President's Message - September 2009

What an outstanding year the Chapter has just completed. The Chapter participated in many activities; for example, forming an alliance with OSHA, hosting an ASP and CSP review course, participation in NAOSH week, and hosting a successful golf tournament. We awarded a scholarship to a deserving student at Southeastern Louisiana University. Even during our country’s economic downturn we were able to increase the donation to our scholarship fund for future disbursement.

This years Executive Board has a lot to do in order to continue the momentum gained over the last several years. We have already been hard at work planning the events for the upcoming year. We look forward to the challenge of providing our Chapter with an outstanding technical program as well as being a resource to it, the community, and with our sister organizations in the Safety, Health, and Environment Profession.

This year Baton Rouge will host the Region IV Professional Development Conference. This will be a great opportunity for both our Chapter and our city to shine as we welcome members of the Society from all over the Southeast.

The E-Board’s overall goal is to provide an effective organization that continues to develop it’s members and their interrelationships with each other, the Chapter, the Society, and our profession. We hope to do this by accomplishing many smaller tasks, and I would like to highlight those here and let you know a little about how we plan to accomplish them.

1. Increase participation in the Chapter – We are nearly 275 members strong, yet we only have an average meeting attendance of less than 25% of our membership. The Board is working to present a Program that draws more participation by encompassing a broad area of interests not just basic safety discussions. We are also planning to have meetings in the evening and morning. These meetings will be held in Gonzales, Prairieville, and on the west side of the River in hopes that we will be more geographically accessible to more of our members. Additionally, we will attempt to provide some opportunities for members to get together for some social events in order to get to know each other better both professionally and socially.

2. Raise additional funds for our scholarship – Last year despite the economy we were able to donate $1500 to the ASSE foundation that administers our Don Jones Scholarship. We hope that through increased participation in our Annual Golf Tournament we will be able to donate $2000 this year. Be sure to mark your calendars for May 7, 2010 and join us at Copper Mill in Zachary to support this effort.

3. Increase mentoring of area schools – For several years we have had the opportunity to mentor area high schools and their industrial arts programs. We hope to continue this program to be able to expand it by increasing the number of schools where we are providing this service. If you are interested in mentoring please contact Paul Amedee to volunteer.

4. Develop the relationship between the SELU Student Section and our Chapter – SELU’s Student Section members participated in several activities with our Chapter and the Society last year. This year we hope to have a Chapter officer participate in each of the Student Section’s meeting as well as mentoring section officers throughout the year.

5. Participate with other organizations to promote the safety profession – We hope to continue interactions with other ASSE Chapters, the local AIHA Section, and other organizations such as the Safety Council, GBRIA, and ABC.

To accomplish these tasks, we need your support and involvement. Please mark you calendars for our monthly meetings, golf tournament and other future activities. As always if you have ideas or are interested in helping with any of the committees or activities please contact me or anyone of our Board Members: Linda Vidrine, Steven Stogner, George Harris, Lance Roux, Paul Amedee, Matthew Buvens or any of our Committee Chairpersons: Annette Springer (Program), Paul Marks (Govt. Affairs), Branden Bennett (Membership), David Noland (Communications).

Looking forward to an outstanding year,

Karen D. Saurage, CSP
President GBR ASSE