First of all, thank you to those who responded to my last conversations regarding discounts and free stuff. Lakshmi is putting everything together, and we should have some information out to everyone shortly. If you come across anything new, please feel free to email her at apsacomm@sfu.ca.
I normally like to keep these posts short, but this one is a bit longer, so grab a coffee and a snack, and read on.
For those of you who don’t know, my “regular job” is Director of Parking & Sustainable Mobility Services (yes… the title really is that long). My office is a small one with only two other APSA members. So as I’ve been getting out and about to meet more and more APSA members, one of the questions I get is, “What exactly does the President do?”
Well… I spend a lot of time thanking people. And I mean that in the most serious way.
We’ve mentioned before that APSA is a volunteer organization. It’s important to me that I (and we) thank and acknowledge the volunteer hours put in by APSA members on advocacy, pensions, and all our other committees. It’s also important that we acknowledge the individual APSA members that come forward about challenges in their workplace(s) and ideas to make things better.
You see… APSA has over 1,000 members spread over multiple departments and different geographic worksites. The only way I, the Board members, and the APSA staff know what is going on is if you tell us. Furthermore, we’re not experts in the work environment or type of work you do as an individual APSA member. So we want to hear both what challenges you are seeing or facing as well as what opportunities may exist to address those challenges.
I’ve been the President for just over a year, and in that time I’ve become more and more aware of how issues that used to be siloed in one area have now spread like a virus to other areas of campus. In addition, APSA members are just being asked to do more with less, and many have reached a breaking point.
Those issues and challenges (which I’ll talk about more specifically in a later post) require more than just a band-aid fix, they require strategic planning and fundamental change.
To make that change happen, as the President I am frequently:
- Meeting and planning with the various APSA committees.
- Working with the Board to develop strategies for moving forward.
- Meeting with the AVP of HR and the VP of Finance & Administration to help them understand the challenges faced by APSA (and APSA’s desired resolutions).
- Working with APSA staff (Andrew, Angela, and Lakshmi) to achieve our organizational goals and communicate with APSA members.
And every once in a while, if I’m in a really good mood, I cancel a parking ticket.