Welcome back to our monthly committee updates! For those who are just now joining us, I will be posting updates from our committees at the beginning of each month to increase transparency and awareness of our committees. As President, I am responsible for the activities of the AIAS Committees and Task Forces. Thank you to all of our committee chairs and liaisons for helping me with the updates this month!
As you may have heard by now, I have decided to reopen the committee application and leave it open all year long. Share it with your friends! I want our committees to be as accessible as possible to all of our members. If any of these committees interest you, apply to join using this form!
Here is what our committees worked on in the month of November:
Governance Committee Chair: Past President Scott Cornelius | Liaison: West Quad Director Tristan Osorio
The Governance Committee has completed our review of the Model Bylaws, and we are currently working on edits to the content and format of the document for a re-release later this year. We spent some time in our last meeting reviewing the goals of the 2022-2024 Strategic Plan and discussing if and how these goals should continue into the 2024-2027 Strategic Plan. We’ve also begun our review of the Rules of the Board by creating a statement defining the purpose of the document, which will help us simplify and decrease the overlap between the Rules of the Board and the Bylaws! Tea Time with Tristan continues, and has shed light on truths about ourselves that even we didn’t know.
Membership Committee Chair: Vice President Nicole Bass | Liaison: South Quad Director Colt Brock
The Membership Committee hosted the first Open Discussions in collaboration with Student Health and Wellbeing Task Force on Sunday, November 20th at 2pm EST and heard some wonderful conversations and questions! The committee has reviewed more membership related documents and sites like AIAS 101 presentation and the Benefits Page on the website for what’s good/missing/needs an update. We will be continuing on and plan to reach out to other committees like JEDI, Sustainable Futures Task Force, and CoGR for future joint Open Discussions.
Finance Committee Chair: Vice President Nicole Bass | Liaison: Midwest Quad Director Ethan Sandburg
The Finance Committee hosted the first Council of Treasures of the year on November 10th at 12:30pm CT with great success! We had good attendance and received some great questions. Here is a recap post from the event: https://www.aias.org/aias-november-council-of-treasurers-kickoff-recap/ The committee also chatted with the Executive Director to go over finances of AIAS on a national non-profit level and review more finance-related documents on what’s good/missing/needs update. We will also be working with the Past Vice President to go over the International Dues structure and plan to reach out to FBDAC and CoGR on some joint charges.
Ethics Committee Chair: Shillpa Kumar, UT Arlington | Liaison: President Cooper Moore
The Ethics Committee is updating a draft of the Code of Ethics with additional commentary on repercussions as well as holding faculty outside AIAS accountable by allowing students to come to the committee with issues involving professors or faculty at their schools. We are looking to expand outreach for not only just the Code of Ethics as a resource but all the committees and task forces, as well as national involvement. We are also trying to develop a video about the Code that can be shown at Quad calls and other chapter meetings.
Freedom By Design Advisory Group (FBDAC) Chair: Michelle Tapia, UNLV | Liaison: Cooper Moore
The FBDAC is finalizing a date for the first fireside chat to close out 2022 and is introducing themselves to their regions as liaisons. They are in each of their regions slacks and are open for any questions and interactions! We are also taking another look at the FBD landing page on the AIAS website and drafting up edits the Committee would like to bring forward to the board of directors.
Council of Global Representatives (CoGR) Chair: Ayman Bitar, An Najah | Liaisons: Latin America Regional Director Paulina Garza & Middle East Regional Director Marcelle El Achkar
The Council of Global Representatives had two more meetings since the last update, and we shifted the day of meeting to Sunday same time (1 PM ET / 12 PM CT / 8 PM EEST). Since last time we started focusing on having a touchable achievement for the council, the team worked on bringing back “coffee with the council” in a way to connect with the members better, in the meeting we brainstormed ideas on what and how the event will be, discussing themes, partners even spinoffs on the concept of the event, we continued work in our growing Miro board where everything is represented visually in a clear and easy to follow way.
We also explored lightly the idea of hosting in international AIAS conference with promising ideas and results so far.
PS: doing a Kahoot! as an icebreaker is super fun and interactive!
Future Programming Task Force (FPTF) Chair: Juanita Libreros Foronda, SCAD | Liaison: Northeast Quad Director Julia Andor
The FPTF held several meetings in the month of November. The Task Force also created a groundbreaking icebreaker activity in the form of a rock, paper, scissors tournament. The FPTF is working to determine what AIAS programming will look like for the rest of the year and beyond, with a specific focus on the future of our FORUM conference.
Student Health & Wellbeing Task Force (SHWTF) Chair: Liz Fraka, U of Kansas | Liaison: Midwest Quad Director Ethan Sandburg
The Student Health and Wellbeing Task Force has continued its work planning webinars for Spring 2023 and Grassroots programming and is beginning a draft of the graphic guidebook to make resources more accessible for the general student population. We also joined the Membership Committee for their first Town Hall meeting of the year!
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force (JEDI) Chair: Christian Waweru, Georgia Tech | Liaison: South Quad Director Colt Brock
The JEDI Task Force is continuing its work on the resource packet for students. Our working groups (Graphics Resource, Academic Resource, Working Place Standards Resource, and Alternate Careers Resource) have been collecting information, doing research, and compiling sources for our packet, and will continue doing so in the coming weeks, in preparation to create our first draft at the beginning of the new calendar year.
Sustainable Futures Task Force (SFTF) Chair: Jordan Luther, Carnegie Mellon | Liaison: West Quad Director Tristan Osorio
The SFTF has been putting together a survey to send out to our members on the topic of Sustainable Practices in Education. This survey will provide the organization with a lot of helpful information regarding the state of education around the world and where the AIAS can focus its efforts moving forward. The task force has also been brainstorming and recruiting for speakers at our upcoming THRIVE webinars. Stay tuned for more information on those webinars!
