AsMA News

President’s Page

February 2010
by Robert W. Weien, M.D., M.P.H.

Passages are often bittersweet. Here in AsMA it is no different. On January 11th, with the start of Jeff Sventek’s era as Executive Director, we completed the changes I have written about intermittently over the last several months. Expect that many will look to the past for guidance. Now, however, is the time to look ahead, without forgetting the lessons of the past. In many ways, this is a hard transition, as both the former ED, Dr. Russ Rayman, and the former Editor in chief, Dr. Sally Nunneley, were great performers and will be a tough standard to equal, let alone exceed. Xenogamy, or cross pollination, among our various specialties should be the goal to which we strive, and I think this will be enhanced by the new crew.

But I don’t want to make the leadership changes the only topic I write about. Exceptional members deserve attention, too.

There are some truly exceptional members in AsMA: our volunteers. Here’s something that shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Excepting the Home Office staff, just about everything in this organization gets done by members who willingly volunteer their time, energy, and skills. Reality is that many of these members pay for their own travel and make other significant sacrifices for the good of our mutual professions. Experts who could be paid for their time willingly participate in (for example) committee work, just because it is the right thing to do for Aerospace Medicine.

A key to this is simple involvement. Lots of people tend to stand back and observe, but the benefits of diving in and getting involved are many. Organizations like ours thrive on the networking that develops among the members. How to best achieve that? A great sense of fellowship and community, fostered by volunteering for committees, or work within a Constituent organization, or getting nominated for Council or higher positions: it really works.

So let me encourage each of you to try volunteering in AsMA. I can tell you from experience that it is personally and professionally rewarding. Those rewards are mostly intangible, but very real. The opportunity to work with both friends and friends-to-be contributes to the development of networks among us. This cross-fertilization between the disparate groups that make up our membership is very useful. It helps combine our many specialties into a unified whole. And that’s a good thing.

If you have any comments, questions, or other inputs, please contact me at president@asma.org.