I am specifically reaching out out to all of you to let you know all the preparation and need for participation this upcoming Cencal Board year 2011/2012.  About 2 weeks ago, our incoming board met for a period of 2 days to come up with a calendar, ideas, and prepare for the upcoming Board year.   With a full list of concerns from present directors, your counselors, and administrative staff, we feel we've worked hard to intend to make this year a great one with you participation and collaboration of this upcoming year.

Here are just a few discussion items we will encompass this year:

1)  We will be phasing into a new listserve.   With overflow of non-Cencal members, or simply acquaintances no longer affiliated and of course new members, we hope with this we can create a tighter group and feasible email format.  Also, in the past because of individual restrictions to some of our email accounts, some of you couldn't send stuff out and we will now, hopefully through this.   I do ask, when our new communication chair Mike Osorio, sends out an email you can relay all emails to be added back to him promptly.

We are hoping that by September 1st, 2011, we introduce our new listserve to the chapter and start using it.

2)  Scholarships will now require Nominator and Applicant Participation.  Again, with our goal of having all Cencal members come to Cencal meetings, attend events put together to raise funds for scholarships like our Annual PDS in October, SLC planned for November, and TRiO Day planned for February 2012.  For CenCal members being nominators we are asking they attend 3 of the 5 Cencal Meetings prior to scholarships committee choosing recipients and your participant attend either SLC or TRiO Day. 

3)  Our first meeting will be on Friday, August 26th, 2011 at California State University Fresno.  An exciting portion to this is that we will enact professional development at every Cencal Meeting, which again will hopefully help you justify just another reason to attend the meetings and get Prof. Development out of each meeting.  With this we are shooting for shorter, to the point meetings, with reports being turned in mandatory prior to save time.  This will set a great precedent to our vision of the year, especially when they see a full room full of our cencal members all happy and willing to be there, so I urge you push and join your staff at this first Cencal Meeting.  At this first 8/26 meeting ironically we will provide an interactive workshop on hosting quick/to the point/effective meetings at your own work place.  You should receive an email by tomorrow Friday, August 12th, with more details from our president elect regarding parking and lunch accommodations.  I am also looking at finding a means of Skype or Conference Calls so everyone who really really can't make it still attempt to join in & participate through this.

4) Our Professional Development Seminar will be taking place in the first or second week of October.  I'm hoping that by mid week next week, all of CenCal will be getting the invite and registration for this great event.  I know Cesar is close to finalizing the location, and presentations so I can attest that it will be a great conference, which again we'd like to see your full participation and input from.  Also if you need to pay your westop membership for 2011/2012, refer to your email from Niki Dixon, memberships, sent on August 10th, 2011 at 1:13 pm to get the member rates.

5) I do want to assist directors in all of our programs in setting up conference calls or discussions in whatever means you may need through our Chapter.  I know with grants coming to an end, or programs still in limbo it is always helpful to open the dialoge amongst yourselves to ease these issues.  With EOC's, ETS's and even UB's finishing their grant cycles, this can be crucial and really help you, and the least I can do is assist with setting up conference calls with you if you want to discuss something amongst other directors.

6) Board Members & Chairpersons will now be given expectations on how to host respective event or fulfill chair duties.  As I mentioned during our 2 day dialouge with board members, we sat down and discussed each chairperson, and have came up with a rubric on what we expect from them, timeline, allocation of money, incentives, and who to go to for what.  This was a very exciting piece to our training as I think with this the chapter events and positions are given direction, but at the same time given to them to carry through.  This is just another great reason to become involved this year for your staff and selves. 

7)  Below my tag line I will attach the dates for our CenCal Meetings and dates for CenCal events so you can share with your staff or admin. to plan early your participation with our Chapter.  During our 2 day board planning and training we realized that as directors you can be great assets in securing you'll come to the meetings, events, and we hope in turn we can provide what you need from our events.  Notice the upcoming meeting in a few weeks here in Fresno, PDS in October, and Student Leadership Conference in November, and so forth to plan accordingly.  Also, if you are willing to host a meeting and see yourselves as perhaps an institution who might have a hard time getting to other campuses and would consider hosting, please please let me know.

8) I will be at our Board Training next week in Sacramento, Ca for Westop.  If you have any concerns or talking points you would like to discuss at the meeting, please call or shoot me an email as again I hope to serve you to the best capacity in our our Chapter and Association.   We the board wish everyone of you the best in this upcoming academic year, and are looking forward to all of our grants to renew, new & older programs to participate, lots of great professional development and networking, and getting everyone back to contributing to our great CenCal Chapter.

I am wanting to forward this to the cencal listserv later next week, so they know I reached out to you as directors firsthand for support and you can have dialogue with them on everyone's participation within the association.

thank you, president 2011/2012,