Things are definitely looking up. We have a Vice President, Kay Faris; fifty brave souls attended the Meet and Greet Pizza Party; travel opportunities are beginning to appear; and this year’s budget has been approved! What more could you ask for?

Board meeting notes

• The Treasurer, aka Barry McNeill, presented the draft budget which was approved. Several items increased in cost due to inflation. One exception was the money for the scholarship. Because of the robust book sales last year we only need to take $5,000 from Operations to fund the scholarship, down $1,000 from last year. The treasurer also presented the annual Financial Health of the Association report which showed the Association is financially sound.
• Jan Shore, Scholarship Chair, asked the Board for permission to let the Scholarship Office know that we would continue to offer the $10,000 scholarship. The board approved this request.
• Pat Schneider, Seminar Chair, said the program for this year is in place. The October 2023 Open Enrollment seminar already has over 100 registered, including 25 from NAU. There will be four spring seminars including two popular repeat presenters from last year with new topics.
•  Connie McNeill, Website and Database Chair, told the Board that she had created a new page on the website to display all the past Scholarship recipients. To find all these recipients took some diligent searching of the records by the Office Volunteers, Joy Shearman, and Connie. They eventually got names for all but one year – 2001-2002. If you would like to see these recipients go to our Scholarship webpage and click on the gold “See recipient history” button.
• Connie also proposed breaking the Website and Database Committee into two committees:  Database & Website. The reasons for the split are:  1) maintaining the database and publishing content on a website are very different tasks and 2) separating into two committees has the potential of making it easier to find people who are willing to do one type of task but not the other. The Board approved the division of the committee.

Committee of the month – Government Liaisons

Who are these Government Liaisons? You see them here; you see them there; you see them everywhere! They are our members who have the exciting task of acting as agents of the Board to provide information and advocacy in relation to the Arizona Legislature and other associated sub-organizations. Per the ASURA Bylaws, the Liaisons are charged to exert influence on targeted agencies and specific bills, as approved by our Board and in consultation with our Officers.

As any good agent knows; the key to success is gathering and interpreting information and that is what our liaisons do. In the late fall they survey information for prospective legislation of interest to ASURA.  By early January, they submit a list of bills to support or oppose to the Board for their approval. Once the legislature is in full swing they keep their eyes and ears open to stay current on the legislative process. It is an exhilarating and eye-opening experience to be a liaison.

This job requires multiple people working together to track and respond to legislation. When studying what to support or oppose, the liaisons test out their views on each other. It is helpful to have multiple people attend the Legislative session(s) when bills that have been identified as concerns are being presented. If you would like to read more about how these liaisons operate, visit our Help for Volunteers website, Government council. If you would like to join this merry band, contact the Government Liaison Chair.

Controlling your privacy

Ensuring the privacy of the information contained in the membership database is important. When you join ASURA your profile is created and only you and ASURA membership administrators can view it. Since committee chairs and members would like to and may need to contact specific members, a directory was created which is a small subset of the profile information, specifically name, mailing address, email, phone, employment category, department, and campus. The directory is visible to any member who logs onto the membership site.

Up until recently we assumed it was possible to either show all or none of the Directory information which turns out to be false. You can control which of the Directory items you want displayed and which you want hidden. Controlling what is displayed in the Directory is done by editing the privacy settings in your profile.

So if you currently have your profile’ privacy set to not show any profile information and would like to show a few items in the Directory, e.g., name and email address or if you would like to remove some of the Directory information currently being shown, then go to our website (http://asura.asu.edu), select Update Profile from the Membership menu and follow the directions for updating your profile privacy settings.

Office Hours

The ASURA Office will continue its summer schedule through the current academic year. The Office will be open three hours Monday through Thursday. See the schedule on our website (Office hours and volunteers), If you plan on visiting the Office it is a good idea to call ahead to make sure one of the volunteers is in.