Message from the Chair
By: Luoluo Hong - Chair, CSJE
Greetings and happy fall!
I’m sure all of you are well into the swing of things for the fall term. I hope that this newsletter finds each of you in good health and happiness. I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on some of the priorities that the leadership of the Commission for Social Justice Educators has identified for the upcoming year.
The core leadership team – comprised of the four Vice Chairs, the Past Chair, the Chair-Elect (when s/he is elected) and myself plan to have focused discussions throughout the year on each of these areas of focus as we plan and implement strategies. Your input and suggestions are highly encouraged and greatly desired. As you know, the CSJE is still a relatively new commission within the American College Personnel Association.
The leadership team felt it was important to focus on enhancing and building infrastructures that ensure the sustainability and longevity of the Commission, even while maintaining efforts in key program and project areas that are already underway. (In fact, we encourage you to visit our home page at http://www.myacpa.org/comm/social/ to learn more about how you can contribute to our program initiatives.)
Given our goal of sustainability, we identified these three priority areas of focus for 2007-08:
1. Clarify roles, responsibilities, duties and purpose for each of the officer positions comprising the Directorate Body.
Feedback from our Directorate Body members indicated that while our officers are enthusiastic and committed to serving the Commission, not all of them necessarily understood the nature and scope of their expected roles and responsibilities. There are some basic descriptions for many of the positions, but not for all of them, and some of the descriptions are also not very…well, descriptive! The Vice Chairs and myself will be following up with each member of the DB to develop a more comprehensive document that details the duties and purpose of each officer position. Hopefully, this will help people feel more comfortable about stepping forward to take on a leadership role within the CSJE. Note that even if you are not a member of the Directorate Body, we would love to get your input on what you think the Commission leadership is doing – or should be doing!
2. Increase the quality and quantity of member engagement.
The CSJE listserv already comprises several hundred members, yet it is clear that the level of member involvement varies greatly. As with so many other professional organizations, it appears that a small core group of individuals are most actively involved, while the vast majority of members do not feel engaged or know how to get involved. We would like to understand how we can break this usual pattern in the CSJE. Given our mission, the CSJE can and should play an important professional development and support network role in CSJE members’ lives. Beginning first with the needs assessment recently conducted, we would like to find more viable ways to help members feel meaningfully connected with each other and with the Commission’s mission and activities.
3. Increase and diversify the membership of CSJE.
Within both the ACPA and NASPA, as well as other professional organizations which serve higher education professionals, there are many identity based groups and targeted interest groups that address topics of multicultural affairs. We have to examine who has joined the CSJE thus far and who has not, and then also ask why or why not? The CSJE is truly unique in that it has a broad, overarching mission that embraces the intersections of our multiple identities and simultaneously incorporates the work of diversity education, multicultural organizational development, and social justice activism and change. As such, we have the potential to be the niche organization that can meet the needs of educators who work across organizational boundaries or who transcend traditional ways of organizing diversity and/or social justice work. We need to be sure to reach out to those individuals. I continue to invite all of you to let the CSJE leadership know your thoughts, concerns, suggestions or feedback regarding any or all of these priorities.
Many thanks to all of you for being willing to invest the personal energy and professional passion that is essential to doing the work of social justice change well. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the ACPA Annual Meeting in Atlanta next March!
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