News of the Association

Three Months In

s you read this message, I will already be wrapping up the first quarter of my term as President of AEG. I continue to be honored to serve in this role and am thankful for your trust and support. I also want to thank everyone that helped make the 2022 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, such a unique and successful experience! The event was full of great speakers, field courses, exhibitors, and, of course, people. If you were not able to attend this year, you were missed, but I hope to see you at next year’s meeting in Portland, Oregon!

As I shared during the recent Annual Meeting, I have three primary objectives for my time as AEG President: 1. Strengthen our relationships with affiliated societies, 2. Develop more effective volunteer management, and 3. Continue the momentum of our Strategic Plan.

1. Strengthen Our Relationship with Affiliated Societies

Affiliated societies are like-minded scientific, professional, or technical organizations that share common interests and goals with AEG. We have had both formal and informal relationships with many affiliated societies over the years, such as the Environmental & Engineering Geology Division (EEGD) of GSA, American Geosciences Institute (AGI), and ASBOG, just to name a few. However, we could be doing more to leverage these relationships in order to better collaborate in mutually beneficial ways. For example, members of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (DEIC) have been participating in AGI’s Intersociety Committee on DEI to share their own successes, learn best practices, and address DEI-related challenges, and to apply what they have learned to our own DEI initiatives. As another example of our relationshipstrengthening, we are currently in the process of developing a formal memorandum of understanding with the Geoprofessional Business Association (GBA), which will in part provide greater visibility of AEG with GBA’s members and will make GBA resources available to AEG members.

ANathan Saraceno, 2022–23 AEG President

3. Continue the Momentum of Our Strategic Plan

My third objective is to continue pushing toward achieving our strategic goals as an Association. The last version of our Strategic Plan was developed in 2018. AEG Past Presidents Cynthia Palomares (2019–20) and Bill Godwin (2020–21) made great strides toward completing many of the tactics that were identified in the Strategic Plan during their time on the Executive Council. Since then, and beginning with AEG’s current Past President Maddie German, we have begun the process of revisiting and revising the plan, and through strategic planning workshops with the BOD are nearing completion of an updated plan with new goals and tactics. The Strategic Plan is vital to AEG maintaining relevancy and continuing to understand and meet our members’ needs. Through new tactics under the overall goals of membership, meetings, communication, and marketing and management, we will continue to thrive as an Association. I look forward to serving as your President and am excited to do so alongside the strong and dedicated slate of volunteer leaders that make up the rest of the Executive Council.

Nate with outgoing AEG President Maddie German at the 2022 Annual Meeting

2. Effective Volunteer Management

Volunteers are what makes AEG function. Historically, we have managed most of our volunteers by organizing them into committees and working groups. AEG has many highly active operational committees, and others that are struggling to find direction or have been dormant for several years. After several brainstorming sessions with the Board of Directors (BOD) on how to reinvigorate some of our struggling and dormant committees, I believe AEG must reevaluate how volunteers are organized in order to achieve our strategic goals. For our most active committees, this may mean no change at all. For others, combining or completely disbanding the committee. However this looks, the process will involve stakeholder input from the BOD, committee chairs and volunteers, and you, the membership. Our intent for this volunteer management plan would be increasing our volunteer base by identifying and pairing volunteers with specific initiatives that are of interest to them. Our goals would be to reduce volunteer burnout, increase our volunteer base, and to develop new leaders within AEG.

AEG – The Place to be for Applied Geology

began my year as Vice President in

September and hit the ground running, but instead of physically running—I started my year of listening and coordinating.

During both the April and September 2022 meetings of the Board of Directors (BOD), the Board took a closer look at refining AEG’s Strategic Plan (originally developed in 2018) and identifying some new goals to keep us moving forward. As the Strategic Plan turns five years old in 2023, it is time to take a closer look to identify which initiatives have been accomplished and which ones need some reworking as we strive toward continued improvement of the Association and benefits for members.

The BOD, along with organizational input from the Strategic Initiative Coordinators, have identified goals in the following areas to move AEG forward over the next five years:

Membership:

Establish a membership committee to, among other items: ■ Ensure timely communication during the membership renewal season of late Fall. ■ Develop a more formalized membership renewal and appreciation effort. Board member Martha Whitney (International Region) and Student and Young Professional Support Committee (SYPSC) Cochair (and former Board Member) Rick Kolb agreed to get this committee up and running.

Meetings:

■ Reestablish development of Spring Forums (in-person or online). ■ Encourage Chapters to begin recording speaker presentations when permission is granted. ■ Work with the Association Manager and AEG’s Meetings Manager to create meeting advertising content for social media. ■ More effectively communicate the availability of the

Student/Young Professional Travel Grant funding to encourage

Annual Meeting attendance. Many of these initiatives will be adapted as goals for the Meetings Advisory Committee (co-chaired by Sarah Kalika and Paul Weaver), with assistance from the SYPSC (co-chaired by Morley Beckman and Rick Kolb), and the Chapter Support Committee (chaired by Curt Schmidt with active participation by all Chapter leaders.

Communication:

■ Ensure that the voices of AEG members and leaders are being heard. ■ Provide clear direction to leadership on which issues have the most impact.

l■ Increase recognition for our many outstanding volunteers. Ensure that the Volunteer of the Year Award is communicated at prominent levels within AEG’s publications and Sarah Kalika, 2022–23 AEG Vice President during plenary sessions, including the Opening Session of the Annual Meeting. ■ Promote more and better communication with the Chapters and Chapter leadership boards by hosting more effective collaborative calls. These initiatives will be advanced by multiple parts of the Association including the Communications Committee (co-chaired by Isaac Pope and Bill Godwin), Chapter Support Committee, and Annual Meeting Chairs, with support from the Executive Council and Regional Directors.

Marketing & Management:

Recognizing that AEG has a long history of being a small- to medium-sized professional organization that still lacks recognition among industry professionals, the following goals were established: ■ Increase the impact from advertising of AEG-hosted events including the Annual Meeting, webinars, professional forums, Chapter events, field courses, and short courses. Find alternative approaches to advertising these events to different audiences (including members of partner organizations). ■ Evaluate the use, reference, and readership of our peerreviewed journal, Environmental & Engineering Geoscience (E&EG). Look at other association journals for cues on ways to improve readership and citations of E&EG, including potential for more open-access publishing, special edition issues featuring a common topic, and better publicity for the journal. As Vice President, one of my tasks is to attend as many Operational Committee meetings as possible and serve as a liaison between the Committees and the Board, so this year I will strive to invigorate our existing leaders and recruit new leaders to take on some of the initiatives identified in our revised F Strategic Plan. I am O already full of ideas, R and I’m looking forward A L to working with you— our outstanding members and leaders—to help AEG accomplish our goals.

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