ANNOUNCEMENTS COF Executive Committee Meetings
Above: The COF Executive Committee peers through the internet from their homes, offices, and vacation (virtual) hideaways. From left to right, top to bottom: Terri Stewart, Peter Kuttner, FAIA, Muza Conforti, John Castellana, FAIA, Frances Halsband, FAIA, and Roger Schluntz, FAIA
Governance In The Pandemic by Chancellor Peter Kuttner, FAIA
Those
Fellows who are familiar with the COF Executive Committee, or who have followed this COF Newsletter, know that we meet at least five times a year. We gather at Grassroots, the national conference, and at Governance Week in December. We also try to meet in the spring and in the fall in different cities across the country, where we can meet the Fellows in that area. This year we had planned to go to Boulder, Colorado, in the spring and Charleston, South Carolina, in the fall, to meet with Fellows from the Western Mountain Region, and the South Atlantic Region, until the pandemic caught up with us after Grassroots. Like much of the rest of the world, the COF ExCom moved immediately online. We meet in Zoom, and have adapted our meeting format. Where we used to spend two days in a meeting room, we have changed to two-hour weekly meetings staged over several 8
weeks. In the Spring we had five weeks of meetings, which allowed us to gather information we needed for subsequent sessions and adapt our discussion to the changing calendar and the virus. While we missed seeing each other in person, we appreciated this new level of efficiency. We met for our most recent summer meeting several times in July and August and have kept all our programs moving forward. Specifically, we just awarded the latest round of Emerging Professional Component Grants, developed the COF Heritage Society for estate donations to the COF Fund, and have begun new mentoring outreach with YAF. We also had our first Zoom meeting with the COF Regional Representatives. We are moving the College forward, though we still long for the collaboration of face-to-face.
