Welcome from Incoming President, Natasha Kolchevska, Winter, 2005
As I begin my service as President of AWSS, I stand in awe of my predecessors and in anticipation of an effective and stimulating collaboration in the next two years with the our current board members, both those continuing and the newly elected. Through her tireless efforts and intelligent and collaborative leadership, outgoing President Beth Holmgren leaves us with an organization that is focused in its mission and in good financial shape. Beth has been invaluable in recruitment and organizational efforts, as well as being the motive force behind last summer’s well-attended AWSS conference at UIUC. I would also like to extend a “big thank you” to the board members who are rotating off in 2005: Lynn Mally, Elizabeth English and our graduate student representative, Krisztina Fehervary. Without them, prizes would have remained unawarded and publicity tasks undone. I also look forward to working with the newly elected officers and board members: Vice President/President elect Margaret Beissinger, as well as Choi Chatterjee, Nicole Monnier and Olga Livshin. Fortunately, the WE-W Newsletter is in eminently capable hands with Betsy Hemenway, whom I thank for her ongoing creative flair and her reliability. Finally, with the prospect of a newly revamped AWSS website, which will facilitate recruitment and communication both within the organization and beyond, our future looks bright.
As always, the success of AWSS in carrying out its various mandates depends primarily on the willingness of the membership to participate directly in our projects and priorities. While I could not ask for a better, more creative and hard-working executive board, I am also eager to work with individual members of AWSS. Please, if you have an idea or a question; if you feel there is an issue that the organization can collectively address; or if there is a matter that needs our discussion and/or support (material or moral), please contact me. The Board and I want to know your concerns, be they scholarly, professional, or organizational. One issue that is of immediate concern to me is that we continue to actively promote and investigate women’s professional concerns through the AAASS Committee on the Status of Women. One of the first items on my agenda will be to work with AAASS to see how that group can implement some of the findings from the gender survey it conducted in the late 1990s. There is no doubt in my mind that women in our profession have made numerous gains in recent years, but more remains to be done. Issues such as unfriendly campus climate, participation on top-level academic committees (including tenure/promotion and hiring), salary equity, gender-related professional issues for graduate students and junior faculty, and administrative overload on female junior faculty continue to affect women more than men. AWSS will work to make sure that these concerns are not lost in the larger professionalization issues that AAASS undoubtedly faces in this less than friendly time for Slavic studies and academia in general.
I am also looking forward to building on the successful groundwork laid during the summer of 2004 by Beth and fellow AWSS members in organizing the first AWSS research conference at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That has led to the AWSS co-hosting with UIUC, on June 24-25, 2005, the Fisher Forum conference on the topic of “Commodity, Consumer, Entrepreneur: Women in the Marketplace (see CFP on p. ).” This is an exciting event, not only because of the subject matter, but because it is the first such collaborative effort between AWSS and a host university. The members of the organizational committee and I promise to do everything we can to ensure it is not the last!
And so, I ask not only for your support of the projects and initiatives undertaken by the Board and myself, but also for your active involvement in this organization that continues to be vital to the women in our profession. Please contact me with any thoughts–or offers of service. Aside from sending in your dues regularly, you can contribute to AWSS by offering to serve on a standing committee (Fundraising, Membership and Outreach, Mentoring, Nominating); volunteering with important ongoing projects such as the mentoring program, translation registry, or syllabi collection; suggesting a forum topic or contributing an article to WE-W; donating a successful grant proposal to past president and resident grants goddess Christine Worobec (worobec@niu.edu), and of course recruiting new members, both graduate student and faculty, from here and abroad. (Perhaps even by donating a gift membership?)
You can reach me as follows: nakol@unm, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 229 Ortega Hall, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, (o) 505 277-7363, (h) 505 265-1971. I look forward to working and talking with you about how we can build AWSS into an even more essential part of our collective professional lives. Best wishes for the coming year!
Natasha Kolchevska