NYSAFCS President’s Message May, 2010

Hello everyone,

As my presidency of NYSAFCS, 2009-2010 draws to a close it is time to reflect. It has been a very challenging and at the same time an exciting and rewarding year for us.

Overwhelmingly the Centennial Celebration Conference, “Celebrating the Past, Sustaining the Future” was the years highlight. The Centennial Celebration portrayed the Lake Placid Conferences on Home Economics at the Lake Placid Club 1899-1909 sponsored by Annie Godfrey Dewey, Melvil Dewey and Ellen Swallow Richards. Kudos to Shirley Ware as the conference chair.

Another highlight of the year was having our spring board meeting at SUC Oneonta with Rosemarie Avanzato as our host. A tour of the renovated Human Ecology building puts Oneonta’s FCS Departments in the forefront. Top notch facilities including the textile lab, fashion design computer lab, commercial kitchen, new foods labs, climate controlled historic costume collection, and child care center will help perpetuate and sustain Family and Consumer Sciences into the future.

We also had a unique opportunity to interact with students in various Human Ecology and FCS curricula. We promoted the benefits of membership in AAFCS/NYFCS that can enhance academic and career success. Our interactions provided time for students (pre-professionals and new professionals) to share career paths, experiences, and enjoy networking over lunch.

Another area we are proud to move forward with is our new “Special Project Grants”. These grants are designed to enable and encourage the continuation and development of further collaborative educational and environmental efforts within FCS. A description of the guidelines is included in this newsletter.

Among additional efforts is the construction of our new website. We also oversaw the

the re-organization of LID and securing the name change to NYSFCS with documentation from the NYSDOS. Many thanks go out to Carol Hanley and Joan Firmery for their diligence to get this done. We are updating our strategic plan in accordance with new guidelines from AAFCS. Our plans for the 2012 Unified Conference are well underway.

We are proud to have a contingent attending the AAFCS Conference this June in Cleveland including Carleen Smith, Linda Traynor, Pat Raynor, Betty Weber Worden, Marybeth Tyndall and Judy Lynd. We will also be participating in the NE Regional Conference in State College, PA, March 10-12, 2011.

We look forward to having passed the gavel to Carleen Smith as NYSAFCS President for 2010-2011. Carleen brings an abundance of experience, passion and dedication to the profession and we all welcome her.