October 25, 2001

Board Members Present: Stan Moore, Mark Longstroth, Jerry Lindquist, Mary Dunkel, Gary Thorton, Jeannie Himmelein, Bruce MacKellar

Secretary Report: Minutes of the last meeting were posted on the Website.

Treasurers Report: Paul was not in attendance. Paul is working on finding the two small accounting errors from the Annual conference report.

Dues: Discussion about when the dues need to be collected. Jan 1 is the official deadline, but ideally we will collect the most of them in January.

Dues will be increases from $60 to $75 per member, Dues for members for another association is $60, associate members will increase from 30 to $37.50. This increase in MAEA dues reflects the increase in the National Dues.

Fall Conference Auction:

Each organization brought 5 auction items for the MCEA Scholarship Funds.

ESP picked out items for the dollar auction.

Auctioned off the 2 days at shanty creek for the Red Cross Relief Fund. $400.00

MAEA: $645.00

NACAA Education Foundation: $610 in pledges for the fastest "boot-up" computer contest.

A reminder: People who have not contributed at least $40 might want to consider bumping their donation level to at least $40.00 so that they could have access to up to $1000 for travel funds.

Professional Development: Funds raised from the silent auction and dollar auction were $2,127.00

Regional Director Reports:

North - Gary has taken over the Regional Director Position for Steve Fouche.

West Central Report: Small fruit position is open out of Ottawa County. Will continue to hold the position open for the next 5-6 months. (Ottawa County is heavily funding this position, which is why it is still being offered.) Tim Johnson’s old Animal Initiative position is still open. Clare County has an ag agent position will be posted to back fill for Hal Hudson who is doing more community development work. This position will be funded 100% by Clare County.

Committee Reports:

Program Recognition Committee: Jeannie Himmelein visited about developing folders that held the instructions about how to apply for the communication awards. The challenge has been that the forms for the awards have not been filled out correctly, partially because the forms were printed in the County Agent NACAA publication. Jeannie will also be sending out the flier that Phil Durst had put together for the MAEA sponsored meal (Fish Boil) at the 2003 Wisconsin NACAA National Meeting. Jeannie also reported that she would be meeting with recognition and awards state contact Joanne Davidhizer to discuss preparation of selection of the Achievement Award (AA) and the Distinguished Service Award.

Professional Improvement Committee: Mary Dunkle visited with members of the U.P. Region about interest in planning with spring conference. There has been very little interest among the group. Potential reasons for the lack of interest include the fact that many of the UP members find it too far to travel to the event. Discussion about participation in the event included the survey of attendance that was circulated before last years program. We seem to have a steady 50 – 60 agent participation in the program. Program specific in-service training is one of the main requested complaints. It was suggested that the AOE meetings planned for the same time period may have reduced some attendance. Also discussed was the fact that the Monday-Tuesday dates were hard to get agents to because many agents were involved with meetings later in the week during the ANR program sessions. This may be an ample opportunity to get specialists to come and visit with agents. It was pointed out that many specialist use the spring break as a time for a winter vacation. It was suggested that agents from other regions be asked to help step in and plan the program or to simply skip holding the event this year. Mary reminded us that with the rotation system that the UP would be asked to be the main contributing group with the East Central Region for the planning team next season.

Based on last year’s attendance, we may decide to plan a program to start with the lunch meal and then hold a general session, followed by 3 breakout sessions about 1 hour in length. An association meeting will be held about 6 p.m., with a meal following. The plan is to have a practice run fish boil, (see above) as the meal, which will probably be held out at the pavilion. Tuesday would be filled with 3-6 breakout programs, with the lunch meal provided at the Dean’s Luncheon.

Mary will contact a couple of members from the UP region, to try to gather more support for the planning committee. Participants on the committee for 2001 from the North region are Roberta Dow, Jill O’Donnell and Mary. Warren Shauer has agreed to participate from the north.

NACAA Reports and Plan for 2007 NACAA Annual Meeting Bid:

Stan plans to send a letter to the National NACAA Committee Chairs to find out what is involved for fund raising for the National Meeting Bid and the Process. He has also visited with the Administration about what the expectations and potential contributions may be. We now need to start raising money for the hospitality suite.

What we need to do now is to organize three main committees. We need to establish a Bid Committee, A Facilities Committee and a Fundraiser Committee.

We will be asking regional directors to help identify people from each of the regions to help starting to serve on these committees.

Keep in mind that we will need to "spread the wealth" in order to help make this process successful.

College of ANR.

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Restructuring meeting to be held on November 9^th from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at the Erickson Kiva. Dean Armstrong is hoping to have agents attend this meeting and to be a part of this process.

Respectfully submitted,

Ned Birkey, Secretary

For more information on this webpage or MAEA contact Mark Longstroth
Copyright © 2002 MSU Extension. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer, Indicia, and Linking information

Michigan State University is an affirmative action equal opportunity institution

This page was last updated on 1/17/2002