HI All: Please see below and pass on the news about a reduced registration fee for our annual meeting to colleagues who are unemployed or underemployed, with annual incomes less than $25,000. This is all thanks to an initiative by the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group.
Norma ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Foote <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 11:16 AM Subject: [Specialty_groups] Please announce new conference registration rates for 2013 for underemployed/unemployed geographers To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Cc: Eric Sheppard <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" < [email protected]> Specialty Group Chairs: I wanted to let you know that, at the AAG Council meeting held just before Thanksgiving, a resolution was passed to offer a reduced registration fee for our annual meeting to colleagues who are unemployed or underemployed, with annual incomes less than $25,000. The registration fee will be the same as the student/retired rate. As requested by the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group in its most recent proposal on this topic, the new program will be designed and implemented in time for the opening of registration early next year for the 2013 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. I would appreciate your help in publicizing of this change to your membership. This is one of several initiatives the AAG has developed recently to keep meeting costs as low as possible. The Conference Volunteers program has, for example, been a tremendous success. It has over the past two years been expanded to help underemployed/unemployed geographers as well as students. More information about this program is available at http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/get_involved/conference_volunteers. Additionally, the Developing Regions membership program continues to offer a means for many geographers to participate in the AAG at very low rates, see: http://www.aag.org/cs/membership/developing_regions_membership_program/program_at_a_glance . Many other programs have also been established to broaden and diversify our annual meetings while, at the same time, keeping them as affordable as possible: http://www.aag.org/cs/about_aag/grants_and_awards/annual_conference_grants. With these programs in mind, I was somewhat disturbed to read the messages circulated this past summer by the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group suggesting that the Council had been unresponsive to related proposals made over the past two years to support unemployed and underemployed geographers. Nothing could be further from the thrust of Council discussions. That original proposal generated considerable positive support. Council voted unanimously to expand the Conference Volunteers immediately and asked the AAG staff to study the relative costs of changing the fee structure of the annual meetings (AAG Newsletter, March 2010, pp. 21-22). Our annual meeting is the single largest expense incurred by the AAG. Although it is sometimes assumed that the association generates a profit from the meeting, the conference generally breaks even. Registration fees have been kept low--and have not increased significantly during the past several years--because of our concern to keep costs low, and the AAG’s success in growing the overall attendance of the annual meeting by developing it as major national and international forum. The original proposal from the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group had called for redesigning the entire registration fee structure. Not only would this have been costly to implement, but it could potentially have compromised the financial health of the AAG at a time when the association is moving forward on important projects across the entire breadth of the discipline and during a major economic downturn. Yet the desire among Council members to provide support to unemployed/unemployed geographers has remained strong. A variety of additional plans were discussed in considerable detail last year (AAG Newsletter, March 2011, p. 25). At that time, we studied the analysis presented by AAG staff about the costs of the annual meeting. In the end, we approved unanimously a further expansion of the Conference Volunteers program and undertook a major effort to publicize some of the existing programs the AAG provides to help geographers attend the annual meetings. At its fall 2011 meeting, Council approved the proposal for a separate, lower registration fee for unemployed and underemployed geographers. This resolution passed, again, unanimously. I have served six years on the AAG Council, the past three as an officer. I can think of few organizations as open and attentive to member concerns as the Council. Each Council meeting begins with a discussion of the concerns put forward by our regional and national councilors. The annual meeting, as well was registration and membership fees are a topic of debate at almost every meeting. It is important that we act together as a discipline to address our common concerns. The work of Council speaks, I think, to how we can--and should--respond to the current economic crisis. Ken Foote, AAG Past President [email protected] =========================== Department of Geography University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 80309-0260 _______________________________________________ Specialty_groups mailing list [email protected] http://lists.aag.org/mailman/listinfo/specialty_groups -- Norma Rantisi, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Geography, Planning & Environment Concordia University 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8 Tel.: 514-848-2424, ext. 2018 Fax: 514-848-2032 E-mail: [email protected] OR [email protected] Webpage: http://gpe.concordia.ca/faculty-and-staff/nrantisi/
