News

Summer Board Proceedings Include Transition for New Officers, Full Agenda

Members of the new Board, clockwise around the table from far to near: Vicki Highstreet, Region V Vice President; Sev-Ira' Brown, Region I Vice President; Jimmy Pitre, Region IV Vice President; Linda Clauss, 2005 National Student Representative; Mark Jacobson, NIRSA CFO; Kiki Alexander, Assistant to the Executive Director; Kent Blumenthal, NIRSA Executive Director; Maureen McGonagle, President-elect. Seated at right is Karen Bach, NIRSA Education Director.

The NIRSA Board of Directors met June 21-24 at the NIRSA National Center (NNC) in Corvallis, OR, for its annual Summer Meeting. The agenda this year included the installation of new Vice Presidents from Regions I, III, and V and the National Student Representative, who were elected at the 2005 Annual Conference & Recreational Sports Exposition in Orlando. The Summer Meeting transition of officers was ordained by the adoption of a bylaws amendment to that effect. The Student Leadership Team of six Regional Student Representatives also attended the meeting for the first time, allowing them to familiarize themselves with the NNC and meet for discussions of the coming year's activities. The agenda for the event was thus divided into two parts, the Summer Meeting and the New Board Meeting.

Highlights from the two agendas are listed below.

Summer Meeting:

• The NNC team is developing a new process to assist Members in planning NIRSA regional conferences, state workshops, lead ons, Emerging Recreational Sports Leaders conferences, and other events. The new process will provide help with budget planning, distribute printed materials for attendee packets, facilitate NIRSA banner loans, and more.
• NIRSA Executive Director Kent Blumenthal and Marketing Director Barry Brown laid out plans to the Board for the NIRSA Web site's new look, with better navigation, easier readability, and many new features.
• President-elect Maureen McGonagle conveyed that incoming Presidents-elect will try to attend all six regional conferences at least once over the three-year period of their terms in office.

New Board Meeting:

• Plans are underway for site selection of the Annual Conference in 2009, which will be NIRSA's sixtieth anniversary. If feasible, based on Board-adopted site selection criteria, the Board has directed NNC staff to select a location at or near one of the eleven Historically Black Colleges and Universities that were represented when NIRSA was founded as the National Intramural Association (NIA).
• The Board accepted the CRSS Work Team recommendation to discontinue the CRSS exam in its current form. This recommendation is not meant to disparage the CRSS exam or certification, but to recognize that it was an important step in the ongoing development of a professional credential through NIRSA. The Board also charged the Professional Registry Work Team to move forward with the gathering of Member feedback on professional development. It is crucial for Members to review the proposal [PDF, 64kb] and take the survey, which was launched July 15 and sent to all Professional and Student Members. At launch of the newsletter, 207 Professional and Student Members had completed the survey.
• The NNC team is planning an upgrade of the existing membership database software. The new database will provide Members with the option of updating their own information online.

Complete Summer Meeting proceedings will be archived soon on the Members Only Section of the NIRSA Web site. Additional coverage of the meetings, which coincided with the 4th Annual NIRSA Neighborhood Summit hosted by the NNC, can be found in the July issue of the NIRSA Know.

The BOD will gather next for its Midyear Meeting, September 21-23, in Louisville, KY, site of the 2006 Annual Conference & Recreational Sports Exposition.