President's Report (René T.A. Lysloff)
This has been a particularly busy year for me and it will get much worse in the coming months since I will be coming up for tenure at UCR. I attended the annual meeting of SEM in Austin, Texas, and met with other Chapter representatives along with the Chapter Coordinator, Janet Sturman. She urged all representatives to consider exploring themes that are of particular interest to each chapter and then bringing these to the annual meeting of the Society. We also discussed the difference in success among the various chapter and she asked those particularly active and prosperous chapters what suggestions she might convey to less fortunate chapters. SEMSCC was singled out as one of the most active and healthy chapters of the entire society. Congratulations to all of you for making our chapter stand out as an extraordinarily fine group of ethnomusicologists.
Having said that, my own presidency has been rather spotty. On the plus side, we have a rather interesting and informative web site as well as a useful online list. I am proud that these have become institutionalized within our chapter. Furthermore, we have had well attended and well organized conferences during my term, including this meeting. On the other hand, I have not been as consistently organized as I should have and, clearly, all would have been lost if it weren't for Louise Spear, our superb secretary-treasurer. As usual Louise remains an important source of information about our chapter and keeps the whole ship afloat. Additionally, no thanks to me, the program committee put together an excellent schedule of papers. Finally, the local arrangements committee, Ron Shaheen and Chris Adler, made this joint meeting of SEMSCC and PSC-AMS an enjoyable and productive experience.
To close, I want to thank all of you for your patience and support during my presidency. I've served as president for two years now and it is time for me to step down so that I can get on with my own work. I have many projects that must be completed over the next several months and I'll need to be somewhat selfish with my time. I'll be glad to continue overseeing the SEMSCC web site and the email list, unless there is some poor soul willing to take these over. To facilitate a smooth transition, I would like to offer any help the newly elected officers may want.
Many thanks and best wishes to all of you.