Letter from the President

Maggie Haag

Maggie Haag, current President

The membership directory is now available electronically.  Thanks to Rudi Berkelhammer for getting this project up and going.  It was distributed to the membership in October.  If you did not receive a copy, please contact Rudi (rcberkel@uci.edu).  Also, please keep Rudi up to date with any changes to your e-mail address.

Doreen Schroeder completed the ABLE brochure this past fall.  At the annual meeting last June it was decided that an electronic copy would be available to the membership so that copies could be made and distributed by members as needed.  All members should have received an electronic pdf file of the ABLE brochure.  If you did not, please contact me and I will send you a copy.  A limited number of brochures were also printed.  If you would like copies to take to other professional meetings, etc., please let me know.  For example, Ann Lumsden distributed brochures at NABT last fall.  This is an excellent way to spread our name around and hopefully lure in more membership.

I hope you have all had the opportunity to check out the BEN (BiosciEdNet) Collaborative website.  ABLE became a Contributing Member to the BEN Collaborative this past fall.  The link to our website is in place and the cataloging of our previous workshops is just about complete.

We would like to keep the momentum from last year’s business meetings going.  We will continue to work on ways to increase membership and to facilitate partnerships with other organizations.  If members have any new ideas, we welcome your input.  Please encourage colleagues to apply for the Lab Initiative Grants.  Encourage new staff, graduate students and post-docs to take advantage of reduced registration fees and the Waiver of Registration grants.  This is an excellent mechanism to encourage more participation at annual meetings.

I hope everyone will be making arrangements to attend the workshop/conference at UNLV.