ARPAS is currently in the midst of a transformative process that we believe will make your benefits more accessible and grow our member community. These include

• Our new and improved website, making your member benefits more accessible and easier to use.
• An electronic exam system is nearing completion and will allow anyone at any time and any place with an internet connection to take the self-proctored exam.
• A focus on increasing our graduate student members, and their professors too, is underway and will increase this next year.
• Advancements to the ARPAS journal, Applied Animal Science (AAS). Under the stellar leadership of editor in chief Dave Beede, AAS has
  • gone open access and lowered article charges for authors
  • expanded its Invited Reviews and Perspective and Commentary articles
  • continued to release symposium topics and issues tackling the most pressing applied animal science topics, including a special issue on liver abscesses
  • all while achieving an initial Impact Factor of 1.5!

Are you curious about the current demographics of our ARPAS community? Here is a breakdown of our membership as of June 2024:

1. 51% dairy, 26% beef, 8% horse, 5% swine, 4% feed, 3% poultry, 2% sheep, 1.4% companion animal, and then laboratory, goat, and aquaculture. There are major growth opportunities across all of these categories.
2. 26% female, but increasing quickly.
3. About 500 members are over 50 years of age, 400 over 65 years of age, and nearly 90% are male.
4. Only 6% of members are graduate students. This is our biggest opportunity and challenge to grow membership.
5. Members are 45% in companies, 29% academic, 19% consultants, and the balance in small business, government, and other categories. Again, there are growth opportunities across all these categories. And an increase in academic members directly affects graduate student membership.

As we focus on growing our members in 2025, we have also entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with WATT Global Media with their support to promote their members becoming companion animal and poultry ARPAS members.

Here is an overview of the other membership and sponsorship growth efforts currently underway:

• Graduate Students. Forty-five universities, including 5 in Canada, have been contacted each semester and a faculty member has agreed to present to departmental graduate students on the benefits of becoming an ARPAS member. This has not gotten much traction yet in securing more graduate student members. We also are working with current and soon-to-be appointed graduate student representatives to the American Dairy Science Association, American Society of Animal Science, American Meat Science Association, and Poultry Science Association to their graduate student organizations to enlist more to take the ARPAS qualifying exam.
• Highly Qualified Individuals (HQI). An alternate route to taking a qualifying exam for ARPAS membership was made available in fall 2022 for HQI individuals. There were some initial untimely delays in processing some nominees, but we have worked further to streamline the process. There are 23 new HQI members and about 10 in the queue. Sometimes the delay was by the Membership Committee in reviewing applications, but it also has been by nominees not completing the process in a timely manner—especially among academics.
• Sponsorship. All sponsors but one renewed from last year, and we added 3 new sponsors in 2024. The new 2024 sponsors are Cumberland Valley Analytical Services, Merck Animal Health, and Provita Supplements Inc. Thank you for your support, sponsors!