Laurie Shaw, Branch member and Georgia AAUW Co-President [effective July 1], gives her impressions of the AAUW National Convention.
- Laurie Shaw
The AAUW National convention held June 16-19 in Washington, DC was an energizing experience! Comparing this convention with the national one I attended in 2005, also in Washington, DC, has me armed with considerably more information than I previously received. With the new “one member, one vote”, both electronic and paper balloting began before the convention for electing AAUW Board of Directors, proposed bylaws amendments and proposed changes to the Public Policy Program. The election results were announced at Saturday’s luncheon, with Carolyn Garfein (GA) re-elected as President and Patricia Ho (MA) elected Vice-President. Those who attended the State Convention in April will recall Patricia Ho was our Director at Large representative from the AAUW National Board. You can view other election results at the AAUW website. The major change I noted between the 2005 convention and the 2011 convention was that there were more panel discussions on major topical issues as well as more workshops and special interest group meetings. Because legal requirements for notice of business preclude amendments and voting from the floor at convention, no time is now taken up with issues that could produce much time-consuming debate over wording, amendments, etc.
There were ten of us there from Georgia but since President Carolyn Garfein and Board of Director Marcia Capriotti had some official duties to attend to, the remaining 8 of us tried to sit together as a group for meals and panel discussions. This allowed us to share ideas to take to our respective Branches and further discussion on topics such as AAUW Public Policy, Safe Schools: Bullying and Sexual Harassment, Why So Few? In STEM, and Women and Men in the 21st Century Workplace. Since there were many opportunities to attend workshops and briefings on a wide range of topics, the Georgia attendees tried to split up to gather as much information as possible. Some of the topics were Sharing successful recruitment & retention stories, Branch fundraising, Mission-based programming, College/university partners, and Social media.