Candidate for President-Elect:
Ruth Beattie

Department of Biology
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506

Phone (859) 257-7647

rebeat1@uky.edu

Ruth Beattie is an associate professor at the University of Kentucky.  In 1987 she graduated from Queen's University Belfast, N. Ireland, with a Ph.D. in biochemistry.  She completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the Hipple Cancer Research Center and at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.  She then taught for four years at Ball State University, Muncie Indiana.  In Fall of 1995 she joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as an instructional specialist, where her primary responsibility is teaching large enrollment freshman level biology and microbiology classes. In 2000, Ruth was the recipient of a University of Kentucky's Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching.  In 2000, 2002 and 2003 she was named a Top Ten Teacher in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2007 she was awarded the Ken Freedman Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award.

In terms of ABLE involvement, Ruth has presented both major and mini-workshops at annual meetings, hosted a Regional ABLE meeting in 2000, served on the Board as Member-at-Large, currently serves as Chair of the Regional ABLE Committee, and most recently hosted the 2007 Annual Meeting at the University of Kentucky.

The single biggest challenge facing ABLE is membership recruitment and participation. When we look at the trends in membership growth for the past 29 years, we recognize that, in recent years, there has been little/no membership growth. Membership dues and the annual meeting surplus support a large portion of ABLE functions. Our most effective recruiting tool is our annual meeting and it is the responsibility of all members to encourage colleagues to attend the meeting and join ABLE. At the 2007 Annual Meeting, over 50 of the 159 attendees were “first-timers”. We must continue this trend if we are to make up for the membership losses of recent years. The ABLE Board has been working on membership issues for the past number of years.  At this time, the most crucial role of the President is to facilitate and lead this work.