From the President

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Jamie Washington
ACPA President

Happy Summer, ACPA Family!

I wanted to take this moment to say “thank you” for all you do on and off your campus to make a difference in the lives of the students and families we serve.  The role of the student affairs professional is one that continues to expand with many opportunities and challenges.  Thus, I want to start by making sure you are taking care of yourselves. I know that summer is not everyone’s downtime, but if it is, I hope you’ve found time to reflect, reconnect and rejuvenate for the coming year.  If summer is not your downtime, I trust that you will do the same as we enter the semesters and quarters.

As an association, we are excited about our 95th Anniversary in Boston.  Mark your calendars for March 3-6, 2019 for a celebration and our setting the course for our 100th year.  ACPA is in a powerful moment of reflection and redefining itself as an association.  While we remain committed to being a comprehensive student affairs association that exists to prepare professionals to serve and prepare college and tertiary level education students to be leaders and effective contributors to our global society, we are examining and redefining what that will look like in our practice, programs, and services.  The leadership is actively engaging with key stakeholder and you, our membership, to help us set the course so that we can best serve our membership and higher education moving forward.  Stay tuned, there’s more to come.

In the fall of 2016, we announced our Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization. This imperative is not only timely for our country but an absolute necessity for college campuses. It is our intention to help student affairs professionals better understand what it means to serve all students with a racial justice and decolonized lens. To that end, we are in the process of developing resources that will assist our membership in examining their policies, programs, and practices and to develop the tools and the capacity to more effectively engage this core value.  The work that ACPA and NASPA did in 2015 on Professional Competencies offers a great starting place for this effort and we intend to build on that work over the next year.

Your ACPA is busy working to provide a full and robust professional development experience for our members.  Please check out our website for the programs that you won’t want to miss this fall. These are great opportunities to do focused learning with professionals from around the country that will help you to build capacity to better serve your students.

ACPA is your association. Take advantage of your state, regional and international division conferences and meeting.  We need your leadership and it’s a great way to get involved.  You can also connect to one or more of our Commissions, Coalitions or a Community of Practice to contribute, learn and build a great professional community.  Go to www.myacpa.org for more information on all the ways to stay connected.

Finally, you will soon see a call for nominations and awards.  We all know great people who are doing amazing things on our campuses and for the profession.  Take time to nominate folks for the awards. Consider running for national and local offices within the association.

I wish you all a great opening season and I look forward to reconnecting and updating you in the fall, and remember, you matter, our work matters, and we are making a difference. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.  Until next time…

Rev. Jamie Washington Ph.D.

President ACPA

75 thoughts on “From the President”

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