Appointments Update

One of the major tasks that the Vice President performs is filling a significant number of vacancies as terms expire. Fortunately, an Appointments Committee helps manage the process and assists with matching volunteers with vacancies. A sincere thank you to all SAA members who responded to the call for volunteers and offered their time and expertise to serve on committees and task forces for the Society. The number of volunteers who came forward was impressive: 156. All who volunteered have a wide range of excellent credentials. The unfortunate part is that we had more volunteers than vacancies. There were 71 vacancies, including 17 on the San Diego Host Committee, which is limited to members in the immediate area of that city. That left 54 vacancies or about 1 vacancy for every 3 volunteers.

We have been working to streamline the appointment process, and this year we made significant progress thanks in no small part to the SAA staff and an excellent Appointments Committee. As this process evolves, we hope that volunteers will be able to prioritize their committee preferences so that the Appointments Committee will be able to match the requests with the openings more easily. In addition, the SAA staff has begun to identify those members who have volunteered in the past and not been appointed. This year there was a concerted effort to ensure that at least some of those people were appointed. We were also encouraged by the number of members with only one to five years of experience who volunteered. If you did not receive an appointment this year, you are strongly encouraged to put forth your availability next year. As noted, it was not always possible to appoint every volunteer because the demand exceeded the supply. All volunteers should have received a letter from me.

The work of volunteers on committees, working groups, and task forces are essential to SAA. Thank you again for volunteering.

Gregor Trinkaus-Randall
SAA Vice President
June 21, 2011