by Rick Pomeroy

As I begin to conclude my first year as your president, I have come to realize that running this Association takes a tremendous amount of effort and time from the professional staff in the office, the Board of Directors, the Conference Committee Members, and the CSTA members who have volunteered to assist these people with the day to day operation of CSTA. Unfortunately, we do not have as many volunteer members working on CSTA committees as we would like. This, in large part, has to do with our lack of outreach efforts to our members for this type of support. Starting with this article and the Survey  Form linked to this article, I hope to change this for next year and well into the future.

We are missing the voices of the majority of the members. In order to make a professional association work, the members need to be involved. As any of us who have ever participated in a volunteer organization know, it is not healthy for the organization nor the members to have a select few volunteers doing all of the decision-making and implementation of those decisions. As we move into these coming years of new standards, new assessments, and changes in the role of science in the core curriculum, it is important to have members involved at all levels. (more…)

It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing the retirement of our executive director, Christine Bertrand, effective March 31, 2011. As president of CSTA I don’t know what we are going to do without her! She has been with us for just over 15 years! Needless to say, she will be missed. Most of you know her and have seen her at our state conferences, but maybe you don’t know just how much she has done for our organization. She has had a myriad of responsibilities, too many to mention, that have impacted CSTA in a memorable and meaningful way. What follows barely scratches the surface of all that Christine has done over the years, but bear with me as I make mention of some of them. (more…)