Members of the Governing Council and the Executive Committee of ARPAS have been busy the past few months taking on a number of issues and challenges.

The item that has occupied most of our time is our publishing agreement with Elsevier. We are starting the fourth year of our agreement with Elsevier to publish Applied Animal Science.

Membership in ARPAS has declined about 8% over the past few years. We believe this decline is due in part to the fact that many members who joined when ARPAS was first formed have retired and not renewed their membership. Unfortunately, we are not signing up new members at a rate sufficient to make up for this loss in membership. Please urge graduate students and others in the animal science field to take the ARPAS exam and become members. Any member of ARPAS and university testing centers can proctor the exam, which can be taken online. Just contact Brittany Morstatter at FASS to obtain the exams. For graduate students, the ARPAS foundation will cover the cost of the exam. Exams will also be given at a number of scientific meetings this year including the Midwestern Section of ASAS and ADSA meeting, the Tri-State and 4-State Dairy Conferences, the Beef Improvement Federation, the annual meeting of ADSA in Cincinnati, and the annual meeting of ASAS in Austin. Also, if you know someone who has let their membership lapse, urge them to renew. It is easy to do – just fill out a request for renewal on the ARPAS website (ARPAS.org) and pay your dues. AND – do not forget to renew your own membership by paying your dues and updating your continuing education units (CEUs) online.

We are striving to increase the number of corporate sponsors of ARPAS. I find it amazing that we have many companies where 5 to 30 of their employees are ARPAS members but the company is not an ARPAS sponsor. I urge you to be a champion for ARPAS within your company and work to have your company become an ARPAS sponsor. Again, it is easy to do; just go to the ARPAS website or contact the chair of the Professional Relations Committee, Daniel Rivera, at Mississippi State University.

Thanks to the fine work of a committee headed by Ryan Walker, we now have a graduate student member on the ARPAS Governing Council. Miriam Snider from the University of Vermont was selected as our first graduate student representative on the Governing Council. You can read more about Snider later in the newsletter.

ARPAS will have booths at a number of upcoming meetings, including the Midwestern meetings, ADSA and ASAS, and others. We always appreciate and enjoy having members help out at the booth. So if you have some free time, please stop by the booth and help out.

The annual ARPAS Governing Council meeting, ARPAS symposium, and ARPAS business meeting will be held at the ASAS meeting in Austin, Texas, in July. More details are provided later in the newsletter. If you are not a member of ASAS, as a member of ARPAS you will be able to get ASAS member registration rates for the conference.

We had an excellent conference call of the Governing Council on January 25. Thanks to all those members of the Governing Council who were able to participate. We discussed many items, but two I would like to mention include the following:

1. Paul Beck has served as one of our representatives to PAACO for a number of years and will be stepping down later this year. We are looking for an ARPAS member to replace Beck. If you are interested in being one of the ARPAS representatives to PAACO (along with John Richeson), please contact me (nacole@suddenlink.net), Al Kertz, or Kenneth Cummings.
2. Our western director and chair of the Membership Committee, Heidi Rossow, is working with several graduate students to develop videos: “What is ARPAS?,” “How to take the ARPAS exam,” and an interview video to promote to graduate students. She also noted that ARPAS is now on Linkedin, so “friend” us on your Linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpas-arpas-pas-225730103.

Election of a new president-elect and northeastern director will take place soon. Watch for the invitation to vote in your email, and be sure to vote.

As ARPAS president, I cannot pass up on an opportunity to thank our executive VP, Kenneth Cummings, and our representatives at FASS – Brittany Morstatter (see more on Morstatter later in the newsletter), Cara Tharp, Susan Pollock, Jeremy Holzner, and the many other great people. You make it possible for us to operate.

Hope to see you in Cincinnati, Austin, or both later this summer.

Andy Cole, PhD, PAS, ACAN
ARPAS President 2018-2019