Howdy folks! As President, I am responsible for the activities of the AIAS Committees and Task Forces. In the interest of increased visibility and transparency, I will be providing updates throughout the year – on the first of each month – sharing what our committees have been working on. A special thanks goes out to the Chairs and Liaisons for providing me with these updates!
In other committee news, I’ve decided to leave the committee application open all year long. In the past, members could only join committees at the beginning of each year, but I didn’t like the idea of a member joining in September and having to wait until next August to get involved. Hopefully this allows members to pursue their passions as soon as they join! You will likely hear more about this in future updates. If any of these committees interest you, apply to join using this form!
And now, without further ado, here is what our 2022-2023 Committees and Task Forces have been up to so far this year:
Governance Committee Chair: Past President Scott Cornelius | Liaison: West Quad Director Tristan Osorio
The Governance Committee has had three meetings so far, and is currently focused on reviewing and revising the Model Chapter Bylaws document for a re-release later this year. GovComm (Live Laugh Lovecomm) is hoping that this will help chapters who are getting re-organized post-pandemic to establish more resilient processes and governance procedures that will keep functioning well for years! We have also been discussing the beginnings of goal development for the 2024-2027 Strategic Plan, and we are about to begin a full review of the Rules of the Board. We’re also ecstatic that West Quad Director Tristan Osorio’s weekly segment, Tea Time with Tristan, has brought us closer together as a committee fam.
Membership Committee Chair: Vice President Nicole Bass | Liaison: South Quad Director Colt Brock
The Membership Committee has had 3 meetings on Sunday afternoons so far. Memcomm has been working on getting Chapter Alumni Mentorship Program (CAMP) pairs together and kicking off that programming, and has been reviewing content and see what works/needs updating/what’s missing. Lastly, Memcomm is planning our Membership Committee Townhalls – we renamed them Open Discussions. The first date has been set for Sunday, November 20th at 2pm EST. Spread the word to friends, chapters, and alumni!
Finance Committee Chair: Vice President Nicole Bass | Liaison: Midwest Quad Director Ethan Sandburg
The Finance Committee has had 3 meetings on Sunday mornings so far. Fincomm has worked on developing short form content about chapter finances by first going over the ‘So You’re The Treasurer Guide’ and seeing what works/needs updating/what’s missing. Fincomm will be hosting the first Council of Treasures meeting of the year on November 10th at 12:30pm CT. Spread the word to friends, chapters, alumni! The committee will also be working with the wonderful Executive Director to go over finances of AIAS on a national non-profit level!
Ethics Committee Chair: Shillpa Kumar, UT Arlington | Liaison: President Cooper Moore
The Ethics Committee has had two meetings so far, usually over the weekends. We have met to discuss the Code of Ethics, understanding the Rules of Conduct, as well as going through the hearing procedure. We are in the process of making revisions to the Code and updating for relevancy. We are currently working on a presentation in order to educate about the Code, as well as presenting at our Chapter’s GBMs as well as Quad meetings.
Freedom By Design Advisory Group (FBDAC) Chair: Michelle Tapia, UNLV | Liaison: Cooper Moore
The FBDAC has had 2 meetings so far, we have discussed information on FBD, and what the FBDAC does for our members. We have established most of our liaisons for each of the quads and are brainstorming our first fireside chat and plan on re-implementing FBDAC quad pod calls to help give chapters a more quad centered experience. We are hoping to collaborate with NCARB to help provide trainings and help with AXP hour trainings and discussions. We also have been brainstorming what resources we want to tackle this year to help out our chapters.
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 has had two meetings so far, occurring biweekly on Saturdays at 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT / 8 PM EEST. So far, the team had the chance to break the ice between the members and explained the tools they will be using to manage their work – among these is an ongoing Miro board that will be used throughout the year as a visual representation of all the meetings, as well as a Notion workspace that will help in breaking down our tasks. We also had the chance to introduce them briefly to the history of the CoGR and international regions. We encourage participants from any chapter, whether they were from the US or International, as we’ll all be working together to make the AIAS experience fairly accessible to members across the borders.
Future Programming Task Force (FPTF) Chair: Juanita Libreros Foronda, SCAD | Liaison: Northeast Quad Director Julia Andor
The Future Programming Task Force has had 2 meetings that take place on Monday nights. So far we have discussed with all our members about the essence of FORUM. This has been done through Miro board discussions to understand how we all feel about AIAS Conferences moving forward. Our goal is to support this year’s FORUM 2023 but also rethink the way that conferences have been structured in the past in terms of programming, location and timings of FORUM. Our most recent conversation involved some analysis on how to define the 3 main conferences (Quad, Grassroots and FORUM) to give students the incentive of being involved in then. We also discussed the meaning of a FORUM conference vs a Grassroots 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 had 3 meetings on Saturday mornings so far. We have brainstormed how we would like to approach our deliverables and split the committee into two teams to work more efficiently. One team is working on developing a brief, highly graphical resources guide for students struggling with different topics that we would like to encourage chapters to print and leave in common spaces in their school to make these resources more accessible for all students. The other team is developing programing options for both in person and online conferences.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force (JEDI) Chair: Christian Waweru, Georgia Tech | Liaison: South Quad Director Colt Brock
The JEDI Task Force has had three meetings, on Sundays at 7:30pm eastern time! Over the past three meetings we have introduced our charges and deliverables, gotten to know each other better through different ice breakers and fun quizzes and have officially launched our working groups for the committee. All in all, we have five total working groups each with two people covering Graphics, Academic Resources, Alternative Career Resources, and Workplace Standards resources. The last working group consists of our Chair (Christian), NOMA/S Liaison (Catherine), and Board Liaison (Colt), and is focused on assisting all of the working groups, planning programming, and working with external organizations. We are hoping to culminate our efforts this year into a singular document (name and format tbd) that can be shared with all AIAS members and K-12 students where possible!
Sustainable Futures Task Force (SFTF) Chair: Jordan Luther, Carnegie Mellon | Liaison: West Quad Director Tristan Osorio
The Sustainable Futures Task Force has had three meetings and meets twice a week every other week, on Tuesday evenings and Sunday Mornings. We introduced our five charges and have established a sub-committee for each charge. Each task force member is working on two charges, and has begun researching and brainstorming for each of them. The charges we will be focusing on first are planning a THRIVE webinar and developing a sustainable practices survey. We plan to have our first THRIVE webinar before the Winter Break and a draft of the survey by the same time as well.
