Dear Colleagues and Friends in Art Education,

A year ago I wrote to you to share my pride and enthusiasm around the mission and potential of our organization. At that time I identified several key challenges that I saw as facing the strength and vitality of PAEA. These were:

• developing leadership opportunities to prepare younger members to lead;
• expanding and extending our outreach to be more inclusive and welcoming of art educators in varied learning settings across Pennsylvania;
• advancing professional development opportunities for our members as teachers and artists;
• closing the regional “divide” by moving the board meetings around the state;
• integrating distance technologies for conducting association business;
• Streamlining the PAEA Executive Board structures for meeting schedules and member participation;
• Continuing to develop and expand collaborations and partnerships with other arts and education shareholders while continuing to nurture our existing ones with loyal partners.

Clear and verifiable progress has been made over the last year in all of the above areas through the support of the general membership and members of the board. While this is gratifying, we must continue to strengthen and broaden our accomplishments, especially in the area of inclusion. Working to bring diverse voices into our membership and to service on the board will be the top priority for this next year. Toward that goal, the board has created a new position, division director for nonpublic education. The responsibility of this division director is to identify potential new members from the nonpublic sector and to represent the interests of art educators from the non-public sector on the board. Ms. Sheila Ruen, a highly accomplished secondary art educator from Philadelphia, has been appointed to serve in this new capacity.

Randy W. Granger