R. Eugene Schuster, Minneapolis, Minnesota - 2002
Good morning. I call this business meeting to order.
I want to begin this morning’s meeting with a few brief
remarks about serving as your president the past year. It’s obviously an
easier path to follow when so many have helped blaze the trail. If
you’ve been able to read my notes over the past year, you’ve noticed I
really appreciated the privilege to follow in the footsteps of a number
of “giants” of our profession through this office. But through my
service as an AACRAO leader, I’ve found giants are not only held this
office, they are all around us. A number of them stood up at the opening
session of this annual meeting and without their contribution not much
would have happened this past year.
I’ve also discovered the importance of institutional
support in order to participate in this once in a lifetime opportunity.
Institutions are our members and it is they that we, as individuals,
serve. Their resources are very, very important for our association to
flourish, it hard to participate without their support.
And there’s another group that is all too often
overlooked and must be recognized as well. Our families sacrifice
greatly for us to be involved. I want to thank my wife, Saunie, for her
support over the past years. It has permitted me to be involved in
association activities. Her tireless spark has encouraged and provided
invaluable support for me. I couldn’t have served you this past year
without her devotion and understanding.
When I entered this office I had a number of dreams and
aspirations for the year that I shared with you. I’d like to report on
their status, as I’m about to pass the president’s gavel.
The first target was to enhance Board operations. The
effort involved attempting to create a clearer distinction in our labor
as your Board, the group of officers that act on your behalf, and the
individual responsibilities of each officer. You have entrusted the
association’s welfare to your Board. It is responsible for planning the
activities of the association, for setting policies that assure it
operates and continues, and for financial oversight on your behalf. We
try to work as group to do that. On the other hand, your officers have
individual duties and areas of responsibility. Each of us is working
with the executive director to accomplish what was planned. I think we
have been relatively successful moving this effort forward. But
continuing concentration will be necessary to assure its
institutionalization.
At the Town Meeting last night our Executive Director
reported about our accomplishments this year. I’m sure you’ll be reading
more about them in the days ahead as we attempt to reduce a report to
writing for those unable to join us this morning.
One other thing we’ve been able to accomplish is that
we’ve greatly improved the infrastructure of our association. We’ve
developed a system and support in the AACRAO office through tremendous
efforts of our staff. Yes, there have been some volunteers that have
helped a lot and without their support we would not have been able to
build this apparatus. Now we have the infrastructure to support us
becoming a knowledge organization. It is so important that we capture
our professional knowledge, the essence of what it is to be a
profession. We now have a way to capture this information and keep it
organized for those that might need it. And I am not just speaking our
need, but that of our members, the institutions. The public will also
benefit if we can get this recorded.
The infrastructure developed is not just a system; it
includes a talented and dedicated office staff that has been tirelessly
works for us. These people support and move our organization ahead,
attempting to meet our expectations and aspirations day in and day out.
But, alas, there are some things that are yet to be
accomplished. One of these is meeting the challenge of The Annual
Meeting Scholarship program. Your contributions this year have been
generous but still not enough to adequately sustain this project. Your
Board will try to act in the best interest of the association shortly
after this meeting to carefully consider what to do about this important
effort.
Another thing yet to be attacked is to design a
methodology to identify our “best practices.” I apologize to you for not
accomplishing that. I hope we can work together on this important task
in the future. We have moved toward identifying some “common practices.”
The Adequate Transcript Task Force has surveyed members and through
your cooperation has collected much more information than we ever knew
before about campus practices to record and transcript student’s
experiences. Through the identification of common practice we will be
able to thoughtfully consider what our future practices should be. And
that indeed is what makes a profession, the ability to elaborate what
“best practices” are.
One of the things we have not been able to do as a Board
is to be able to provide you complete insight into our planning
activities. It’s a work “in progress.” I’ve tried to write about it
during the year so you would have some insight into this effort. I’d
like to talk to you for a minute about the strategic planning framework.
First, we tried to re-draft the mission of our association for planning
purposes - not to change our Bylaws but to better focus our thinking. I
want to just speak it out loud because this is what has guided our
activities this year.
The mission of AACRAO is to engage its members in the
collaborative pursuit of excellence in admissions, records and
enrollment services.
We’ve drafted some goals as a result of this planning mission:
- We want to develop and document professional practice guidelines and voluntary standards
- We want to provide comprehensive professional
development opportunities based on a continuous assessment of evolving
competencies and needs of members.
- We want to advocate the profession’s thinking on public policy issues affecting excellence in higher education.
- We want manage an efficient and effective organization in concert with allies that share any aspect of AACRAO’s mission.
Through these goals and the mission, we have looked at
the environment in which we find ourselves today, to prioritize and
focus our efforts on a number of critical issues. They stand today as:
- We need to develop the information about our
profession. This has been the target of our effort to engerize committee
efforts and to develop the infrastructure to store and organize our
collective knowledge.
- Information technology affects us everyday. We are
moving toward more integrated business processes on our campuses and
that is causing changes in organizational structures and those involved
with those processes. In a true sense our profession is changing,
requiring us to acquire new competencies and it challenges us to adapt
to new structures, ones unknown before.
- Another issue that affects us greatly is the
increasing diversity of the students and their educational experiences
along with the mobility of the population. These place a significant
pressure on our institutions and our profession to improve approaches to
accepting and applying degree credit. This is an area AACRAO needs to
focus much time. We haven’t yet but we must.
- We also need to integrate the activities of our
association with those of our colleague associations. In particular with
the state and regional associations to which we belong and that share
our interests. I think there has been some progress being made there. I
hope the state and regional association feel that way too.
- The final issue we confronted this year was the tragic
threat of war and terrorism in our country accompanied by an economic
downturn. That resulted in unusual amount of uncertainty early in the
year. It affected our institutional budgets, our office budgets, and
student mobility. It added a number of issues to our workload this year.
The future is bright and I’m sure Heather will do a
wonderful job for you this next year. I want to end here acknowledging
that without your contribution this past year my being able to serve you
in this role would not have been nearly as enjoyable. Many of you have
shared your appreciation for my involvement but I have to admit that my
work was greatly eased by your active interest and participation. I want
to applaud you for that effort. It is your involvement that makes the
association go. Thank you for the opportunity to know so many others.
This year and has been the highlight of my career.