Listening to Our Members

Over the past year as your president, one of my personal goals has been to engage in an interactive dialogue with members so that I can understand the many challenges that you face. Our staff, led by Executive Vice President Christie Tarantino, has also made a renewed commitment to reach out to members to gain insights, establish better communications within our network, and generate new initiatives that meet your needs. While this is an ongoing process, I wanted to share a few highlights on how we are creating a valuable IFT experience for you.

Through my work with the board, I have shared the critical value academia offers our organization and the entire food science and technology community. Therefore, I am very pleased with the board’s work with the Academic Advisory Group, co-chaired by John Coupland of Pennsylvania State University and Chris Daubert of North Carolina State University, which initiated a series of conversations to solicit input and feedback on how IFT can better meet the needs of academic members. We are grateful to those who invested time participating in a focus group or contributing to these valuable conversations. Special thanks goes to the leadership of the Higher Education Review Board (HERB) and the Council of Food Science Administrators (CFSA) for further vetting the final recommendations of this group.

Several recommendations were presented and approved at the March board of directors meeting. To highlight research and the advancement of academic programs, we launched the new Inside Academia bimonthly column in the June issue of Food Technology. At IFT15 our scientific and technical sessions will feature two Research Presentation & Poster Experience sessions. These sessions offer a deep dive into technical research being conducted by academics in the areas of gut microbiota and food structures from a micro to a macro level. We’ll also preview electronic posters, an innovative approach to sharing research, which will debut at IFT16. Looking forward, we will invest in identifying the needs of early academics and will cultivate opportunities to strengthen interactions among IFT sections, divisions, and the academic community.

This year’s Section Leadership Forum is all about membership, helping our sections grow, and highlighting a few sections that have done great things to increase membership. In addition, we’re holding our first Section Summit just before IFT15. Born out of visits to sections and our section unification process, we are convening our section leaders to work in collaboration with the board. We are reflecting on the outcome of unification and how we can better partner with our sections, and we plan to continue to invest in section leadership through educational programming and peer-sharing sessions.

We are investing resources to enhance IFT volunteerism with training, development, and recognition of volunteer leaders. We want our efforts to increase the flow of volunteers in the pipeline of leadership that runs throughout IFT.

To ensure that we are communicating with all of our leaders, we’ve created a new Leadership Update e-newsletter to raise awareness of IFT initiatives among key volunteer leaders, such as those who lead our sections, divisions, committees, and workgroups, as well as Fellows, past presidents, IFT Student Association board members, and Feeding Tomorrow trustees. We are sharing insights from IFT board meetings to increase communication among leadership and provide recent strategic updates.

These initiatives are designed to cultivate a community of IFT leaders focused on the future. In addition, we have dedicated staff and new team members working to meet your needs. Thomas Foley is IFT’s new senior director of membership. In his role, Tom will oversee IFT’s membership recruitment and retention activities and serve as a resource for our sections, as well as identify opportunities to further drive engagement among members. Kate Dockins is IFT’s director of volunteer leadership development and recognition. She provides strategic oversight of IFT’s training, development, and recognition of volunteer leaders with the goal of engaging more members in the pipeline of IFT volunteer leadership. She coordinates Nominations & Elections and the Call for Volunteers as well as Awards and Fellows programs. Please feel free to reach out to Tom at [email protected] and Kate at [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts.

Please know the board of directors and IFT staff are listening and value our members’ contributions and feedback. Please stop by the IFT booth at IFT15 to talk about membership matters. We look forward to continued communication as we act on member needs and interests.

We hope these efforts stimulate new ideas and strategic thinking because the enthusiastic involvement of our members is key to IFT’s success.



Mary Ellen Camire, PhD, CFS,
IFT President, 2014–2015
Professor, Univ. of Maine,
Orono, Maine
[email protected]