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September Message
Greetings
It is an honor to be selected as your District president and I wish to thank all of you for your fantastic support and encouragement. I would especially like to thank my supervisors Wayne Tanda and John Fisher for their understanding and encouragement. A lot of ground last year under the very capable leadership of Randy McCourt and I know that we all want to thank Randy for his exceptional leadership and dedication as president. We are very excited and pleased to have Dalene Whitlock as our new secretary treasurer and Rory Grindley as our new District International Director.
Our career guidance committee with the help of Jennifer Rosales has established our District 6 Mentoring Program. At our next year board meeting we will select program coordinators whose responsibilities will be to promote the program, identify potential mentors and create an application process for those who wish to be mentored.
District 6 Board Members wish to
thank John Kerenyi and Peter Koonce for their services producing
our award winning newsletter Westernite. Peter is stepping
down as Technical Editor and we are looking for a new Technical
Editor. Please contact me if you would be interested in this
position before October 15.
I am pleased to announce that Michelle
Norsten form 3M Traffic Safety Systems is our Vendor Chair
for District 6. She will be assisted by Paul Lamb also from
3M Safety Systems who will serve as Vice Chair. We look forward
to working with Michelle and Paul in making our vendors exhibition
at the next annual meeting a great success.
Having been involved with LAC,
I know how much hard work it takes to pull off a successful
annual meeting.. Bob Grandy, Steve Brown and LAC did an outstanding
job putting together the annual meeting in Sacramento this
year. A survey was issued to the attendees of the Sacramento
meeting via email. Judging form the comments of those who
have responded, all indications are that the meeting was very
successful and over 65% of the respondents indicate they plan
to attend the next meeting in Montana.
We are in the process of establishing
the first District 6 student endowment fund. The interest
from this fund is to be used to offset the costs of travel
and related expenses for students attending the District 6
ITE annual meetings. At the present time about $10,000 is
needed to offset these costs for the 50 students who are expected
to attend the annual meetings. We estimate that the fund needs
to have a principle of at least $350,000 to allow adequate
funding. This is a very achievable goal since there are over
4,000 members in District 6 and if every member would make
a one-time donation of $100 our goal would be reached. At
this time we already have over $15,000 in commitments from
our members. We are very fortunate to have Pat Gibson in charge
of administering this fund. Please keep this fund in mind
if you or your estate wishes to create a charitable giving
plan. It will allow us to attract, recruit and retain the
best and brightest students to our profession.
Success of District 6 depends on
the success of the Sections and Chapters that make up our
District. We are indeed fortunate to have so many outstanding
individuals who volunteer their time to serve as officers
for the different Chapters and Sections. This month I would
like to introduce you to our New Mexico Section and the Southern
California Section. For the New Mexico Section we have Eric
Hawton (President), Tom Blaine (Vice President), Afshin Jian
(Secretary Treasurer) and Kurt Thorson (Past President). The
Southern California Section President is Glen Pedersen, Raymond
Lee is the vice President and Sunil Rajpal the Secretary Treasurer.
I hope to hear from all of you
so that we can make District 6 even better. Together we are
the BEST
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