January Message from the President

CAS President, Dr. Ralph Johnson, shares a message for the new year alongside recent organizational news.

Dear Colleagues:
 
On behalf of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, it is my pleasure to wish you a happy new Year! First, I want to thank all the members of the CAS Council for their unwavering commitment and dedication to CAS and to higher education. They spend hours and hours of their time each month sustaining the critical mission of the organization, and that is to create, revise and promulgate standards of good practice for student affairs and other higher education professionals. As always, we move forward with an ambitious agenda. At our November 2022 Council meeting, we made a significant commitment to develop a new website and we reached a milestone in that we approved our 50th set of standards with the adoption of Esports Programs! You will hear more about these outcomes in the coming months.

As we launch this new year, we also usher in a new method of delivery for the traditional CAS "Blue Book" of standards. We are currently working on the 11th rendition of the standards that will be available in an electronic format exclusively. We will no longer print a book. As we shared this concept with many CAS users last fall, it was met with excitement and overwhelming support. Given that response, the CAS Governing Board and the Council moved forward with plans to make this switch. The new rendition of the standards will be available this spring as we enter the major conference season.  I will share more about this in the next two newsletters. 

I'd like to thank Dr. Jen Wells and Noah Henry Darwish for their tireless work with our varied CAS publications and resources over the last several years. This can be detailed, and laborious work and they did it with great conviction and care. They were formally recognized with a Presidential Citation for their significant contributions during the November 2022 Council meeting. As transition seems to be the theme of this missive, I also welcome the new editorial team to the CAS leadership group. Thanks to Dr. Lena Crain for accepting our invitation to become the new CAS Editor and thanks to
Dr. Kellie Dixon for accepting the role of Assistant Editor. Their terms officially began on September 1, 2022.

I am equally pleased to announce that Dr. Gayle Spencer is the CAS President-Elect! Gayle is one of the representatives for the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) and has been a stellar member of the CAS leadership for many years. I look forward to facilitating her transition in the President-Elect role and helping her transition seamlessly into the Presidency this coming September!

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to work with such committed and outstanding professionals. Please join me in applauding the leadership and service of these colleagues. CAS is so fortunate to have this type of consistency in the leadership. Finally, I thank each of you for your support of and commitment to CAS as we work collaboratively on behalf of our colleagues across the great span of higher education and the hundreds of thousands of students who benefit from our work. 

Sincerely,

Ralph Johnson, Ph.D.
President
Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education