Distinguished Colleagues, Dear Friends,
This is my second progress report after 60 days on the job as President of ISSMGE. In the 30 day progress report I told you about the creation of the three Board Level Committees (Technical Oversight Committee TOC, Membership, Practitioners, and Academicians Committee MPAC, and Innovation and Development Committee IDC). The leaders of these three committees are progressing steadily with the final selection of their members and organizing their activities.
In this report, I would like to tell you about the second initiative that the ISSMGE Board and I have undertaken: The Student and Young Members Presidential Group SYMPG. I asked the 6 Vice Presidents to select 3 students or young members from their region to become members of SYMPG. After collecting the nominations and applications, they selected their three SYMPG members. They gave me their list of three but added that it was a shame of having to turn down other candidates. So I have decided to create two categories of SYMPG members: the members per say and the corresponding members. The 18 (3×6) members of SYMPG will be the ones selected by the Vice Presidents. The corresponding members will be those who were candidates but were not selected; they will receive the news about the committee, will be able to participate by email but will not be attending the conference call meetings and will have no voting privileges. If a member does not contribute, he or she will be replaced by a corresponding member who has shown definite interest and has contributed. I have also decided to enlarge the corresponding member list by including a few other young members from your national society. If you wish to have a corresponding member on the SYMPG please send me their CV, contact information, and a one page statement written by the young member indicating why they are interested in contributing to SYMPG.
The goal of SYMPG is to listen to the wishes of the younger (less than 35 years old) geotechnical engineers on what ISSMGE can do to be more attractive to the next generation by letting them interact directly with the President. I am excited about working with this group which no doubt will have a lot of energy and a lot of ideas for all of us. I attach the current worldwide list of SYMPG members and corresponding members.
I would appreciate if you could relay this message to the ISSMGE members in your country. As usual, feel free to communicate with me on what is important to you.
Best wishes,
Jean-Louis Briaud
60 Day Progress Report – SYMPG Memb and Corr Memb-9Dec2009.pdf (61 kB)