Leadership
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Vice Presidency, ALISS [Spring 2002 - Winter 2003]
| The Association of Library & Information Science Students acts as the student government for the MLIS programs in the UW Information School. In Winter quarter 2002, I was elected to be the Vice President of this organization. Throughout the following year, I helped represent and guide the student body of the iSchool by coordinating events, organizing and advising committees, and attending meetings. The following timeline chronicles the most significant milestones during my time in office: Timeline
ProcessSpring fling
My first major leadership experience as ALISS Vice President was organizing and coordinating Spring Fling, the iSchool's annual year-end celebration. The event is open to the entire school (over 300 people in total) and traditionally features food, games, music, and, of course, beer. Planning for Spring Fling requires the coordinated effort of a sizable committee of students and staff. The venue must be reserved. If the event takes place outside, tents, chairs, and tables are rented. A sound system and a DJ must be found. Food, catered and otherwise, must be planned for. For the beer, we needed an alcohol permit, plus permission from several entities on campus. On the advice of my predecessor, I immediately formed a Spring Fling committee within 2 weeks of taking office. I separated the volunteers into two teams: logistics and entertainment. We set a budget, decided on a date, location, and time, and then set about procuring the proper authorizations, reservations, menus, and so on. Fortunately, I had several willing and responsible committee members to collect the necessary information and paperwork. For all my delegation, however, I had to spend many hours wandering the bureaucratic maze of UW's facilities, catering, and student activities policies. On the day of the event, I faced a nightmare of last-minute changes of plan due to the simple fact that it rained -- torrentially -- negating our plans to hold Spring Fling outdoors. The equipment we rented -- the tent, tables, chairs, and garbage cans -- went unused. We moved inside, quickly finagling a deal with a building manager through an iSchool staff member. The event itself went over well, though not without unforeseen difficulties. The DJ's music was too cacophonous and didn't have a microphone; the caterer didn't bring enough food; we ran out of beer... But, in the end, people left satisfied that another Spring Fling had gone successfully. The SilverfishAs ALISS VP, I was also responsible for overseeing the publication of the iSchool's student newsletter, The Silverfish. In the past, this newsletter had been published once a term, usually including two or three articles in each issue. It went mostly ignored and unread in the past due to its anemic publication schedule, and, as such, suffered from a lack of contributions. When I took office, I hoped to greatly increase the relevance of The Silverfish by raising the frequency of issues to once a month and recruiting several new staff members. I drafted a plan for reorganizing The Silverfish that included a set of policies, procedures, and schedules. I worked with the other ALISS officers to refine the plan and then set out implementing it. I recruited fellow student Michael Harkovitch, who had a background in journalism, to be the new Senior Editor of The Silverfish. During the Summer, I attended the new student orientations for the Evening, Distance, and Day MLIS programs to talk about ALISS and recruit staff members for the new positions I identified in the reorganization plan. By the second week of Autumn quarter 2002, Michael and I had collected a group of 7 students from all three MLIS programs to fill the new staff positions. Using the publication schedule and list of article ideas I drafted as a guide, we began publishing issues of The Silverfish on a monthly basis. It was a hit. As the school year progressed, we generated articles and solicited contributions from students that were timely, often controversial, and, most importantly, read regularly. Amendments to the ALISS BylawsIn Winter 2003, I worked with the other ALISS officers to coordinate the elections of the new ALISS officers, since our term in office was coming to an end. We followed the guidelines in the ALISS Bylaws, but, despite our heroic efforts to recruit nominees, we were unable to generate enough interest in the elections to fill all the officer positions. The Bylaws were silent on what to do in this case, and we debated amongst ourselves whether to:
I argued for the former, and after a stalemate and much discussion, we decided on a compromise: postpone the elections long enough to find a candidate for the open positions, but close nominations on the other positions. To save future officers from having to deal with these problems, I proposed two amendments to the ALISS Bylaws clarifying elections policies and rules of order. These amendments had to be ratified by the MLIS students, so I took charge of setting up the vote. The amendments passed almost unanimously, and I incorporated the new policies into the Bylaws as my last act in office. ReflectionThrough my experiences as ALISS Vice President, I've learned many important lessons in delegating, time management, teamwork, budgeting, and a host of other leadership issues. In the case of the Spring Fling, I learned those lessons the hard way. However, I believe I learned from those lessons and applied that learning in later situations. If I could, I would certainly do things differently, but I value my hard-won skills in management, delegation, and politics. What's NextI am currently mentoring my successor, S.J. Alexander, to pass some of this knowledge to her. Artifacts |
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