The Annual Fall Conference will be meeting here in Arlington Texas, just down the road at the Arlington Convention Center, October 7-9. The theme for this year's conference is "TASFAA - Teach Up for Success!" As of today, we have 420 registered for the conference and about 70 registered for the ABC workshop on October 6-7 at the same location. Also, the final board meeting for the 2008-09 TASFAA Board will meeting at noon Tuesday, October 6, at the conference location.

The conference this year will feature Drew Pearson, former Dallas Cowboy star as the opening speaker. We will also have the whole team of USDE Region VI trainers at our conference presenting several sessions on Federal updates and current training issues. On Friday, in addition to our normal state and federal legislative updates, we will also have a visiting guest from Senator John Cornyn's office, his chief staff on higher education legislation Dr. Michelle Chin. Michelle will be there to gather information to take back to Washington on the current SAFRA bill and other legislative issues.

TASFAA elections were delayed by about a month this year and are currently under way. Voting will close this Friday and the results will be announced at the conference next week. This year we are electing a president-elect and five board members. Earlier this year, the membership approved two emergency constitution and By Law changes that removed the voting associate member position from the board and also gave authority to the board to change membership dues and dues structure with a majority vote of the board.

As with other associations, TASFAA continues to struggle with the adjustment to the new environment of declining revenues and associate memberships. The new board will be tackling a long term strategy for stabilizing our financial infrastructure this next spring. Carolyn Jones, our president for 2009-10 will take the gavel at lunch on Thursday, October 8, and will be ready to tackle this and many other issues facing our profession in 2010.