It is election time for the CSTA Board of Directors. This year, the K-8 representative, two 9-12 representatives, the school district representative, the college faculty representative, and the at-large representative need to be elected. Each member of the Board of Director serves for a two-year term.
We get a lot of queries about the election process at the CSTA. Here is the process we follow…
We get many applications for the various Board of Director positions. Each application is required to include a CV and a 130-word statement to be shared with the membership about the candidate’s vision and/or qualifications. It is amazing how many folks get confused between 130 and 1300 for the length of the statement, and how many applications we receive after the deadline.
Once the valid applications are received, the Nominations Committee, headed by the Vice President, must select the top two candidates for each position. This is a challenging and important task because it involves choosing the people who will provide the vision for and lead the organization in the future. As a result, the committee considers many factors when choosing the candidates, including: educational and volunteer experience, commitment to CSTA’s mission, leadership potential, and vision. The committee also has to look at the entire Board as a working group, with the goal of building a team that will work hard and in harmony but with a sufficient diversity of opinion and experience to ensure that all perspectives are well represented.
In this current election, that meant sorting through nearly 40 valid applications to choose the top 12 candidates (two for each of the Board of Director representatives that are up for election). This was a fairly exhausting meeting, as there were far more highly qualified candidates than we had positions for.
Once the Nominations Committee has made its top-two choices for each position, CSTA mails out an official election ballot to all current CSTA members along with a document that provides all of the candidates’ statements. The completed ballots must be mailed back to CSTA and must be postmarked no later than May 1, 2009.
Then the work begins.
Michelle Hutton
CSTA President