Chair

November/December 2009

Dear Midwestern ITE Members:

Greetings and salutations! Less than two months remain in my tenure as District President, and here is the final installment of my District President’s Message, which I hope, has kept you a bit more updated on the current and recent happenings in the Midwestern District. As I compose this installment, I have just returned from the Board’s end of year meeting, which was held in Minneapolis at the site of our 2010 Annual meeting to be hosted by the North Central Section.

Over the day and a half of our meeting, your officers and section representatives for the present year and next met to develop new objectives and programs to put into action our District’s strategic plan in 2010. We had a very full agenda, and as usual did not quite accomplish everything that we had outlined. While a bit disappointing, in part this can be expected as we continue to grow and mature under the elected leadership format that we, as a District, commenced in 2005. Nevertheless, we accomplished a lot and made some significant decisions. It was time well spent, and for those who were not able to attend, you missed a very fine meeting, which included excellent hospitality by the North Central Section.

I must share with you that Mrs. Katz killed Charlie with a twinkle in her eye. This verdict was reached during the NCITE Annual Meeting held Friday evening. One of the features of the evening was a mystery dinner theater performance by the Mystery Café Comedy Dinner Theater. It was a grand evening that also featured the annual awards presentations of the North Central Section, and the installation of the 2010 officers for both the Section and the Midwestern District. Special credits go to Randy Newton and his board for their outstanding work. I can truly see why NCITE was selected as the Section Activities Award winner for 2008 at our recent annual meeting. Congratulations and job well done!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, 2010 will be a year of continued growth for the District. The Board decided to continue to focus our efforts in four predominate areas – Student Initiatives, Communications, and Recognizing Excellence in our Profession, and the District Annual Meeting. We are anticipating continuing our student initiatives with such activities as the Student Poster sessions and Collegiate Traffic Bowl, both held at the Annual Meeting, look to expand our student activities committee, and to initiate some new student programs as well. We hope to enhance our web site and continued to strive to keep it current and informative. We are also planning to host a teleconference/webinar for elected section level leadership in the entire district in the early spring. The objective of this event is to develop a community to share and discuss ideas between sections. This will be followed up at the Annual Meeting in June with a special elected leadership reception where all can meet face-to-face and continue to share their program successes and not so successes with each other.

In our continuing efforts to recognize the excellence in our profession throughout the Midwestern District, we are looking forward to awarding our first Transportation Achievement Award In 2010, and also plan to unveil another district award for presentation in 2011. Finally, we plan to examine our Annual Meeting format and approach to access different ways to enhance our delivery of beneficial technical and professional content at this meeting. Throughout each of these focus areas; we plan to also introduce leadership development opportunities.

Now it is time for the customary thanks and salutes for jobs well done. Snappy salutes go to Jeff Young and Steve Manhart as they leave the Board. They both did an outstanding job and we look forward to their continued contributions. Thank you to John Crawford, Doug Ripley, Mark Rinnan, Todd Szymkowski and Tom Campbell for their hard work. A tip of the hat to David Jolicoeur, Shawn Leight, Randy Newton, and Matt Letourneau for their contributions over the year as Section Representatives and Section Presidents. I also wish to express a special thanks to my wife and family for tolerating yet another round of officer positions for me in ITE.

We had a grand year, accomplishing much, but there is so much more to do! I hope to see you in Minneapolis in June. Best wishes to you and yours for a happy New Year and have safe and joyous holiday season.

To close, I would like to leave you with yet another thought from Yogi Berra, "It's like déjà vu all over again."

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me or any of the other officers. Just see the officer page for our contact details. Be good and TTFN.

Best regards,