Midwest Chapter
Aaron Park, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAS
The MW Chapter is still in the rebooting stage after COVID-19. A group of interested individuals has been on a conference call twice to attempt to work out details of how to move forward. I have drafted a yearly activity and job description for officers and directors to alleviate the huge responsibility placed upon the president. At this point, no comments or suggestions have been received on the write-up. Progress needs to be made because people for officers and directors should start being selected for the May election.
Pacific Northwest Chapter
Chad Mueller, PhD, PAS
The 2021 year was busy and positive for the PNW ARPAS Chapter. Our primary focus was to reorganize and reinvigorate the chapter membership to position the chapter for future growth.
Starting June 2021, the PNW Board officers began meeting once per month for planning and work sessions related to short- and long-term planning of our three overarching chapter programs:
1) Continuing Education programs for members,
2) Fundraising and Scholarship programming, and
3) recognizing outstanding members and building our membership base.
To better inform the PNW membership, the board developed and is publishing a monthly electronic newsletter highlighting chapter activities, CEU opportunities, and scholarship and recruiting efforts to support undergraduate and graduate students.
The 2021 PNW Chapter board members were as follows:
President: Chad J. Mueller, PhD, PAS—Eastern Oregon University
President-Elect: Jim Sullivan, PhD, PAS—Novus International Inc.
Past President: Tom Ritter, MS, PAS—Origination LLC
Secretary-Treasurer: Bill Sanchez, PhD, PAS—The Potter’s Vineyard
Director #1: Evin Sharman, PhD, PAS—Phibro Animal Health
Director #2: John B. Hall, PhD, PAS—University of I
Director #3: Michelle Whiteside, MS, PAS—Simplot Western Stockmans
Liaison to the PNW Animal Nutrition Conference: Pedram Rezamand, PhD, PAS—University of Idaho
Membership Standing (2022 paid membership dues as of Jan. 13, 2022):
NOTE…The chapter officers have identified, and contacted, an additional 38 potential PNW members who are listed in the national ARPAS database but currently have not paid 2021 or 2022 chapter dues.
Chapter Bylaws. We were informed by the national office that the PNW Chapter did not have an approved set of bylaws for official chapter activities; therefore, the chapter needed to draft and approve a set of bylaws in 2021. A draft of the bylaws was constructed and approved by the board officers in fall 2021 and was then sent out to the PNW general membership for possible approval prior to our 2022 PNW annual meeting. If approved by the PNW membership, the bylaws will then be sent to the ARPAS Governing Board in January 2022 for final discussion and approval.
Continuing Education Activities. The board has been working on developing a great assortment of CEU opportunities for the membership. In the short term, the board has been working on highlighting CEUs both regionally and nationally through our monthly e-newsletter. In the long term, the chapter would like to focus on developing and offering monthly webinars and collaborating with industry partners to offer additional regionally important CEU opportunities.
Scholarship and Fundraising Activities. In the long term, the board is committed to building our financial reserves to support CEU opportunities and, more importantly, to offer greater scholarship support for both undergraduate and graduate students in our regional universities. We believe the investment in our students will then help maintain and grow the PNW Chapter sustainably in the future.
In the short term, we wanted to add more support behind our annual chapter scholarship program. The drive for that support unfortunately came with the passing of Dr. Carl Hunt (University of Idaho). Hunt (2019 Distinguished ARPAS recipient) was a strong and tenacious supporter of education, students, and the animal agriculture profession. Hunt was also responsible for ensuring the PNW ARPAS Chapter always supported undergraduate students through scholarship. Therefore, the chapter renamed the annual student scholarship the Dr. Carl Hunt Memorial Scholarship and, with the help of private member donations and a grant from the national ARPAS organization, was able to present four undergraduate students with $1,000 scholarships (out of 16 applications!).
Our 2022 Dr. Carl Hunt Memorial Scholarship winners are as follows:
- Hayden Erickson, Utah State University,
- Brynley Cozzi, Oregon State University,
- Mackie Griggs, University of Idaho, and
- Danny Salas, University of Idaho.
The chapter also donated $1,000 to the Hunt Family Beef Education and Research Endowment at the University of Idaho.
Membership and Nominating Activities. With the reduction of COVID-19 restrictions, many of our board officers were able to visit universities in the PNW region to discuss the importance of ARPAS to graduate students. The board officers produced a set of talking points for each officer to use during the visits to encourage the students to consider taking the membership tests as they are finishing their graduate programs. The board officers visited Washington State University, University of Idaho, Montana State University, and Utah State University.
In Memoriam. We were sad to announce one of our university greats, Dr. Carl Hunt, 68, of Moscow, Idaho, passed away September 6, 2021, due to heart failure arising from cancer treatment complications.
Carl Hunt’s obituary can be found here. The obituary does not go into his contributions to ARPAS, but they were many. At the national ARPAS level, Hunt served as a long-term treasurer (2008–2015), a western director (2004–2007), and a representative to the American Society of Animal Sciences (2006–2009). At our local chapter level, Hunt served as PNW Chapter treasurer (2012–2018) and chaired the PNW ARPAS scholarship committee. Hunt also participated at the highest level of certification within ARPAS as a Charter Diplomat of the American College of Animal Nutrition (beginning in 1995).
Hunt’s passing was a shock to us on the PNW ARPAS board as it was only a few weeks into our monthly board work sessions that he had been on the call with us discussing the PNW ARPAS scholarship program. Hunt epitomized what so many of us want from ARPAS, to be a foundation for young animal science professionals, and to his last days he found time to lead the effort to ensure that scholarships were awarded to worthy students.
PNW Chapter Bylaws
The PNW Chapter Bylaws received final approval by the ARPAS Governing Council on January 21, 2022.