July 2001
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It has been an honour serving as President of the Canadian Society of Animal Science this past year. I'd like to sincerely thank the members of the 2000/01 CSAS executive for their cooperation, dedication and hard work over the past year. A special thank-you to outgoing executive members John McKinnon, Priya Mir, Ed Charmley and a warm welcome to Erasmus Okine, Julie Small and Leslie Maclaren who will be joining the 2001/02 executive. The commitment of our executive members is outstanding and contributes greatly to our success!
As I leave the position as president, I welcome this opportunity to update you on the issues your executive has been dealing with this past year. One of our top priorities has been to sustain the long term financial viability of the Society. As you may already know, the Society has been in a deficit situation for the past couple of years and this is eating away our equity. In an attempt to decrease expenses, we phased out the newsletter this past year.
Information is now relayed to the members via our web site (www.csas.net) and direct email. We are also in the process of re-evaluating our AIC service contract. Decreased expenditures, combined with a small increase in dues, will ensure the long-term financial viability of the Society.
I would like to extend a special thank you to Tim McAllister who has done a really nice job on our web site. I know that Tim has put in many hours to develop the site which continues to evolve. He efforts are much appreciated. I would also like to thank Ed Charmley for his outstanding efforts as this year's Honours and Awards Chair, and Shannon Scott for her dedication and commitment to membership recruitment.
I am also very pleased that the Canadian Journal of Animal Science editor Mick Price is now an official member of the CSAS executive. Mick's presence on the executive, together with other initiatives (such as CSAS pages within the Journal) will ensure the CJAS is more closely tied to the Society.
As I leave the position of president of the Canadian Society of Animal Science, I am confident that we are on the right path to becoming a truly world-class scientific society. We look forward to 2002 where we will host the American Societies of Animal and Dairy Science in Quebec City.
The CSAS executive has been giving a lot of thought to future meetings, and has decided not to participate in the AIC 2003 meeting which is scheduled for New Brunswick. We are currently looking at the possibility of holding CSAS 2003 in Saskatoon. Organization of annual meetings is a tremendous commitment and with the shrinking animal science community this task repeatedly falls on the same people. From the members' standpoint, time and financial constraints dictate that many of us have to choose between the CSAS annual meeting and other scientific meetings.
The Society needs to give some thought to our meeting format so we continue to attract leading Canadian animal scientists. As president of the CSAS, I have been involved in discussions with representatives of the other AIC scientific societies, and it appears that most of the societies are also facing the same issues. We are working with the other science societies to determine whether there is interest in holding a joint meeting (within or apart from the AIC conference framework), the type of meeting our members would want to participate in, and the optimal venue and format for a joint meeting. We should have more details for you in the near future.
Our challenge as a society, is to build upon our strengths to continue to address the needs of our members and to attract new members. I am happy and confident to turn over the leadership of CSAS to our new president Tim McAllister. Tim is truly committed to the Society and has consistently demonstrated that he has the experience and vision to be a true leader.
Finally, I will close by saying it has been an honour and a privilege to be president of CSAS.
Karen Beauchemin
CSAS President