NIRSA Member Network Update

Post date: Oct 14, 2014 3:00:25 PM

"I will apologize in advance for the length of this update, but I wanted to share with everyone all of the great news that came out of our recently completed round of state workshop as well as share and reiterate some important upcoming NIRSA deadlines.

Let’s start with a recap of our state workshops:

Michigan: Central Michigan University hosted a wonderful MIRSA conference with 90 attendees. Elections were held and please join me in congratulating the following:

Nicole Green – Valentine (UM) State Director

Darin Leigh (WMU) Associate State Director

Jasmine Chatten (CMU) Secretary

Scott George (CMU) Treasurer

The following awards were also presented at the workshop

Christy Nolan (WSU) Dr. Tom Jones Award

Marie VanBuskirk (Oakland) Dr. Michael Stevenson Award

Sarah DiStefano (Oakland) Robert England Outstanding Student Award

Wisconsin: UW- Whitewater hosted WIRSA which featured 128 attendees. Please help me recognize the newly elected WIRSA officers:

James Friel (UW-Whitewater) State Director

Jenny Larson (UW-LaCrosse) Associate State Director

Megan Holman (UW-Madison) Treasurer

Marci Kuhrt (Viterbo) Secretary

Jeff Dvorak (UW-Madison) Historian

Samantha Rodenberg (UW-LaCrosse) State Student Leader

Wisconsin also debuted a new web page (www.mywirsa.org) and raised $4400 for scholarships!

Illinois: 110 attendees made their way to The University of Illinois for IIRSA. Elections were held and please congratulate the following:

Lisa Hanson Lamey (Moraine Valley CC) State Director

Katie Birdsall (Illinois State) Assistant State Director

Sally Wright (SIU-Carbondale) Treasurer

Corne Prozesky was honored with the IIRSA Service Award and through the auction, IIRSA was able to raise almost $3500 in scholarship money.

Ohio: Cleveland State University welcomed 243 attendees to the ORSA State Workshop. Elections were held and please recognize the following:

Steve Hardy (Toledo) President Elect

Lizzie Holton (Akron) State Student Leader

Through raffle and auction efforts, approximately $5100 was raised for scholarships.

Indiana: 90 attendees met at Butler University for IRSA. Elections were held and please congratulate the following:

Andy Fry (IU) President

Josh Bisher (Ball State) Vice President

Beth Lohman (Butler) Treasurer

Drew Ison (IU) State Student Leader

Also, Jess Adkisson was awarded the Carol J. Stickel Outstanding Student Award and IRSA set a record with over $3200 raised for student professional development scholarships!

All in all, we had 661 attendees at our state workshops and raised over $16,200 for scholarships at the state level! What a great representation of our region that is!

Speaking of Scholarships: As we announced at our state workshops, we will be moving forward with endowing a Region III Scholarship through the NIRSA Foundation. $10,000 is coming out of what we have raised in the past (currently being held in the contingency fund) and several MIRSA members issued a challenge. They pledged $2000 and some ORSA members and several others followed suit with pledges. I am in the process of working with the Foundation to set up the account, so to all of you generous members that pledged, hold off on doing anything with your money until I have that information. The money raised in the penny wars will also go toward this effort. Hopefully, by the completion of Lead On, we will have the $15,000 necessary to have the endowment kick in.

Speaking of Lead On: There has been much work over the course of the last few months to get us ready for Lead On (and Lead In…more on that in a few). For those that don’t know, Purdue will be our host for the event taking place January 22-24, 2015. Registration will be opening soon, probably by the end of next week. I will send a note out when it is live and we will spread the word via social media. A couple of things to remember: we are limited to 500 and registration will close on December 19. Right now, the presentation proposal form is live at the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vFldwMRZqbS-HeQ8t_JAA_HzeILdXyTByTA5OuDlmR4/viewform

Purdue’s website will be the host for the information regarding the conference: www.purdue.edu/recsports/region3leadon. I will let you know when that goes live as well. New this year is LEAD IN, a preconference ½ day that we hope addresses some of the educational deficiencies we have in the region. Lead In will be aimed at 2 distinct groups of professionals, executive level and young professionals. Both sessions will run from 1-5pm on Thursday, January 22. The Exec Level session will be led by Tom Kirch and Lori Lynn Stettler and will be capped at 32 attendees. The Young Professional Session will be led by some presenters TBD. Both of these are only $10 to attend. We are excited about this and thank Sarah Hardin and her planning team for putting the program together. More to come on this! While the professionals are doing those activities, the students that may be travelling with them will also have the opportunity to either do some teambuilding, a community service activity or take a tour of the phenomenal facilities at Purdue.

Award Deadlines Upcoming: As I think we did a good job of communicating at the state workshops, there are several important ones that are upcoming. Here is a list:

November 3 NIRSA Honor Award

Outstanding Sports Facilities

Creative Excellence Awards

November 16 NIRSA Foundation Scholarship

NIRSA Foundation Travel Stipend

December 15 Region III Award of Merit

Horace Moody Award

William Wasson Awards

Research and Assessment Awards

All info about awards can be found at nirsa.org/awards. Let’s get our deserving colleagues nominated for these prestigious awards.

That’s all I have for now! More info about Lead On later in the week or early next week once registration is open!"