BY SALLY ABELLA, BOARD PRESIDENT
Hello! We are looking for new Board members! It’s that time of year when we ask new people to step up and help determine WALPA’s direction. A general Board member commitment is two years of monthly meetings (December is often skipped), and attendance at the annual fall conference. A second term can sometimes be added if desired. Please contact Sally at info@walpa.org if you have any interest. Much appreciated!
The Board attendance via the Uberconference platform continues to be excellent this year, and we are making good progress on planning our online conference that will occur this October. Hope to see lots of people in attendance! Registration will be free, with further opportunities to become a voting member for a small fee, and of course, you can help bolster our depleted treasury by making donations! These dollars will go to our scholarship program and to produce Waterline. We were able to postpone our contract for a conference in the Tri-Cities to 2021, so look for a live meeting along the mighty Columbia next year!
In this era of unrest and worry, the WALPA Board has decided we need to be more proactive in areas of social justice and opportunity where WALPA can be effective. We have created an ad hoc committee on Diversity and Social Justice. Their first act has been to craft a statement approved by the Board that expresses our position and hopes for further action, which you will find in this issue of Waterline. Their second act will be to refine ideas on what we as an organization can accomplish and how to get started. Stay tuned for some action items!
Three scholarships were awarded to very deserving students this year. The pool of scholarship candidates was very competitive, and the committee wished we could have given more awards! The Nancy Weller Memorial scholarship for $1250 was awarded to PhD student Katherine Swensen of Washington State University – Vancouver. The Dave Lamb Memorial Scholarship ($1000) went to Salvador Robb-Chavez, also from Washington State University – Vancouver. Hana Haakenstad from the University of Idaho received the Undergraduate Scholarship of $500. Congratulations to these students! We hope to hear about the work they are doing at our October conference.
