TO: ACSA Member Schools and Faculty Councilors
FROM: Judith Kinnard, ACSA President
Patricia Kucker, ACSA Secretary
ACSA Board of Directors
RE: Proposed Amendment of ACSA Bylaws
DATE: November 18, 2011
The ACSA Board of Directors voted at its recent meeting to send two proposed Bylaws amendments to the membership for consideration. Both involve matters of governance for the organization, and I am writing to ask for your consideration and support of these changes.
Amendment 1. Public Director. We are proposing to change the Public Director appointment process from an election by the membership to an appointment by the board. Currently we require two candidates run for the Public Director position, with one prevailing in a majority vote. Although the requirement reflects the organization’s commitment to a participatory process, we believe it prevents us from recruiting good potential directors. In place of an election, the ACSA board prefers to hold an open call for nominations for the Public Director position, followed by an internal board review and appointment process. Supporting this proposal would help us recruit exceptional candidates for Public Director, without causing one to feel he or she has lost an election.
Amendment 2. Regions. After many years of discussion about the size of ACSA’s regions, the organization would like to redraw the U.S. regional map and rename certain regions in order to achieve more balance. Currently the Northeast region holds 35 schools and the East Central region holds 11 schools. Representing a large region puts an undue burden on the Northeast director, while in small regions it is regularly a challenge to recruit potential candidates and hold a competitive election because of conflicts of interest. For this reason, we propose redistributing schools, mainly in the eastern sections of the United States, and renaming the regions affected. As a result we would continue to have 6 U.S. regions, but all of them will have roughly equivalent numbers of schools. Attached is a map and proposed list of schools in each region. If approved, the change in regions would go into effect immediately.
Ballots for these amendments with complete details will go out to your school on Friday, November 18, with a return deadline of December 7. We encourage you to discuss these proposals with your faculty and we hope you will support these changes by voting for them.
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