Section/Division Report

There has been a lot of activity in the Society regarding Divisions lately and there will be a lot more during the President's Summer Meetings in Calgary. Hopefully you and some of your associates will be able to make it to Canada for a meeting of the Reinventing Divisions Task Force. The goal for this group is to reinvent the Divisions, which, simply put, means to bring Divisions back to the prominence they once had in the Society. Where did the need for this reinventing come from, you ask? Well, it all sort of started when the programming for the conferences and symposia went under the guidance of the Theme Committees. Not that the Theme Committees did anything wrong in their pursuit of better technical programming for the Society, but the support that was there from the Divisions just wasn't recognized. And that, I think, led to the weakening of the Division structures and a lack of enthusiasm among new Society members to participate in Division activities. Whether that enthusiasm was as mundane as joining a Division, or as important as being an active member responsible for all of the technical programming, reviewing or presenting papers, or being a Division Board member, Division membership went down and some help was necessary. Now, let us hope that the Division Task Force, chaired by Leo Staples, will come up with some solid ideas to restore the Divisions to their previous level of prominence.

If you would like to be a participant in the Task Force to help reinvent Divisions and you are going to be in Calgary in June, be sure and take your place in the meeting of the Committee charged with that assignment. For more information about the President's Summer Meetings in general just log onto www.isa.org/psm. And for information about the Division Task Force you can check the site at www.isa.org/fmo/reinventdiv/ or you could give Leo Staples a call at (405) 553-3714 or contact him by E-mail at stapleshl@oge.com. I'm sure that he would be happy to have your input and help for this most important activity

By the way, for more information about any of the more than twenty Divisions of the I&S and A&T Departments, you can give me a call at (713) 436-9777 or you can reach me by E-mail at dutch.keen@att.net.

Till next month,

L.M."Dutch" Keen, P.E.

Section/Division Liaison