Important Information
Electronic Ballot
January 2016 - Constitution Conflict Comments
Dear CoADE Member,
I would like to thank you for your participation in the CoADE Fall 2015 Conference: Riding Across the Curriculum II. Although you had several conference options that day, I am glad you chose to spend the day with us. Those of us on the Executive Board felt the conference was successful and useful in generating ideas that will help us serve our students and fellow faculty well. So, thank you for your commitment to our students and colleagues.
As part of the fall conference you elected three new members to our Executive Board: Emily Forand from Pike's Peak Community College (PPCC) as our President-Elect, Mark King also from PPCC as our Vice President, and Kimi Kelley from Otero Junior College as our Secretary. As the new President, I want to thank them for stepping up to volunteer to help guide our organization. However, after the election the Executive Board found that the newly constituted board is contrary to Article V of CoADE's Constitution. Article V states that the CoADE Executive Board cannot contain more than two members from the same institution. Please go to www.coade-colorado.org to view the Constitution and ByLaws. Currently, the Executive Board has three members from PPCC: Ms. Forand, Mr. King, and our current treasurer Lindsey Small. Thus, the Executive Board would like to call on the wisdom of the membership to find a remedy.
On November 13, 2015 the newly formed Executive Board met to discuss potential remedies to this conflict with CoADE's constitution. As a board, we formulated three potential options:
- Amend the Constitution by popular vote of our membership to allow more than two people from the same institution to serve on the board concurrently.
- Ask the membership by popular vote to allow for a one-year, non-precedent setting exception to the rule that would allow the current board to remain intact.
- Ask one of the Executive Board members from PPCC to resign, and then solicit the membership for nominees and then put the nominees up for a popular vote.
Each of these options has potential benefits and drawbacks. So, as President and caretaker of your organization, I would like to open a seven-day comment period beginning December 4, 2015 and ending on December 11, 2015 to allow the membership to weigh in on these potential remedies. Please e-mail me at aaron.leff@frontrange.edu if you have comments on the proposed solutions or ideas for new solutions. After the comment period, I will publish the comments on the CoADE website (www.coade-colorado.org). After I have published the comments, the Executive Board will send out an e-mail ballot asking the membership to vote on the best solution. We will publish the results of the vote on the website. Whichever option wins the popular vote, we will pursue that option which more than likely will require a second e-mail ballot.
Again, thank you for your participation.
Best wishes,
Aaron Leff
CoADE President