It's Membership Renewal Time...a letter from the president

Like many of you, I spend a good portion of my professional life explaining what it is I do for a living. ''Arts administration educator'' isn't in the common lexicon of most of my academic peers, civic leaders, or immediate family (my mother almost gets it, but not quite). Even the professional practitioners to whom we provide exceptional leaders and innovative managers don't always connect the dots between their daily work and the concepts of academic research, curriculum, pedagogy, and service learning.

Which is why it's always such a revelation to connect with a AAAE colleague — by phone, by e-mail, or most wonderfully in person at our annual conference. Suddenly, I'm talking to someone who not only understands what I do, but shares my broad and specific challenges around improving what I do. Almost immediately, we can have powerful and specific discussions about how to teach, how to learn, how to connect theory and practice, and how to coax and cajole that skeptical provost or dean into a passionate ally.

That, to me, is the core value of my membership in the Association of Arts Administration Educators. It's a plug-and-play network of extraordinary peers. It's a "phone a friend" lifeline for my vexing and immediate concerns. It's an annual retreat where I can recharge my batteries and reframe my thinking. With the help of our extraordinary board, our many active members, and our focused and fabulous professional Administrative Director Barb Harkins, we've been working to make those core benefits ever more effective, connective, and responsive.

At our upcoming annual conference in Philadelphia, April 2-4, 2009, we'll be sharing more details about how that evolution is progressing. We'll be showing the ever-expanding and interactive AAAE web site that helps prospective students find your programs, and helps you find each other. We'll be exploring the opportunities for AAAE to become more international, more active between conferences, and more intertwined with related peers and partners throughout the arts and culture industries.

But mostly in Philadelphia, we'll be reveling in the unique value we find when we connect. No need to explain what we do; but rather an immediate opportunity to celebrate and advance how we do it. I hope as you renew your membership, you also take a moment to reflect on how extraordinary that conversational shortcut can be.

Sincerely,
 
Andrew Taylor
President

p.s. Thanks to our new secure transaction system, you can now renew your full, associate, affiliate (individual), or student membership on-line.