Year 2011 (FY11)! Last week the Executive Council (EC) met for our Annual Summer Planning Meeting to set goals and direction for the upcoming year. It was a very productive meeting where we talked about programming for the year and brainstormed our annual fund development event. I would like to formally introduce you to our new Fund Development chair, and new to the EC, Melissa Kaufmann, as well as the two new Outreach co-chairs Rachel Borchers and Amanda Porter joining the EC. The Professional Development committee will continue under the direction of Katrina Sanders and Jacalyn St. Dennis as will our Scholarship program led by Naomi Brill and Holly Kimball. The SWE Counselors to the Minnesota schools with SWE student sections will persevere on under the advisement of myself, Martha Escobar, Charlene Willenbring, and Melissa Stiegler. We are well represented to voice our opinions to the society with returning Section Representatives Charlene Willenbring and Lindsey Roberts McKenzie who will be joined by Kalyani Mallela who was the Outreach Co-Chair last year.
With the beginning of a new year, it is time to renew your membership so I encourage you to visit www.swe-mn.org member services to stay involved with the activities planned by our new Membership co-chairs Lynn Davenport and Nicole Danielson-Bartelt, also both new to the EC. It is very rewarding to have new members on the EC with fresh ideas. And I still would like to have more people involved in the section, so I invite you to attend our Open House and sign up for the professional development or outreach committee. Even if you can help out with one event to sign people in at a program you are already planning on attending or spending a couple hours volunteering at an outreach event, we would all greatly appreciate the participation. There are other opportunities for personal contributions like judging scholarship applications or writing up speaker bios for the professional development spring seminar. So come to the Open House to check out what is in store for the year and to mark your calendars for all the programming you don’t want to miss.
To stay up to date with the section, you will continue to receive weekly SWE-MN emails from our Secretary Laura Copp and Roz Johnson, the Newsletter editor, is still compiling these now monthly html newsletters along with Senja Lopac, the Webmaster, who manages our www.swe-mn.org website. There is a calendar on our website with the dates of all of the committee activities. Some summer highlights since the last communication include our section submitting ten National Awards packets that we will learn if we won any at the Celebrate SWE! event during the annual SWE National Conference in Orlando the first week of November (registration open at we10.swe.org). The Section Representatives also applied for nine section or individual awards to be distributed from our Region H leadership. Cassie Svendsen is the current Awards chair you will hear from if interested in submitting for the SWE National and some local individual awards.
Finally, at the summer planning meeting the EC also approved the FY11 budget that the committee led by new Treasurer Melissa Stiegler compiled. Lesley Wyckoff, the Vice President, and I will be meeting the rest of this month to finalize the tactical plan for the section as well as taking some personal time to enjoy the last few weeks of summer before we get really involved with all the exciting SWE programming Minnesota has to offer.
- Angela
