It is my pleasure to be the bearer of good news for SEA.  Particularly encouraging is news regarding our membership.  Traditionally, SEA membership has experienced a slow, steady incline.  This year our membership escalated by a whopping 17 percent!  Two-thirds of our new members came from institutions with existing faculty members of SEA.  One-third of our new members, however, came from institutions that had no faculty members of SEA.

 A partial explanation could be that current members of SEA may be relocating to institutions under-represented in SEA; another is the transition of chairs throughout the country.  SEA sponsored no publicity campaign.  Therefore the most plausible explanation for our increase in membership was a result of networking — meaning you, our members, are happy with the services, products and benefits SEA membership offers, and  you are spreading the word of SEA to your colleagues.  I shall reiterate the presidential position statement I made prior to being elected: “Broadening our membership, so more residency programs are represented will foster cooperation and empower SEA to undertake more encompassing projects.” 

Some more good news is that we had the highest attendance ever at our 2007 Annual Spring Meeting, which was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Implementing Innovations for the New Century: Educating Adults” markedly surpassed past records.  Not only did we immediately fill the first hotel we booked, but we also needed to scramble to secure a second hotel that was filled to capacity as well.  Despite this, we still had 22 walk-in registrations.  Laudatory praise goes to Program Chair Janet K. Brierley, M.B., B.S., for a phenomenal job.  Incredibly, she managed to recruit enough speakers to offer 16 workshops, enabling anyone who attended the meeting to find topics pertinent to their academic role.  This is a difficult feat to accomplish for any spring meeting program chair given our membership’s diverse needs, talents and experience.  In fact, as a consequence of this meeting, SEA will introduce a new framework to our meetings.  The format will offer relevant topics appealing to the broad spectrum of academic positions, but they will be structured to enable members with similar interests to discuss solutions to shared problems.   

Another project that skyrocketed was the Leadership Development Program for Chief and Senior Residents.  The SEA Board of Directors elected to pilot this project as a result of Abbott Laboratories canceling their Chief Resident Symposium.  The intention was to keep attendance low until the kinks could be worked out and to determine the amount of interest it would generate.  We decided to announce the project to our members via e-mail and then send out an announcement to all the members of  the Society of Academic Anesthesiology Chairs (SAAC)/Association of Anesthesiology Program Directors (AAPD).  The response to the first and only e-mail we sent to our members was overwhelming.  We realized we had to expand the program to accommodate the high number of telephone calls made requesting additional slots for their residents.  We finally drew the line at 36 (based on past experience with attendance at our Workshop on Teaching Program) and had to generate a waiting list.  Fortunately the program encountered only minor glitches and was rated very high by all its attendees.  I am very grateful to Melissa Davidson, M.D., and Jean Simonson, M.D., who did an outstanding job with helping me to launch this project. 

Another first for SEA is that our booth will be on the main floor of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Exhibit Hall at the ASA 2007 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  In the past, SEA has had a small booth in the poster section that was difficult to find.  It received very few visits for the expense outlaid.  This year, however, SEA has purchased a booth out on the highly trafficked main floor of the ASA Exhibit Hall.  This is a significant expense to SEA, but the Board of Directors opted to make the investment to determine its value to our Society.  We believe that having a booth on the main floor will provide visibility and awareness of SEA’s accomplishments and benefits. It will stimulate interest and create an increased awareness of SEA activities among our allied societies, representatives of industry and anesthesiologists from every institution.

Increased exposure also makes SEA vulnerable. I have appointed a presidential task force consisting of Ira Todd Cohen, M.D., Susan Cymbor, M.D., and Scott A. Schartel, D.O., to ensure that people walk away with an appropriate impression of SEA.  They are to be congratulated for working very hard at organizing the contents of the booth, creating a visitor tracking system and providing the booth staffing to ensure its success. 

In conclusion, I would like to report that there have been many individual members of SEA who have approached me with marvelous ideas that they would like to develop under the auspices of SEA.  There also are numerous intriguing initiatives being originated by the members working on SEA committees.  I am looking forward to informing all of you about these new projects in my next report.  Until then I am requesting that all SEA committee chairs update the reports they provide to our Board of Directors and place them on the SEA Web site www.seahq.org to provide you with a sneak preview. I am very excited by each of these new developments on the horizon.

SEA is an organization that unites professionals with a passion for anesthesiology education and encourages them to share ideas and create new strategies that impact the quality of anesthesiology training. It is my privilege to serve every single dedicated member of SEA as your President. 

Thank you,

Kathy D. Schlecht, D.O.
SEA President