Sections and Divisions Report, November 2011

There is always something going on when the ISA leaders get together for a conference and the Fall Leaders’ meeting in Mobile, Alabama, was no different. Not surprising, there were lots of Division leaders there for what was thought to be a controversial discussion regarding the governance of the society. One might ask, just why does the ISA need to change anything? Why, haven’t we operated in the similar manner for the last fifty or sixty years? Shouldn’t what was good enough for the leaders back in the 1900’s be good enough for us? Wow, look at part of that question! Back in the 1900’s. Here we are in the 21st century and some of us want to live and operate in the past century! So, the question becomes; who wants to live in that era?

Before I write anything more, I should explain that for the past year there has been a committee working to change the governance of the society and if you haven’t been aware of its activities then perhaps that’s where the whole idea and its progression fell apart. Today it seems like a lot of technical and non-technical societies are moving toward governance systems that are not only smaller, but in the interest of efficiency, perhaps being led by the paid staff of the society rather than the volunteers. The question became one of “is this the best way for the ISA to operate?” and that may not have set too well with all attendees. If you attended the Summer Leaders’ meeting in St. Louis you had the opportunity to attend the meetings where the governance model was discussed.

Personally, it seems to me that there are lots of volunteers who have been looking forward to sharing the experience of being members of the Executive Board and, perhaps, the Executive Committee. Of course, you have to think about the odds of both of these things happening. With nearly 30,000 members sharing membership with you, first you have to be active in your Section and advance to District VP, or be in charge of one of the Divisions and eventually take on one of the Department VP roles. Think of it, you join the society, become active, and one day you take charge of how you and your associates would like to see your society operate. Sounds simple doesn’t it, and it is. It just takes time and a lot of voluntary hours.

So it seemed that a number of attendees thought it might be better to take a little step back and, perhaps, hit the reset button before continuing on the path toward the smaller governance idea. Was that the best thing to do? A lot of delegates agreed with the proposal to send the action item back to committee so that it could be looked at again in 2012. If you had been a delegate for the Council of Society Delegates, what would you have done for your Section and for your society? A number of the delegates voted to postpone the decision to have the governance committee go on with its work and to establish a new larger committee that appeared more representative of the society in general. Is it a good idea? I’m afraid we’ll have to wait to see if anything comes from the new group. So, stay tuned until the ISA Spring meetings in La Jolla in 2012. Then we’ll talk about governance again.

L.M. “Dutch” Keen, P.E. CAM
Section & Divison Liaison