It has been about a month since our annual meeting of the membership of ACAO and it is an exciting time in the growth of our organization. Below are just a few highlights of activities we are undertaking in the coming months. Past President Laura Niesen de Abruna continues to serve as principal investigator on our Digital Fellows Project (http://www.acao.org/digital-fellows-program) with the Gates Foundation. She and Casey Green are working non-stop to identify 30 CAO’s as fellows who will participate in a yearlong effort to provide senior campus leaders the information resources and support needed to help their faculty understand and adopt high quality digital courseware with the result of creating significant gains in undergraduate persistence and graduation. Anyone interested should contact Casey at [email protected].

The Board in March approved the creation of an Advisory Committee consisting of past CAO’s who can assist us in a range of organization building efforts. First up on their plate is to identify and provide a variety of interesting benefits to you. Connie Johnson along with Sharon Vasquez will lead this effort. We have identified several individuals interested in participating and hope to have a working board in place in the next month. We have moved forward to expand our social media presence including an active twitter account (@acao_org) and the development of a Facebook page with a closed, CAOs only, Facebook discussion forum. This will allow quick and easy access for all of us to continue our CAO topic discussions, network and share ideas.  We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Finally, join me in thanking Jim Sirianni of ACE for all his help and guidance over the last three years. Jim is leaving ACE this month to work with Shelly Storbeck at Storbeck/Pimentel in California. Jim has been our chief liaison with ACE assisting with the creation of ACAO and building our relationship. We wish him the best of luck. I hope you are enjoying Spring weather!!

Best regards,
B.J. Reed
President
Association of Chief Academic Advisors