President’s Letter
IDEA Members,
I hope that you have all had a relaxing summer and a great start to your school year. New students, curriculum, equipment, etc., make for an exciting time of year for teachers and your IDEA organization was founded to support you and your students. The Fall Conference is fast approaching on Thursday October 27th and it will be a great opportunity to meet together, attend workshops, learn the latest and greatest software upgrades, and prepare ourselves to teach our students the 21st Century skills that they will need for their future success. The IDEA Fall Conference will once again be hosted at Turner Hall on the ISU campus. See our website to register and check out the program. Thanks to Mark Anderson, Dr. Mark Laingen, ISU, and the IDEA Board for offering another great fall workshop. We once again will be joining TEAI and participating in ITEC conference on Friday Oct 28th in Normal at the Marriott. New this year is an opportunity to be certified as an AutoCad user free of charge through Certiport.
Last year we unveiled the Engineering Design and Architectural Design Team contests at 4 Regionals and then brought those teams to state to compete. We crowned our inaugural state champions in each contest and generated a lot of enthusiasm and positive comments from students, parents, and teachers who observed their displays and presentations in Turner Hall. This year we hope to expand the contests to more regionals and schools. We are currently surveying Regional Directors to see if they would like to hosts these new contests. If you or your school is interested in participating please contact your Regional director. We will also be hosting a ED Design Brief and AD Charrette writing session at the Fall conference to create this year’s problems for release in December so teachers and students can begin work. One caveat we learned from last year is to remind you that your students can only compete in one contest at Regionals and State.
At the September Board meeting the Board updated our current website to allow it to be more easily used from computers and mobile devices. We are asking for your input as we move forward in its continued expansion. If you have an educational website or link that you think would benefit IDEA members click on the link and share it with us. We are now using Google Drive for competition, conference, and member registration as a way to streamline these processes and lessen the workload of the directors. 2015-16 was a test year and we believe we have most of the kinks corrected as we move forward. The Board voted to allow Dr. Laingen and the ISU graphics program to come up with some possible ideas for rebranding IDEA’s logo and maybe even our name, as many people do not know what the term ”Drafting” means in a modern world. More info will be coming out as we move forward with this initiative.
At the Fall Conference we will hold the annual membership meeting and elect 2 members to the Board. These members will serve a 2 year term and be able to serve in a number of capacities. Under our current system we will have 2 Members at Large/recruiting membership directors, a secretary, VP, and President. Please consider becoming a member of the Board. Contact any current Board member to express your interest. We sincerely hope that you will nominate a peer of yours to be the IDEA – R. Tim Phillip Award for Excellence in Drafting Education for 2016. We all work with many deserving individuals who are worthy of this award. Please submit a nomination by October 1st.
At 2012 Fall Conference the membership voted to fund $500/year Dr. Ryan Brown IDEA Scholarship. The third scholarship will be awarded this fall and the winner is Jordyn Imana from Hinsdale and she is a TEE major at ISU and a past participant in IDEA. The scholarship information and an application are posted each spring on our site. Please encourage your students to apply each year.
I hope that your year is off to a great start and that I see you at the IDEA Fall Conference or at ITEC.
Sincerely,
Steve Skorup
IDEA President
IDEA Calendar
- Regional Competition: March 3, 2017
- State Competition: April 22, 2017
- IDEA Fall Conference: October 27, 2016
- ITEC-IDEA Conference October 28-29, 2016