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Report from the Executive Director
David E. Schrader

It is now September, and the beginning of a new academic year has come. It is also time to give an update on activity at the APA National Office.

While summer is a quiet time in terms of major APA activities, there is still much that has happened. First I will note some changes in personnel at the National Office. In the early summer both Rosanna Mangini, APA Finance Director, and Katina Saunders, Assistant to the Executive Director, left the APA for other positions. Rosanna oversaw an extensive revision of APA financial organization. She and Terry Riley, APA Finance Assistant, created order out of relative chaos. They did such a superb job that when Rosanna left us we determined that Terry could be promoted to the position of Finance Coordinator and that the position of Finance Assistant was no longer necessary. Katina provided invaluable service in helping me to orient myself to the ways and people of the APA during my first year as Executive Director. It is simply impossible for me adequately to express my gratitude to both of them. We are presently nearing the end of a search to hire a new Assistant to the Executive Director. In another very minor change, Lindsay Palkovitz has been promoted to the position of Employment Services Coordinator. This is really just a formal recognition of the work that Lindsay had already been doing at the APA. Those of you who have worked with her in any aspect of the placement process or through the paper submission process know how very capable and gracious she is in her performance of that work.

We have also spent a considerable amount of time this summer working on our new data system with the people from Counter-Point Software. We were not able to have the new system in place by the date for which we had initially hoped. As I write this we should be a week or two away from having it in place. It should improve the efficiency and order of the National Office in a multitude of ways.

One of the great pleasures of my summer has been my attendance at the Rutgers Summer Institute in Philosophy for Minority Students and at the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute. Both of these summer institutes, one in New Brunswick, NJ, and the other in State College, PA, provide opportunities for students from traditionally underrepresented groups to get a taste of the world of professional philosophy. The students are bright and enthusiastic. The Rutgers program, which is several years older, has already helped bring several new people into our profession. I expect similar results from PIKSI. It is certainly a great delight for me to spend time with these students, many of whom I hope will be our colleagues someday.

Summer is also the time when we receive nominations for vacancies on the APA's twenty committees. Many of our committees generate substantial interest from APA members. We do, however, have some committees for which we get insufficient nominations. The National Office will work to find additional members where needed so that the APA committees will be able to start the 2008-2009 year at full strength. Let me take this opportunity, however, to encourage you to look at the APA committees and their charges. Next spring we will be soliciting nominations for terms running from 2009 to 2012. This is an important way of serving the profession. I hope you will consider nominating yourself or someone else whom you think might serve well.

Additionally, I represented the APA at the annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies in Montreal in May. I was joined by Ruth Marcus, APA representative to the ACLS, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, who serves as Chair of the ACLS Board of Directors. Two other philosophical organizations, the Metaphysical Society of America and the American Society for Aesthetics, are also ACLS member societies. I would encourage other philosophical societies to consider ACLS membership.

In late August I attended a meeting Board of Directors of the National Humanities Alliance. We have had some success this year in supporting a budget increase for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and continue to work on developing a more coherent agenda for humanities advocacy. Please consider contacting your senators and representative to urge support for humanities funding.

Later this month the APA will cosponsor a conference here at the University of Delaware on the Environment, Energy, and Ethics. Our partial support of this conference is under an arrangement approved several years ago drawing from the Baumgardt Memorial Fund.

Apart from specifically APA activities this summer, it was my great pleasure to attend the Third International Conference on Axiology in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Our Spanish hosts provided a wonderful setting, and all in attendance enjoyed a productive dialogue among philosophers from Europe, Asia, and North America.

I wish you all well as you launch into the Fall semester. I look forward to seeing many of you at one or more of our divisional meetings this year.