Diversity Committee Report
Dee Talley, Chair

The Diversity committee has been hard at work developing and informative and enriching diversity program for SASFAA’s annual conference.

The committee will be offering four concurrent sessions at the conference. They are: Diversity Roundtable; Working with Students with Disabilities; Communicating with Different Cultures and Managing the Multi-Cultural Workforce. Excellent presenters have been secured for these sessions, which promise to be very enlightening.

Three cultural venues have been identified by the Diversity committee as being of potential interest to the membership. They are the Carter Center; the High Museum and the Martin Luther King Center. The Carter Center has an admissions fee of $7; the High Museum $12 and there is a nominal fee for the Martin Luther King Center. Transportation to and from these venues is currently being worked out with the Local Arrangements Committee. Also, the Diversity committee is concerned about the cost of the venues.

The diversity general session speaker will be Mark Abelsson, a human relations consultant from Los Angeles, California. Mr. Abelsson owns a company called Diversity@Work, which specializes in workplace education and consultant on sexual orientation issues. He will give a presentation on Sexual Orientation in the American Workplace. The committee is looking forward to having Mr. Abelsson address the SASFAA membership.

The committee is working diligently to organize the leadership symposium that will be presented as a pre-conference activity on Sunday, February 12, 2005 from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. The symposium is a leadership development activity that will focus on developing leadership skills among all SASFAA members. Topics will be focused on those skills and abilities members will need to pursue future leadership roles in SASFAA. The presenters will be professional and highly qualified individuals within the higher education arena. There is no charge for this activity; however, due to space limitations, it will be limited to 100 participants. Registration is required (can indicate interest on the conference registration form), and lunch will be provided.

A survey form has been developed by the Diversity committee for distribution to the SASFAA membership. The survey has been developed in an effort to determine what diversity means to the membership, and what type of activities/ interest sessions they would like to see offered at future SASFAA conferences in the area of diversity. The results of the survey will serve as a guideline for future Diversity chairs and committee members in developing a diversity program that will be informative and meaningful to SASFAA members.

Membership Committee Report
Forrest M. Stuart, Chair

At the writing of this article, more than 800 of your SASFAA colleagues have joined or renewed their SASFAA memberships for 2004-05. With over 1,400 members in 2003-04, I am hoping that SASFAA will enlarge its membership again in 2004-05.

Here are some points to remember:

• Paid SASFAA membership entitles you to “Members Only” access to the web site.
• To check your membership status, go to www.sasfaa.org/docs/forms/memCheckStatus.html.
• To renew or join, go to www.sasfaa.org/docs/forms/memApp.html.
• To update your demographic information, including email address, go to www.sasfaa.org/docs/toc_memberservices.html and click “Update Your Member Profile.”
• Need help with your username and/or password? Contact support@sasfaa.org.
• Payments for membership are mailed to our SASFAA treasurer, Lester McKenzie.

Finally, it is very important that all of your information is correct. If you discover errors in your information in SASFAA membership database, please go online and correct it. You have the authority to do this.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the 2005 SASFAA Conference in Atlanta!

Forrest M. Stuart
SASFAA Membership Chair
Rhodes College