At a time when everything we always wanted to know, and more, arrives instantaneously via e-mail, an old-fashioned snail mail newsletter may seem out of place. It is probably going to be one of the last snail mail efforts at keeping you informed about the activities of your professional association, as our new Web-Site is launched. In fact, you ought to be able to access it at http://www.msue.msu.edu/maea by the time you receive this.

A number of people have been working diligently to establish web sites for our professional associations in Michigan. Roger Brook is creator and webmaster for the MCEA site, located at http://www.msue.msu.edu.mcea. MAEA Webmaster, Mark Longstroth, is setting up our web page, and is working on a linkage to the MCEA site.

Check out these sites. It’s where you will find minutes from Board meetings, agendas for future meetings, application forms for various awards, awards criteria, and more. I know I’ve cringed at the phrase "Check out our web site", just as many of you have. It’s easy to be passive, and read a piece of paper that shows up on your desk. But I’ve learned that even with my old modem, the World Wide Wait is still faster than snail mail - and usually rewards me with much more interesting pages when I take the time to open them.

MAEA Annual Meeting

Our annual MAEA business meeting and awards banquet will be held Tuesday evening, Oct. 12^th, during fall conference at Shanty Creek.

During this meeting, you will be asked to vote on several changes to our own bylaws, as well as a change in the MCEA Constitution. The changes are posted on the MAEA and MCEA web sites. Your Board considers this newsletter, and the concurrent posting of the changes on the web, as meeting the requirements for 30 days notification in order to vote on changes to our bylaws.

Two of the changes are designed to reflect changes in our National Organization. The biggest, is the establishment of a new committee structure, which mirrors the new NACAA committee structure. Those of you who attended Spring Training in March of this year are already familiar with this change. We are including a copy of the committee rotation in this newsletter, because we want the regions to identify possible chairs, co-chairs and committee members before the Oct. 12 meeting.

The second change to our bylaws opens up our membership to any professional field staff, whether or not they are "Board appointed". The final change involves a change in the deadline for collecting dues. Your voting delegates at our national meeting next week will be voting on a change requested by the national board, setting Jan. 1 as the deadline for payment of dues. If this passes, we will vote on moving our deadline up as well.

The change in Article 1 of the MCEA Constitution requires ratification by all four Extension Professional Associations. The change will allow for any new Extension affiliated associations to apply for MCEA membership, and establishes a process and criteria for any such applications.

Our annual meeting will also include the election of MAEA officers. We will be electing a Secretary and a Vice President. Both positions are critically important to the functioning of your board. The vice presidential election involves a 4-year commitment. This person automatically moves to President Elect, then President and finally Past President and Chair of our Policy committee. In order to help you get to know the candidates, and make an informed choice of officers; we are asking the candidates to prepare a brief write-up about themselves, including their Extension experience and their vision for MAEA. These will be posted on our Web page on Oct. 1, 1999.

On the lighter side, we will be welcoming a large number of new agents to MAEA and recognizing a number of outstanding Extension staff, including specialists, support personnel and Presidential Citation winners. Finally, your board has a little surprise for each of you that we hope you will store appropriately – somewhere on your wall.

As of this writing, 14 MAEA members will be representing Michigan at the National Association of County Agricultural Agents meeting in Omaha September 12 to 16. All will be wearing Green and White, and handing out Michigan apples during our hospitality hour on Tuesday morning. Contact Van Varner for information about the Michigan Night Out in Omaha.

Congratulations to our members who will be receiving special recognition at our National Meeting. Our Distinguished Service Award winners this year are George Byelich and Thomas Rorabaugh. Achievement Award winners are Robert Bricault and Richard Hodupp.

We usually report national meeting business in our fall newsletter, but we had to get this to you before hand because of the ballot issues. So folks, you’ll just have to Check our Web Site!

Hope to see all 133 of you at Fall Conference.

Bobbi Lawrence
President, MAEA

Letters of congratulations have been sent to the 1999 MAEA Communications Award winners and their applications have been sent on for National competition. Mark Seamon, Communications/Public Relations Committee Chairperson. Below are your state winners.

NACAA will be voting on a change in membership renewal from the previous March 15 deadline to a new January 1 deadline. If this proposal passes at national meeting, our state organization will be voting on changing our meeting dues schedule during our Fall Extension Conference in October. This may pose a problem for agents who have MAEA dues paid by county budgets. Keep this in mind for October and be thinking about your plan for dues payment with your current budget situations.

The planning committee has been selected for our third annual spring training on campus. For those of you who attended the "Land Use" and "Value Added" program last spring, we hope you left with new information to help you address specific needs in your communities. This year the planning committee members are; Bobbi Lawrence, Ned Birkey, Mark Seamon, Mark Longstroth, Jerry Lindquist, and Angela Eichorn. The committee is looking for ideas for the 2000 spring training. Please pass your ideas along to one of the planning committee members.

Your responsibilities for selecting committee members has changed. Please refer to the MAEA web site for additional committee information. Adopted on March 10, 1994 , MAEA membership adopted a committee structure. Committees were assigned to MSU Extension regions on a rotating annual basis. The new committee structure will correspond with the NACAA committee structure adopted at the national meeting in 1997.

Many of our Association Programs are administered by our various committees. The MAEA Web Site lists standing Association Committees and their functions in an outline format to assist all Association members in becoming familiar with our committee structure. You must identify committee members from your region to serve by the October annual meeting. If you have not selected your committee member, you will have to do this before leaving the annual meeting. You will also need to select new regional directors as terms expire.