President's Report

As we embark on another exciting year, I want to begin by thinking about the idea of “building community.” NCSPP continues to thrive as a professional home for many of us. At our recent board retreat, I was struck by our board members' capacity to engage and think about our vision and role as an organization. Their ability to grapple with differing viewpoints and together create something useful and powerful made me think, “If these are the folks who are leading us in the effort to build community, we are in very good hands!”

Our outreach and programming efforts are directed toward helping participants articulate their ideas and join their colleagues in a creative endeavor. Celebrating the diversity in our thinking and fostering a sense of community for all our members remains an important goal. After all, doesn't an analytic stance require us to be open to many possibilities and be cautious about not collapsing into linearity?

Over the past few months the NCSPP virtual office has buzzed with activity, with our wonderful administrator Michele McGuinness at the helm. We are on the verge of launching our new website, certainly a momentous task. I'd like to thank our past presidents Greg Clinton — who stayed on the project to ensure its completion — and Diane Swirsky, who has taken on the role of Chief Technology Officer! Cate Corcoran and Matthew Morrissey played a key role in planning and guiding us through the process. We hope the new site will serve as a lively cyber community for our members.

NCSPP's biggest strength is our hard-working crew. Very special thanks to all our committee members and chairs for their tireless efforts to offer our membership the highest quality courses, events, and editorial content. Our vision of building community begins at home. We hope to provide more opportunities for committee members to interact with one another and increase intercommittee collaboration.

We welcome several new board members this year. Terrance McLarnan joins us as our