Recent Developments and Updates from International

1. 1. First let me introduce our officers for this biennium.

                                                               i.      President – Michaela Shafer

                                                             ii.      Vice-president – Pam Herbig

                                                            iii.      Faculty counselors – Betsy Vane ( will need to be replaced for next year) and Diane Seibert

                                                           iv.      Secretary – Karen Whitman

                                                             v.      Treasurer – Terry Malavakis

                                                           vi.      Nominating Committee – Natasha Sutton and Heather Johnson

1.  
   1. We will need to look at forming a membership committee that can help us decipher the members list and determine good email addresses for them. 

                                                               i.      When I sent out my first email via our website, I got back over 112 returned messages.  I have deleted those names as I am sure the addresses are wrong.  However, we need to collate the member list from Intl and our web list to ensure we are reaching our members.

1.  
   1. Pam and I attended the Biennium in November and it was very interesting. 

                                                               i.      Many presenters and I would say that most presentations were not at the level that I believe all of us in this room can accomplish.  I would encourage people to submit abstracts as there was a huge audience and they loved the military connection to anything

                                                             ii.      Dr. Karen Morin is our new President and she is a very global thinker.  She really wants to focus on global initiatives and she is multi-lingual which will help with this task.  She cites four Calls to Action. 

1. Creating Welcoming Environments
2. Enhancing Knowledge Resources and Networks
3. Contributing to Global Health
4. Creating a Legacy of Personal Leadership

                                                            iii.      We now only have the one Intl office in Indianapolis but we will be expanding to include three HQ by 2020.  One will be in South Africa and another in Hong Kong. 

                                                           iv.      If you are interested in hearing about the 2020 report – there is a great webinar by ex-president Carol Huston (about 12 min long) on the STTI website. 

1.  
   1. STTI has attained NGO (Non-governmental Organization) status at the United Nations.  We are the only nursing organization to attain this honor due to our contributions to world health
   2. This is the International Year of the Nurse and it is being celebrated at the National Cathedral on Sunday, April 25^th here in DC.  This is a big deal and we really want to fill up the cathedral so if you are interested we will get a list going of those that want to carpool.
2. We are part of Region 12 and they put out a newsletter that can be found via STTI connect.  I have distributed copies of the March issue. 
   1. There is a plan to have a Chesapeake Consortium hosted by Howard University sometime this year.  Apparently there has been a lot of Tristate consortiums up with NY and Philly and Jersey but we in the DC area have sort of been left out so we are going to try to resurrect this meeting.  I will let you know the plans. 
   2. One of the Region 12 goals is to increase the number of chapters that are applying for Chapter Key awards.  This is apparently not an easy task and requires a fair amount of work and needs to be started about 18 months out.  THAT IS NOW!!
3. Because we would like to work toward the Chapter Key award, we are going to use (per Intl) the Key award criteria as a basis for our strategic planning.  I have made copies and I would like to quickly go through them to show you the types of things that are expected of a chapter.  We are in need of some real teamwork to get this going so let’s answer yes or no and then I will send out to those of you interested a list of committees to get that project going.  I suspect that it will take us about 4 years to get these all together but we have to start somewhere. 
   1. Another way to attack this is to have a quarterly meeting where we focus on the four main areas:  Global Nursing Organization, Strategic Planning, Leadership Development, and Member Retention.
4. So after listening to many of these topics and attending the Leadership Development meeting last fall, Pam and I bounced some ideas off of colleagues at Biennium and they were really greeted with a lot of enthusiasm.
   1. People are tired of projects they cannot relate to so the thought was to tie together our research, our community service etc to a truly military mission and then bring in other chapters that would like to help. 
   2. I would like to pose this:  We would like to look at providing therapy dogs to wounded warriors as our community project (other chapters have been interested in helping) and also possibly fund a small study on the effects of a therapy dog on stress etc.  (A colleague at Kean University would like to do this research –fulfills a cross-chapter and regional collaboration area)

                                                               i.      Discussion

1. We need to get together to plan the Spring Induction for STTI. 
   1. Discussion
   2. Community Leaders

  Michaela R. Shafer, President

1) We have decided to focus our service and research money on a unified topic and since we are all associated with the federal government, we have chosen “Paws for Patriots” as that project. We discussed this topic at the Region 12 meeting and had several chapters ask to be part of that project. We will be attaching a short video on “Paws for Patriots” to this website as soon as I can.In short, each dog is “adopted” at 9 weeks old and the money donated ($3500.00 per dog) is used to care for and feed the dog until the age of 20 months. Then the animal is placed into the training program to serve our wounded warriors. The dogs can be used as a therapy dog for a center as a whole or given to a single warrior who needs assistance. Either way, it goes directly to supporting our troops. We also have individuals who have done research on these types of animal companions and would like to support their research if possible. So, we are pursuing the idea of a foundation where anyone can donate to the cause. Some of us have decided to forego giving gifts to our friends and donating to the Tau Theta Chapter for the Paws for Patriots service project instead. We will certainly get you more information as that comes to fruition.�

2. We were proud to have Diane Seibert speak at the convention and it gave great exposure to our chapter.

3. We are working on making this website and a new facebook page user friendly so that we can speak more easily and have our chapter meetings in different forums.

4. Finally I would like to ask you to respond if you currently are able to use DCO. Since it looks like that is going to be DoD wide, we may try to use that option for meetings – however, that remains to be seen until we get clearance. But, I would like to know if you have access so that I can pursue this option.

That is it for now and the Tau Theta Board and I wish you a happy Thanksgiving!

– Micki Shafer

Faculty Counselor: Diane Seibert

Nominating Committee: Capt Natasha Sutton and Maj Heather Johnson

Secretary: LTC Karen Whitman

Congratulations to you all. We will be having a board meeting shortly to discuss our new strategic plan. Welcome to the team!!!!

Faculty Counselor (1)
Nominating Committee (2)
Secretary (1)

The ballot can be found at this link:

http://cim01.usuhs.mil/genein/electauthet09.tp4

It should take you no more than 5 minutes to complete this ballot – so please vote today! (We’d like to close this ballot by next week).

Thanks
Diane Seibert

My transition out of the Presidency position has given me an opportunity to serve as the POC for the Global community initiatives this year (it’s one of the 3 communities Tau Theta is trying to get started). In case you’ve forgotten, the three communities are:

Local: Service in the local community (Adopting a nurse or nursing home)
Global: Global service (Heifer International, Habitat for humanity, Orphanage project)
Professional: Promoting nursing (speaking in schools, mentoring nursing students)

Last December, five Tau Theta members at USU contributed money to Heifer International in lieu of giving holiday gifts to faculty & staff. With our combined dollars, we purchased a Water Buffalo, a Pig, 10 Tree Seedlings, a Trio of Rabbits and a flock of hope (chicks, ducklings and goslings). We then sent out an email message stating that our holiday gift to the USU community was to help feed and nourish individuals in the US and around the globe.

This year, we are extending an invitation to any Tau Theta member interested in joining us in this global service effort.

If you would like to make a tax deductible donation to the 2007 Tau Theta Global Service Project: our 2007 Heifer International gift, please send our treasurer (he was just elected to the STTI board as their treasurer – congratulations Ric!) Ric Ricciardi a short email (rricciardi@usuhs.mil) so we know approximately how many donations to expect in the mail. Then please send a check (any dollar amounts appreciated) made out to Tau Theta to

Tau Theta Chapter

20203 Goshen Road #294

Gaithersburg, MD 20879

I know it’s a lofty goal, but perhaps, this year we could collect enough to buy an Ark!

Check out the website http://www.heifer.org

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Diane

I’m still learning how to use our new website! I included all the information on the Fall meeting in the “Upcoming Events” area under Site Information. I’ll keep trying to attach the Flyer!

Diane

On behalf of our new Tau Theta president, Deb Kenny, I’m forwarding the announcement of our Fall Tau Theta meeting. We hope to see you there!

Diane Seibert

Project: Adopting a local school of nursing

Overall POC: Reyn Mosier reynold.mosier@amedd.army.mil

• Assistance to Associate Degree POC: Diane Padden dpadden@usuhs.mil

• Assistance with writing skills POC: Rod Hicks rodhicks@aol.com