The membership committee had two active and successful meetings at the AMTA National Conference in Louisville, KY. As a result of these meetings, the committee has re-focused its energy towards achieving its goals of insuring the growth of AMTA, promoting the value of AMTA’s membership categories and to evaluating the needs of AMTA members.

To achieve these goals, we will be acting in several areas. First of all we will be encouraging recent members to re-join AMTA through the winter via email reminders. Secondly, we will be putting procedures and structures in place that will improve our contact with students who are graduating and completing their internships. This will be achieved through collaboration with our regional educators and clinical training directors. We will also be collaborating inter-regionally within this committee in order to “track” new professionals who frequently move from one region to another for professional and personal reasons. We hope that this will help new professionals better be able to find mentorship, make professional contacts, become involved in their region, and take advantages of special new professional benefits. Thirdly, we will be creating a report that compares AMTA’s various benefits, membership levels, dues, fees, and other statistics with those of other comparative organizations in related fields. Finally, we hope to create a survey to determine current and former members’ views about the perceived benefits and needs from AMTA membership.

As always, if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to send in your 2008 AMTA Membership! Also, please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, ideas or concerns that you may have.