Guest post by Tricia Spayer, STC Director
What is the CAC?
STC President Michael Hughes is striving to ensure effective communication between STC community leaders, Board members, and the STC staff. At the 2010 Summit he announced the reinvigorated Community Affairs Committee (CAC) and appointed Judith Herr as CAC chair. Mike offered the following CAC Mission:
- Establish two-way communication and cooperation between community leaders and Board of Directors (BoD)/staff through the CAC conduit
- Ensure that needs and requests are identified and communicated for each community grouping to BoD/staff. Ensure that BoD decisions, needs, guidance, and policies/procedures are communicated to leaders. Groups represented on the CAC to include:
- Special Interest Groups
- U.S. Geographic Chapters
- Non-U.S. Communities
- Student Chapters
- Oversee STC Leaders’ Resource efforts to orient and instruct; provide guidance materials; capture and share lessons learned; and mentor STC Leaders (and future Leaders) of SIGs, chapters, non-U.S. communities, and other Society committees
The Leaders’ Resource is part of the CAC and is organizing the training webinar series. We held two pilot webinars in February and March, and recently the Legal, Competitions, and Budgeting webinars. We will soon publish a schedule of upcoming events that will be held through April.
Who are the CAC members?
A hardworking task force, the Community Funding and Support Task Force, convened in February and submitted their suggestions to the Board in June. Where possible, CAC members were recruited from that Task Force to expand on this important work. We are pleased to have the following members on the CAC:
- Robert Armstrong
- Sara Baca
- Ray Gallon
- Vici Koster-Lenhardt
- Fei Min Lorente
- Tracey Martinsen
- Richard Mateosian
- Jeanette Rogers
What are the CAC’s plans?
We have been meeting to discuss our goals and prioritize an ever-growing list of tasks, such as updating the Community Leaders Handbook and gathering leaders’ feedback on a multitude of topics. Our main goal is to make sure communication is flowing between and among community leaders and with the STC Board of Directors, staff, and other STC committees. STC is committed to supporting its communities.
If you are a community leader, pay attention to what your CAC leaders are saying. Answer surveys and submit reports when requested. That is one way your CAC representatives will know whether your community is flourishing or struggling—and what your needs are.
Stay tuned for more information about the Leaders’ Resource webinar series, enhanced tools to share information between community leaders, and much more! If you have any questions about the CAC, please contact Judith Herr or Tricia Spayer.
This sounds like a great idea and long overdue, actually. Many are eagerly waiting for good results and improvements to come from this.
But just one question… When did Chapters not in the US become just communities?
Or is it, what used to be chapters, had become communities, but now we have US and Student Chapters, but non-US groups do not merit being called chapters?
Very confusing. Please explain.
Hi Poppy,
Actually the wording is intentional. We make the distinction to include non-US chapters and the three non-US SIGs that are geographically based (Canadian SIG, Europe SIG, International SIG).
We don’t want to discourage this type of grouping because non-US SIGs (budgeted funds are handled by the STC office) do not have to negotiate an affiliated agreement with their home country.
We broke the US communities into two groupings to ensure representation for the 70+ US-based chapters and the 20+ SIGs almost all of which are specialty/interest-specific.
There’s some overlap in the SIG representation; hence not naming that US SIGs.
Good news!
Dan Voss of the STC Orlando Florida Chapter has agreed to join the CAC to partner with Sarah Baca as the CAC STC student community representatives.