EDITOR’S CORNER
Looking Forward to Working Together
Adam W. Heft, CPG-10265
It seems like only yesterday when I wrote my first Editors Corner article, and yet here we are over three months later and putting the next edition of TPG together. I must say that I was very gratified by the response to the email blast I had Headquarters send out requesting articles for upcom- ing editions. Please keep them coming. For those of you who submitted an opinion piece, technical article, or other material, thank you! If you have not, please consider putting your stamp on the publication by doing so.
This edition includes the information on the upcoming Annual Meeting. There are several interesting field trips and mini-workshops. With luck, by the time October rolls around, the Covid-19 pandemic will be under control, and having an in-person meeting again will be feasible. This may require
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One of the primary focusses of this year is membership, and particu- larly, how we can retain members or encourage others to join AIPG.
that all participants be vaccinated prior to the meeting, so if you have the opportunity to get yours, and plan to attend the meeting, please consider doing so.
The slate of officer candidates is also included in this edi- tion, and once again, it looks to be a tough choice between candidates. PLEASE PLAN TO VOTE if you are eligible to do so. AIPG is your organization, and it is critical that you make your voice heard by voting. Make sure to read the bio and statement for each of the candidates, and choose the individual that you feel will be best for AIPG. Voting is one means by which you become an involved participant in AIPG, which is important to keep the organization from stagnating and becoming irrelevant. To borrow from something that past Editor John Berry said last year, “…without the active participation of our members, our Board will quickly become a club of ‘insiders’, a criticism that has recently been made of some of our sister organizations.” We can’t afford to let this happen.
This edition includes articles on a wide range of topics, including a peer-reviewed hydrogeology article, an article on Malibu, California geology, and several short pieces on geology during the pandemic. The President’s Message and three other articles touch on membership and the status of the geosciences. I hope that they are of interest and spark some discussion.
www.aipg.org
One of the primary focusses of this year is membership, and particularly, how we can retain members or encourage others to join AIPG. I will suggest that this starts “at home” in your Section of AIPG. As some of you may know, every year on February 15th, we have many of our members suspended for non-payment of their annual dues; some of these cases are because the member got busy and neglected to get it done. Also, many students are suspended each year because the anticipated graduation date that they put on their student member application has come and gone. Some of these students took longer to graduate than originally anticipated. Others have gone on to graduate school. In both cases, they would be eligible to continue as student mem- bers, except that their graduation date has not been updated. In all cases, no one is following up with these individuals to find out why they were suspended.
I therefore encourage the Executive Committee of each of our Sections to appoint a committee or designate a volunteer to fol- low up with these individuals. For those inactive Sections that don’t have a functioning Executive Committee, I suggest that an active member could step up and volunteer. I have been doing this on behalf of the Michigan Section for at least five years, and my efforts have resulted in many of our student members updating their graduation date or upgrading to early career professional status. Many of our Section’s professional mem- bers and CPGs have also avoided being suspended. Remember, members paying their dues after February 15th also pay a late fee, and by reaching out to these individuals before that time may save them money.
My method to follow up with our members has been simple. Our Section maintains a list of our active members to send announcements to. I send an email to Dorothy Combs at Headquarters after the first of the year asking for a list of all our Section members that will be suspended on February 15th for non-payment of their annual dues. I then compare that list to our active list, and contact each of those individuals reminding them to pay their dues, or in the case of students, ask whether they have graduated and would like to upgrade to ECP status. I follow up again after the February 15th deadline with those members that still have not paid their dues and have been suspended.
While this method does not result in a 100 percent success rate, it does reduce the number of members that are lost each year. This is low-hanging fruit that we can’t afford to lose. All it requires is an individual or a committee that cares enough to spend a little time to take on the task of contacting these indi- viduals to follow up with them. I’ll go a step further here: any of you reading this that would like to take this step, but would like an assist getting their Section moving in the right direction, please contact me at
adam.heft@wsp.com. I will be happy to provide you a copy of the email I send out to our members so you won’t need to draft your own. Feel free to modify it as you see fit.
Apr.May.Jun 2021 • TPG 7
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