|
Tricia
Satkowski - President:
Greetings fellow BONUS members – new and returning! I
hope you all have gotten the New Year off to a GREAT start.
With each New Year, we have a time to set new goals and reprioritize
things in our lives – whether it is work, personal, or
other.
I missed the 20th Anniversary meeting in Washington, DC in
April 2005 for several reasons. I was awaiting a liver transplant
at the time and had been advised that I could not travel outside
of a 45 minute radius of the hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas
while I was waiting. As many of you are aware, I didn’t
receive my transplant in the spring – or the summer.
I received the call on November 11th and was transplanted
on November 12th. I have been restored to health thanks to
the skill of my surgeon and his talented staff, a generous
donor/donor family, and because of the wonderful support of
special friends and family members who helped me along the
way – in sickness and along the path back to health.
It was a very amazing process and has given me a lot to be
thankful for.
I know that every day we as business officers are faced with
challenges, whether they are in the work place or in our personal
lives. What we sometimes forget is how much we impact the
lives of other people – co-workers, faculty, staff, members
of the public, and students. So, it is up to us to make the
most of whatever it is our day has handed us! We as Business
Officers are LEADERS in our field! We need to rise to the
challenge of facing the day, being professional and personable
along the way!
Our 2006 conference theme this year is “Facing the Day,
Leading the Way”. As you are aware, our conference location
has changed from New Orleans to San Diego. The Steering Committee
was concerned that New Orleans might not be restored to working
conditions for a conference by April 2006 so we deferred our
meeting there until April 2007. We went with a “plan
b” because we thought it was in the best interest of
the conference participants and the conference itself. I hope
you all will be pleased with the location, amenities, and
the conference speakers and sessions that your steering committee
has been working on. We hope that everyone who comes –
and we are expecting RECORD numbers since our membership seems
to be at an all time high – will come away with something
– new information/knowledge, a new friend/acquaintance,
new energy! If you have any suggestions, please feel free
to contact me or one of the other officers. My email is TCSatkowski@uams.edu
I encourage each and every one of you to attend the conference
this year, participate in the sessions, submit a poster, bring
a friend, and come prepared to be filled with knowledge and
a GREAT time.
I look forward to seeing you all soon in SUNNY SAN DIEGO!
Deb Vogt - President Elect:
The months have flown by since our conference in Washington,
DC. The site was fantastic to celebrate BONUS’s 20th
anniversary. Plans are shaping up nicely for the April, 2006
conference that has been moved to San Diego due to the devastation
of Katrina. I am looking forward to this conference as well
as to the April, 2007 in New Orleans. I feel honored to serve
the members of BONUS as your President-elect this year. This
is a great organization with such outstanding talented people.
I would encourage members to consider running for office and/or
to volunteer for a committee. This is a great way to meet
more people and to assist with the annual meetings. I look
forward to seeing each of you in San Diego.
Rudy Gomez - Past President:
As the immediate past-president I want to take this opportunity
to once again thank all the hard-working bonus officers who
made the Bonus 20th Anniversary event so special and memorable.
We had a record attendance in DC and networking and sharing
of information was abundant, and in keeping with our theme.
It was truly a time for remembering the past, celebrating
the present, and through our discussions and topics, it was
apparent that we were ready to embrace the challenges of the
future. Over the past twenty years, I witnessed many changes
in nursing administration …..but one thing that remains
constant is the steadfast commitment in our nation’s
business officers whose tenacity to serve our deans, faculty
and students remains as strong as ever. We have always been
a dedicated, committed and loyal group whose purpose is to
foster and enhance our profession. In doing so, Bonus has
been able to retain its special character and unique culture
by providing a forum for building professional and personal
friendships that will last a lifetime even for those that
go on to other jobs. It is my hope that Bonus never strays
from this core value system, and to help insure this, I challenge
those of you who have been part of Bonus a while to consider
being a mentor to a first timer. Mentoring occurred for many
of us in the early years, but we did not call it mentoring---it
was just being there for each other. Perhaps it was a natural
response to a need to connect…..a need to share…..a
need to know that we were not alone in what each of us does
in the solitude of our respective schools. If this was your
first or second Bonus meeting, I am confident that you were
welcomed with open arms and are now ready to return for more.
Continue returning to the conferences year after year to recharge
and energize by building your own special bonds with fellow
business officers as I have been fortunate to do.
This was a very special time for me personally to have witnessed
Bonus’ evolution this past twenty years. I personally
had a grand time in DC and hope each of you did as well.
It took a tremendous amount of effort by the steering committee
chairs and committee members and I want to express my deep
appreciation for your time, dedication, and hard work.
I am looking forward to Bonus 21. Facing the day----leading
the way is one conference you won’t want to miss. This
is a very appropriate theme for the first program of our third
decade and our current steering committee is working hard
to make it an exciting, productive, and energizing conference
for all who attend.
Thank you again for allowing me the opportunity to have served
as your president. It has truly been an honor and privilege.
Bill Wachob - Planning Committee Chair
Not knowing how long it would take New Orleans to recover
from the recent hurricane and aftermath, we flip flopped conference
locations and dates so that our 2006 BONUS Annual Meeting
will be held in San Diego and the 2007 Annual Meeting will
be held in New Orleans. AACN was able to re-negotiate our
contract with the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street without
penalty and we look forward to the 2007 conference there.
For now, though, our sights are set on San Diego for 2006,
with the theme “Facing the Day, Leading the Way”.
In October, Steering Committee members met in San Diego to
plan the 2006 Annual Meeting and visit potential conference
sites. We selected a wonderful, relatively smaller, elegant
hotel for the conference, The
Westin Horton Plaza, which is centrally located in downtown
San Diego near national chain (e.g. Macy’s and Nordstrom),
just two blocks from the Gaslamp area containing some 200
local restaurants and scores of small shops, and about five
blocks from the water (though if you’re a surfer you’ll
have a longer trek to the beaches as the waterfront near the
downtown is taken up with the Convention Center, high rise
hotels, and a marina). We have identified a range of wonderful
restaurants for the small group dinners in the Gaslamp section
and a fine restaurant with excellent food and a great view
of San Diego for the large group dinner, Peohe’s, on
Coronado Island a short ferry boat ride across the water from
downtown.
The broad program outlines for our 2006 BONUS Annual Meeting
have been set. Several excellent keynote and motivational
speakers have been suggested and are being contacted, and
planning is proceeding on choosing program and breakout session
speakers on topics which tentatively include program costing,
IT, ethics and integrity, disaster preparedness, nursing entrepreneurship,
preparing for accreditation visits, and a poster session.
Most of our sessions are presented by our own BONUS colleagues
who have the experience, inspiration and motivation to share
their experience and know-how. After all, we are the ones
trained and experienced doing this all day-to-day and our
BONUS Annual Meeting is a wonderful national forum to present
and share our knowledge as well as to gain feedback and to
learn from our colleagues across the U.S.
While in many instances we have people in mind as presenters
or leaders for these various program sessions, in others we
are still identifying people to present. And even where we
have selected a leader, they may be seeking co-presenters,
so if you would like to speak on any of the above topics please
email or call me to let me know of your interest and experience.
This year we will again give away scores of door prizes and
will ask that everyone bring one premium from your school
which can be raffled to a colleague. Formal announcement of
this will be made over the listserv closer to the conference
date.
Finally, San Diego is a wonderfully diverse city with loads
of things to do, near the top of all U.S. cities in various
polls for favorite vacation and family vacation spots. If
you want to begin planning your trip you might consult with
AAA or any of the published guides like Fodor’s, and
also check out the following web sites:
San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau: http://www.sandiego.org/
Fodor’s Guide: http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/mgresults.cfm?destination=san_diego@136&cur_section=ove
Westin Hotel Site: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/search/hotel_detail.html?propertyID=1009
I look forward to seeing you all, former and new BONUS members
in San Diego!
Bill Wachob
BONUS Planning Committee Chair
Assistant Dean, School of Nursing, University at Buffalo
wachob@buffalo.edu
716/829-3261
Jodi Degennaro - Special Projects Chair:
Special Projects Committee
It has been a busy 7 months since we were together and I am
looking forward to seeing you all in April in San Diego. October
was the first time I had been there and was very impressed
with the city, our hotel, and the location. The Steering Committee
has been planning an informative and fun conference and I
know we’ll have a great time.
Special Projects has been quiet for a few months but has started
to pick up the pace. We are currently working on sponsorships
for the conference. If you know of a company that may be willing
to sponsor one of events, i.e., luncheon, continental breakfasts,
President’s reception, please send me an email with their
name, address and phone number. You can reach me at digennar@adelphi.edu.
The poster session at our conference has always been a successful
one. It is an optimum conduit for sharing your experiences/expertise
with your colleagues. If you have currently finished (or are
in the process of) a project and would like to share the process
with us through a poster presentation, please let me know.
Right now, the topics are open to the network. There are so
many different events happening in each of our schools, it’s
hard to pinpoint one topic for posters. A variety of topics
is always welcome…you’d be surprised how many other
business officers may be in “the same boat” as you
or approaching it….and would like to know how other schools
proceeded.
Lastly, I do keep an archive of all the past list serve questions
and their replies. If you have an inquiry that may have been
posted in the last few years and you would like to read the
replies, just let me know. I would be happy to email you the
set of emails. At some point, we would like to develop this
into a journal to access on-line but for now I would like
you all to know that it is available via email. Some of the
past topics have been faculty incentive, doctoral program,
background checks, job descriptions, budget cuts. Please don’t
hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
See you all in San Diego.
Dale Walker - Nominating Committee Chair:
Nominating Committee
Look for a "call for nominations" in mid February.
At the meeting in April we will be looking to elect the following
positions:
- President-Elect
- Planning Committee Chair
- Membership Committee Chair
- Special Projects Committee Chair
Please be thinking about who you might want to nominate.
|
