Open Forum Invitation from NEACUHO President:
Dear Members,
Our NEACUHO Executive Board met on Thursday, February 9 at the University of Connecticut. In our conversation, President-Elect Antonio Willis-Berry brought forth challenges in the coordination of our annual site locations. The good news is that we are aware of the challenges! The challenging news is that these factors are impacting our annual meeting site options in October: current inflation rates, scheduling adjustments due to COVID-19, and our organization's financial capacity. This is requiring us, as an association, to think beyond the previous models of a site selection (usually about an 18 month selection process). Rather, we are being required to think between 2 and 3 years in advance about our site to get the best possible rates secured.
However, we do have a procedural issue that has been raised by me and our Board went into a series of discussions. Our constitution indicates the following: NEACUHO shall meet annually in conference at the convenience of the host institution and with the agreement of the Executive Board. President-Elect Willis-Berry submitted a motion, seconded from our Sense of Belonging Chair Colin Seifret with a vote of approval from all voting board members. The approved vote at our meeting is to call for us to change our constitution to the following: NEACUHO shall meet annually in conference with the agreement of the Executive Board. This change would remove "host institution" from our constitution. This change is not to say that we will never explore hosting on a college campus again, rather this change permits the President-Elect to examine key priorities and make the best strategic recommendations to the board. In fact, we have working groups analyzing our options as we speak. We are currently assessing our conference offerings plus how we could do other options (e.g. can a hybrid hotel/institution work?). However, with all that said, we have to move the Association forward and make the change that can set us up for success long-term.
Per our Constitution, I will be calling a vote of all member institutions. This will be scheduled for February 27, 2023. In the interim, I will be hosting 2 open forums joined by President-Elect Antonio-Willis Berry and Immediate Past President Kim Beardsley-Carr. In these meetings we will take feedback, discussion, and comments for our members. These will be on Wednesday, February 22, 2023 at 12pm and Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2pm. Both will be on Zoom.
I do want to give a special acknowledgement to a series of Past Presidents and their teams who have workshopped this, discussed it, and really reflected on this during their Presidencies.
Tommy Tressler-Gelok
NEACUHO President
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