Northeast Travel Award Recipient
I am excited to finally have a minute to sit down and write an article about my SRA life from the last year. In May 2018, my year as President of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Society of Research Administrators International began. A month early, right in the last days of trying to put together a Chapter meeting. In the end, a decision was made to cancel the meeting and move forward with planning a meeting for May 2019. The first thing to complete was putting together the budget and submitting it to headquarters. One of the first things learned is that it is very hard to put together your budget when you do not have a location identified, fortunately for us we had a commitment already in place for our 2019 meeting. Next, you need to decide on the type of program you want. Once the budget was submitted it is time to start putting together your planning committee. I decided that we would have three working groups (marketing, program, food) each of which was led by an executive board member. We had monthly calls in the beginning and in the last several months we did weekly calls. The program came together and the conference was well attended. We were fortunate to have Evan Roberts, Executive Director and Cynthia Moran, President of the Northeast Section (at the time) join us for part of the day. We had a raffle from items donated by various offices at our host institution (University of Pennsylvania) and some outside groups. The Melonie X from the University of Pennsylvania’s, School of Engineering and Science Grants Office was the lucky winner of the large basket, and a few individual items were raffled off as well. At the close of the meeting, the President’s Liberty Bell (president’s symbol) was passed over to Cheryl Frost.
The exciting news is in the spring of this year, I received the Travel Scholarship Award from the Northeast Section. This covered my registration costs and made it possible for me to attend the Northeast/Midwest Section meeting in Chicago. Where I had an opportunity to network with several other SRA members, attend daily sessions, and finally close out the conference by presenting a session of my own. It was a very exciting time for me, in addition to winning the scholarship this year, I was elected to serve as the new Treasurer of the Northeast section. Thank you to everyone who voted.
We are now well into the planning of the Northeast/Midwest Section meeting to be held in Philadelphia this April. Three certificates will be offered at this session, along with many exciting topics from various speakers. We are currently putting together a list of local restaurants and sites to see in the city. If anyone is into the track the famous Penn Relays will be held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (April 23-25). I look forward to seeing everyone at the Section meeting.
Authored by Debra Sokalczuk, CRA, Grants Manager
Netter Center for Community Partnerships