Happy Spring to all!!
This is my first message as the president of the Alumni Association and I am honored to hold this office. It is a daunting task to follow in Dennis Sherrod's footsteps! We are ever so grateful for his leadership these past two years.
We recently held elections and are pleased to announce that Ann Cary is the President-elect and Nancy Ridenour is the Secretary. The three Director at large positions are Mary Kay VanDriel, Debra Honey, and Fran Roberts. Congratulations to all!!
More congratulations and best wishes go out to Kristen Gwaltney who accepted another position at the Center for Creative Leadership. Kristen has been our program manager and "go to" person at CCL and we will miss her dearly! We wish her every success in her new position. Stacey Ezell will transition to the role on April 22. We warmly welcome Stacey!
This has been a busy year for the Alumni Association—we held a face-to-face meeting in Greensboro that focused on leadership challenges. We have a second leadership challenge meeting that is rescheduled for June 5 -7, 2013 in Chicago. We held a virtual annual meeting that was well attended by our membership. In March, we hosted peer coaching leadership consultation calls. Evaluations are being collected and we will report the results next month. To keep us all informed about our activities, we are working with Andi to develop a calendar of events that will be posted on our website. Two CCL books were sent to RWJ ENF Alumni Association 2012 and 2013 dues paying members as a thank you for your membership.
The RWJ ENF Alumni Association is writing an article for the newsletter and other RWJ publications about the involvement of alumni and current fellows in the Future of Nursing Campaign for Action: Action Coalitions. The "Making an Impact, Executive Nurse Leaders in Action" will feature the work of our alumni and current fellows in leading change around the recommendations in the report on The Future of Nursing. If you are involved in a state action coalition, please send a brief description of the work that you are doing in your state. Please include your name, your role in the action coalition, any other RWJ fellows involved in the coalition, and a brief description of your progress. Please send this information to Andi Williams (
). Thank you!
In follow up, several years ago, the RWJ ENF Alumni Association focused on the issue of obesity and several Fellows developed meaningful projects. We ask that the Fellows who did have such projects send an update to Andi Williams (
) to let us know the project outcomes and if your project continues to be ongoing. Thank you!!
Our National Advisory Committee reports that 109 applications were received. Forty two semi-finalists for the 2013 cohort will be interviewed in May. The NAC also reported that Walter Broadnax resigned from the NAC and Cindy Persilly was asked to fill in for him during the upcoming interviews.
As I begin my term as president, I will be sending out an inquiry to all Alumni to determine what you think we should focus on during the next two years. I hope that you all will participate when you receive this email. This is YOUR organization and your voice is very important!
To this end, I have asked Ann Cary to help me spearhead a communications strategy for the RWJ ENF. Additionally, Vicki Niederhauser has agreed to assist in a developing a membership initiative. I am thankful to both for their assistance in these endeavors. If Alumni members are interested in working on the communications strategy or membership initiative, please send an email with your contact information to Andi Williams (
).
Also, if Alums are interested in working on any of our committees (Finance, Program, Nominating, Bylaws), please notify Andi and she will forward it to the Program Chairs. We hope that many of you will volunteer to serve on our standing committees, and a listing of our Committees follows this note. The time commitment is minimal and the rewards are significant!
We are an active and viable organization! We currently have 104 dues paying members, but there are 220 RWJ ENFs! (Oh my! How we have grown!) We invite you to contact members of your cohort to encourage them to become members. We are having fun!! Won't you join us? Please contact Andi Williams to renew or become a member of the RWJ Executive Nurse Fellows Alumni Association.
Kind regards to all,
Kate Driscoll Malliarakis