2 minute read
President’s Report
Bruce T. Morrill, S.J
As President, I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with the Academy Committee and Courtney Murtaugh in doing the work of the past twelve months to realize this present Annual Meeting, the raison d’etre of our Academy. Throughout this Business Meeting you have kindly joined me in thanking those colleagues, as well as those dedicated to the production and dissemination of Proceedings. During my announcements on Opening Night you learned also of the good results from Michael Prendergast’s recruiting and coordinating of the exhibitors at this year’s meeting and Don LaSalle’s doing the same with donors and sponsors. I was able to meet in person and continuously communicate with members comprising the Atlanta Local Committee, several of whom contributed time and expertise for the official Academy worship and the denominational worship services. I trust that this short review gives you a sense of the myriad activities and preparations over which I have presided and for my part, once more, I express my thanks to all.
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I want to take a few minutes to inform you of the work of our Website Development Committee. This past January the Academy Committee asked Troy Messenger to assemble and chair this committee, charged with creating a completely new NAAL website. Troy immediately accepted the task, spent time consulting with the Academy Committee at our January 2019 meeting and set about convening monthly meetings with a committee comprised of Carl Bear, Suzanne Herold, David Hogue, and Layla Karst. Troy was not able to attend this year’s Annual Meeting, so I invite Suzanne Herold and Layla Karst to give you a brief report of the committee’s work and progress, to date.
(Suzanne Herold and Layla Karst give their report.)
Please join me in expressing our gratitude to the Website Development Committee for the service they have been providing to our Academy Committee.
The official NAAL Policies and Procedures specify that the President appoints a webmaster. The Academy Committee and I received and agreed with the Website Development Committee’s recommendation of Layla Karst for this position and, I am happy to report, Layla readily accepted my request that she become the new Academy Webmaster. Given the expanded mission and capacities of the new
website scheduled for launch in April, I am preparing a revised description of this position for the Academy Committee, at our March meeting, to discuss, finalize, and install in the NAAL Policies and Procedures. With you, I look forward to our having an attractive and effective website soon in 2020.
Finally, I have one other revision in our ways of proceeding to review for your information and clarification. As I explained in last year’s Business Meeting and Newsletter, the dates and schedule-format for the Annual Meeting will take a new, standard form at Toronto in 2022. Toronto 2022 was the earliest date we could work with hotels to get the exact dates of January 2nd to 5th, which will then become our standard meeting dates. Again, it is at that meeting, two years from now, that we will enact the new schedule-format. Please be advised, then, that for our next meeting, the upcoming one in Seattle, the dates are January 7–10, 2021. At the Seattle meeting we will once more, and for the last time, follow our current schedule-format, starting with pre-meetings on January 7th.
