By Connie H. Coralli
Recently, the Membership Committee send out a survey to all ASPE members asking some key questions regarding needs and satisfaction of the membership. At the recent Board of Directors meeting the chair of each committee was given the results of the survey in order to get a better understanding of how his or her committee can serve the ASPE community.
In reading the comments from the survey on the plane on the way home, I felt the need as chair of the Educational Resources committee, to respond to a few of the comments. I think it’s important for the members to know that yes, the board members do read these comments and are working hard to serve member needs!
Comment: “Can we have rolling memberships?”
Response: We do now have a rolling year membership rather than a calendar year membership! Whenever you join during the year, you will get a full year’s membership and will renew every year at the same time.
Comment: “Webinars are difficult for members outside of North America because of the time difference”.
Response: Yes we understand that this can be problematic, for this reason, the webinars are also archived on ASPE’s website www.aspeducators.org so that everyone who missed the live version can watch at a time convenient to you. Additionally within the next few months we hope to have the archives of prior years’ webinars on the website for your use as well. There are many excellent presentations already included on the website with more to come!
Comment: “ASPE should respond to association publications that try to “redo” what we have done and are doing.”
Response: The Board of Directors could not agree with you more! If you don’t see a response letter from ASPE, it may not be a reflection of the board’s lack of response to the publication. The ASPE president does respond to such publications with a “Letter to the Editor.” While a letter from the President may carry more clout, letters from individual members to the publication will also get attention…and maybe even be more effective if a President’s letter didn’t do the trick!
Comment: “We need to define and clarify what we do.”
Response: The Board agrees with this comment and to that end the Standards of Practice committee is working on a document that will accomplish this long needed goal. They hope to have a draft to present at our ASPE 2014 conference in Indianapolis. (Don’t miss it!)
Comment: “Please keep developing the website.”
Response: This is an ongoing and very time consuming project. Angela Blood, chair of the Website and Social Media committee, has spent untold hours with her team on the new website and will continue to do so. Conversion of the old website was tricky and time consuming but much progress has been made and the new functional portions of the site look great! Many parts of the website are working well such as the Membership Directory, which is a great feature that has been very popular. There is still a long list of items for additional clean up and development. The Virtual Learning Center is under construction currently and the Virtual Library, a component of the Virtual Learning Center, will soon be up and running.
I know everyone is frustrated with how long that section is taking, but this section required some major website design work. It’s going to be great, however, once it’s finished! Be patient just a little bit longer.
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