Letter from the President

Maggie Haag

Maggie Haag, current President

The membership directory is now available electronically.� Thanks to Rudi Berkelhammer for getting this project up and going.� It was distributed to the membership in October.� If you did not receive a copy, please contact Rudi (rcberkel@uci.edu).� Also, please keep Rudi up to date with any changes to your e-mail address.

Doreen Schroeder completed the ABLE brochure this past fall.� At the annual meeting last June it was decided that an electronic copy would be available to the membership so that copies could be made and distributed by members as needed.� All members should have received an electronic pdf file of the ABLE brochure.� If you did not, please contact me and I will send you a copy.� A limited number of brochures were also printed.� If you would like copies to take to other professional meetings, etc., please let me know.� For example, Ann Lumsden distributed brochures at NABT last fall.� This is an excellent way to spread our name around and hopefully lure in more membership.

I hope you have all had the opportunity to check out the BEN (BiosciEdNet) Collaborative website.� ABLE became a Contributing Member to the BEN Collaborative this past fall.� The link to our website is in place and the cataloging of our previous workshops is just about complete.

We would like to keep the momentum from last year�s business meetings going.� We will continue to work on ways to increase membership and to facilitate partnerships with other organizations.� If members have any new ideas, we welcome your input.� Please encourage colleagues to apply for the Lab Initiative Grants.� Encourage new staff, graduate students and post-docs to take advantage of reduced registration fees and the Waiver of Registration grants.� This is an excellent mechanism to encourage more participation at annual meetings.

I hope everyone will be making arrangements to attend the workshop/conference at UNLV.