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Despite existing for close to 30 years, NCSPP is in some ways similar to a flowering annual, with a life cycle that lasts only one year. These plants grow from seed, bloom, produce seeds, and die in one growing season. Then they need to be replanted each year. This is much like the leadership cycle of NCSPP. Each year the composition of the Board changes, with Committee Chairs in their second, third, fourth, or fifth years collaborating with other Chairs who are entirely new to their roles and the Board. This means the working group begins each January anew. We then spend a few months orienting and getting to know one another. During these early months, there is also a steep learning curve due to the workload due in March and April. We are only relaxed and ready to work creatively by May or June. Summer is a slower time and August is quiet. September brings academic hustle as everything ramps up again. Before long, it is time for the holiday party in December and a new Board in January. This cycle makes deep organizational reflection, innovation, and lasting initiatives challenging. And yet, the 2017 Board, Committee Chairs, and all committee members have done just that.
We continued organizational reflection about supporting and sustaining a healthy NCSPP community that is (among other things) inclusive, accessible, and diverse. This occurred in small process groups, Board conversations, engagement with members, and a focused summer retreat. Experiences and perspectives surfaced that otherwise may have been left split off, unintegrated, or experienced in solitude. This valuable information is essential to improving the NCSPP process and guiding action. The Board will report on this and related initiatives in early 2018.
The Community Events Committee responded to an organizational request and developed a relevant, enlivened angle on the unconscious and the political with their late-summer art pop-up, “The Agitator & His Propaganda Machine: A Psychoanalytic Perspectiv