Announcements

Dear ISA Southeast TX Section Members,

We sincerely hope that you and your families have been able to stay safe during this seemingly, never-ending, Covid health crisis. At the beginning of the summer, our board had big plans and were sure things would be back to “normal” this fall. There were joyful thoughts of going back to regular meetings in a banquet room of one of our ISA-friendly restaurants. However, since those banquet rooms can sometimes get packed and “normal” is still not quite within our grasp, we decided to go with a hybrid format for the kick-off meeting. For those who have been vaccinated and feel comfortable attending an in-person event, Vector is hosting a limited capacity, on-site dinner/technical meeting. For those people not comfortable with an on-site meeting, the technical event will also be hosted concurrently on-line as a Teams meeting.

You may or may not have noticed that there has been an officer shuffle. We did suffer a blow to our ranks; losing two officers. But in the case of our outgoing President, Nancy Vargas, this was as a result of a blissfully, busy prior year® she got married last fall and is now expecting a child! With all of her recent, personal “growth”, Nancy has decided to step down as President. So I have agreed to take a 3-step promotion to President, from Treasurer (Yay for me!). We were able to recruit former board member, Darlene Johnson, as Secretary, and a young, new member, Dante Romano, as the new Treasurer. Thankfully, Max Shiff has agreed to stick around as Vice-President, along with most of our other board members; and in her role as Past President, Nancy will still be on the board to help out and give advice. On behalf of the section, I would like to thank Nancy for all the good work she did in her time as President. Among some of her accomplishments was giving us a Social Media presence and building on our affiliation with Lamar University. As our Scholarship Endowment fund is very important to the section, one last thing Nancy did as President was work with Lamar to get a new Student Liaison named ® Dr. Kelley Bradley.  

Speaking of the Scholarship Endowment fund, the section decided to disperse $6000 to Lamar University for this fall and Dr. Bradley is facilitating the scholarship selection process. Dr. Bradley has evidently already started working with potential ISA student members as some have offered to volunteer with our section. We are planning to have a Golf Tournament this spring and an EXPO next summer so hopefully they will still want to help then!

We are always looking for ideas/involvement from local ISA members. If you would like to get involved, PLEASE contact someone from the board at a meeting or click on the link to their email below. Or you can send an email to isasetx@gmail.com. We can definitely use help to lead the section’s main efforts which are to support the local automation community and provide scholarships for Lamar University students.

Thanks!

Kaylynn Johnston