Annual Business Meeting I: President's Corner

By Susan Chenoweth, Past President, SLA-Illinois
Photos by Joel Berger

New Challenges for New Hands

We celebrated our past and contemplated our future at the chapter's annual business meeting May 11 at the Union League Club.

Unusual Transition

While renewing our chapter's leadership through the election process, we contended with two unusual circumstances this year. First, as you know, we are synchronizing our chapter's calendar year with HQ's. This means ending our year December 31 rather than at the end of May. To accomplish this transition, new board members will serve an extra six months to get us in sync. For example, the President-elect's term will be extend from June 2006 through December 2007.

Second the Nominating Committee needed to fill the President position without the normal succession of the President by the incoming President-elect. Consequently a new nominee, recommended by the committee, stood for election at the meeting.

Subsequently all the candidates were elected by acclamation of the meeting. The election of new board members was conducted by Donna Duff Lenfest. (There were no contested outcomes, no chads and no recounts.) The new officers are: Ramona Howerton as President, Laura Ikens as President-Elect, Bonnie Tilton Sebby as Secretary, and Robin Helenthal as Downstate Director.

For the incoming Board, on their plate will be the report of the Strategic Planning committee which has been updating the chapter's strategic plan. In alignment with the strategies of HQ, they will focus on membership, leadership development, learning, networking, advocacy and knowledge sharing. You’ll have a chance to review and offer input for the strategic plan.

Salute to Dedication

As Cynthia Lesky tells us in Part II of this meeting report in the Informant, the Chapter Awards Committee, which she chairs, honored the achievements and dedication of eleven members and one vendor. We recognized individuals demonstrating expertise with meeting planning, vendor relations, writing, web design, communications, marketing, networking, mentoring, and professional development.

These are also skills we try to develop or exhibit every day at work. If you’ve ever considered volunteering for a committee, be assured that you’ll be developing skills that will transfer and be valuable in your workplace.

In addition, one of our members, Jan Chindlund was named a Fellow of SLA (http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/awardsrecognition/awards2006.cfm). Her award is well deserved for her successful leadership in the chapter and at McDonald’s Corporation. Congratulations to all the award winners.

The Informant

The collaborative effort of the Informant team warrants an extra mention. They call themselves the Informants—not the political or government variety—and include six geographically and organizationally disbursed individuals working together to inform the members of news and events. They also revamped the newsletter into a responsive, web communication tool. It can be challenging enough to work on a team in one’s own organization and this team composed of members from different workplaces and diverse backgrounds successfully implement a new format for communicating with members. You can submit stories for the Informant or better yet, join the Informants by contacting Jim Obst (James.Obst@chi.frb.org) for details.

Debts of Gratitude

Once again, the meeting was sponsored by Basch Subscriptions whom we thank for their continued support. At the last minute Buzzy Basch was unable to attend the lunch and regretted not being able to attend as it’s the meeting where he has the most fun.

We’d like to thank Priscilla Stultz, formerly of LexisNexis, and Renee Citera of LexisNexis for sharing their membership at the Union League Club for our meetings. Eugene Giudice, Meetings Committee liaison, has developed a relationship with ULC and would like to continue his committee role for the chapter and work with the ULC on future planning.

We will continue to plan an array of meetings that you find useful, including lunch or dinner, the shorter Tech-Teeny sessions, the Dine-Arounds and the Book Club get-togethers, and the SLA Cares outreach activities. If you have ideas and/or would like to help plan events, contact Eugene (eugenegiudice@sbcglobal.net) or Laura Ikens (ikensl@staff.abanet.org).

Susan Chenoweth, left, Past President as of June 1, congratulates outgoing chapter Board members and Secretary Karen Trimberger on a job well done for SLA.