Check out the April 2022 Section Meeting!
Friday, May 20, 2022
Dear Members,
I'm writing to update you on several developments concerning your Section.
First, as a result of the recent resignation of our previous President, Doug Rothenberg, from the ISA Cleveland Board, I have assumed the duties of the presidency early to fulfill the remaining two months of Doug's term as stated in Article II, Section 5b of our current Constitution and Bylaws.
Second, it is with great sadness that I inform you of the recent passing of our friend, Joe Kaulfersch, who has been very active in Instrumentation and Controls and made many contributions to our Section and to Section Leadership. He was our Section President in 1993 - 1994, 2006 - 2007,
and most recently in 2019 - 2020. He held many other leadership positions through his many years of membership.
There will be no public services for Joe. Instead, donations in Joe's Memoriam can be made to the Berea Animal Rescue Fund (Berea ARF) at 10015 East River Road, Columbia Township OH 44028, phone 440-234-2034, or online at Berea Animal Rescue. The Berea ARF is a registered 501(c)(3) Organization.
Next, from a Section Programming perspective, COVID-19 is continuing to prove to be a challenge. While you would think that the shift to our second year of being flexible from a scheduling perspective, including the opportunity to conduct meetings virtually and increased accessibility to
potential presenters on a variety of topics would be helpful from a technical programming perspective, it has proven just the opposite. While we know that work/life demands can change, we've had to cancel several of our meetings due to presenter unavailability, including our May Section
Program which we had planned to be hybrid.
We continue to face these three big challenges as Doug stated so eloquently in his message at the beginning of this year.
(1) Recruiting and preparing Section leaders
(2) Diminishing Section membership numbers
(3) Steadily diminishing Section treasury
While we are working towards trying to find solutions for these issues, we are by no means there yet. It will be a multi-year process full of creative thinking and hard decisions that will need to be made.
As we come out of COVID-19 isolation, if you think you might be able to help your Section and are interested in serving as a committee chair or officer, we have a number of openings that we will be posting soon. Please watch our ISA Connect page for details on these positions. We'd be
pleased to hear from you if you have any suggestions on technical programs that you'd like to see presented in the coming year.
Finally, I'm pleased to announce the following ISA Cleveland Section Officers have been elected for the upcoming 2022 - 2023 Fiscal Year:
President: Ryan Kassinger
President-Elect/Program Chair: Harriet Radvansky
Treasurer: Donald R. Ondrejka
Secretary: Sherry LaBonne
Delegate: Debashis Sadhukhan
As I recently told the Board, this past year has been difficult for all of the right reasons. Together, let's hit the reset button and start now to work to creatively figure this out while providing interesting and useful programming at the same time, rather than waiting until our next fiscal year
which begins on July 1st.
I, along with the rest of our board, look forward to sharing this challenge with you. Will you join us in invigorating our section?
Ryan Kassinger
Ryan Kassinger
President, International Society of Automation, Cleveland Section
You can also view program updates by following us on: Facebook or LinkedIn or MeetUp or ISAConnect
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and ongoing support of the Cleveland Section.