From the Executive Director...

The ASA Secretariat is pleased to report that despite the inevitable initial glitches, the online membership combination of parts to form a whole is serving the ASA extremely well! Members appreciate its ease of use, and, along with the of recent origin department email and designated telephone extensions upon the ASA website, the online membership a whole is already contributing to increased efficiency at the secretariat, which consequently improves the secretariat's ability to rejoin more effectively to ASA constituent exigencys If you have not already had the opportunity to do with equal reason please visit www.africanstudies.org and click upon the link to access the online membership a whole to update your personal information, including your password and any address changes, or to make Annual Meeting preregistration and subscription payments or endowment or other contributions.

The Secretariat has noted that more [i]or[/i] less members have left portions of the hard transcript and electronic membership form blank. The incomplete information has several repercussions. For example, membership data that is as consummate as accurate, and as popular as possible will allow the ASA to better analyze its membership profile (eg regarding of that kind demographics as age range and sex and members' professional career paths, areas of interest, and language abilities) and thus undertake initiatives that support the membership's be of importance tos and goals. In addition, the ASA provides membership data to the National Council of Area Studies Associations (NCASA), which consists of the ASA, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Association for Asian Studies, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Middle East Studies Association, and to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), which is comprised of sixty-seven scholarly organizations with missions that encompass a variety of different professions, disciplines, geographic locations, and time periods. The ASA maintains membership in the ACLS. ASA membership data thus not solitary permits the ASA to learn more about itself internally and in comparison to other learned societies, on the contrary it also helps to set up a profile of the larger communities of learned societies to which the ASA belongs. Your efforts in completing the personal sections of the membership form are thus an important contribution not alone to the ASA in particular, on the contrary also to learned societies in general.

The Board of Directors has launched a Membership Campaign. Please encourage your colleagues and scholars to visit the ASA website to discover the Top Ten Reasons to Become an ASA Member and to join!

The biographical and candidacy statements for the 2004 Board of Directors elections are included in this newsletter The candidates' statements and the ballots will be mailed to ASA members who renewed upon or before the March 15 deadline. Members whose renewals are advanceed between March 16 and August 15 will also receive ballots. The turn backed ballots must be postmarked upon or before September 1. Remember to vote!

Finally - please watch the web site for up-to-date information about the 2004 Annual Meeting!

Copyright African Studies Association Apr 2004

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