Following our CASDW-ACR AGM, I’d like to welcome our new President, Dana Landry. Dana’s energetic two-year term as Vice-President and Conference Chair gave us a terrific conference in Vancouver last year. Many thanks to Dana and the organizing team who worked so hard on planning this spring’s conference, some of which we will get to experience next year in Edmonton, Alberta.

I’d also like to welcome the newly elected and continuing members of our executive:

• Vice-President & Conference Chair: Joel Heng Hartse of Simon Fraser University, whom you know as co-editor (with Sibo Chen, Ryerson University) of our journal, Canadian Journal for the Study of Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie
• Journal Co-editors: Kim Mitchell of Red River College and Sean Zwagerman of Simon Fraser University
• Secretary: Sarah Banting, Mount Royal University
• Communications Officer: Matthew Falconer
• Treasurer: Brock MacDonald, University of Toronto
• Graduate Student Representative: Britt Amell, Carleton

Thanks to the outgoing members of the executive: Rachael Cayley, Communications Officer; Kim Mitchell, Secretary; Sara Doody, Graduate Student Representative; and Sarah King, ex-officio Canadian Writing Centre Association (CWCA) Board Member.

A highlight of this year’s AGM was presenting the awards for the Joan Pavelich best dissertation and the best article/chapter. At the AGM we voted to name the best article/chapter award in honour of the late Doreen Starke-Meyerring, who was a former CASDW-ACR President; a longtime member; a distinguished scholar; and much beloved teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend.

It has been an honour leading CASDW-ACR for the past two two years and chairing our conference as Vice-President for two years before that. During this time we added a graduate student position to the executive and reconfigured the conference to make it more collaborative event and introduce new types of sessions. Another highlight has been building closer links to sister organizations such as ACUTE and CWCA, through multi-organization conference forums, the exchange of ex-officio board positions, and other collaborative undertakings such as the revision of the Statement on Writing Centres and Staffing, which CWCA has been developing with involvement from CASDW-ACR.

I am heartened to leave CASDW-ACR in the hands of the new executive, including journal editors, Kim Mitchell and Sean Zwagerman, who will no doubt continue the excellent work undertaken by Joel and Sibo to build and sustain our journal. Speaking of which, the current issue has an outstanding article by our own Rachael Cayley on the supervisory practices of doctoral writers.

CASDW-ACR is poised to thrive under Dana’s enthusiastic and capable leadership; her goal to make our organization more inclusive is a timely one.

Enjoy your summer and hope to see you next year at our conference in Edmonton.

Sincerely,

Andrea L. Williams