Hi Everyone,

As you know, Congress is being hosted at George Brown College this year, which poses some unique challenges as most Associations do not have any members at colleges and, if they do have members there, most of these members do not have research portfolios. Kim knows two previous Waterloo PhD grads who teach at GBC (neither are members of CALS and they do not have research portfolios) who are willing to take on the two roles that the Federation requires to host Congress (Local Access Coordinator and Program Chair). They can have this labour written into their workload as service. However, these two folks will need support in these roles from CALS member(s) who have active research portfolios and a history with CALS/CCLR. The executive met to discuss how we can support them, and an option is to create a Congress Program Co-Chair (CPC) role through the Outreach sub-committee. The CPC would be encouraged to apply for the CALS Connection Grant ($1500) to hire an RA and help lead the development of the program (Call for abstracts, abstract review, development of program, events, CALS meals, etc.) in collaboration with the LAC and PC from GB (Maggie Miller and Mahsa Rouzrokh). The CPC can also invite non-board members to contribute this work.

As Chair of the Outreach committee, Shin has graciously offered to do this work (although he will be unable to attend Congress 2025 at GBC in person and wants to board to be fully aware of this). In the interest of full transparency, I wanted to email the board to ask if there was anyone else who was interested in taking on the role of the CPC through the Outreach Committee or joining the Outreach Committee to support Shin taking on this role.

Please let me know your feedback, expressions of interest or support, by July 12th.

Thank you, Fenton

-- Dr. Fenton Litwiller (they/them/theirs) President, Canadian Association for Leisure Studies (CALS) Associate Professor Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management | University of Manitoba 123 Frank Kennedy Centre | Winnipeg MB | R3T 2N2 204.474.8412 fenton.litwiller@umanitoba.camailto:fentonl@umanitoba.ca [signature_2837124687]

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