Throughout the Club’s strategic planning process and feedback sessions, the need to evaluate our committee structure and succession planning was a consistent topic. The scope of this work falls into the category of Increasing Our Ability to Adapt within the RCAA’s strategic plan.

A workgroup has been organized consisting of Dawn Johnson, Rob Shiff, Susan Shipman, and Kathy Waugh to organize pertinent information for this process. A template has been developed that will identify the goals of the committee, the roles and responsibilities (job descriptions), succession planning, and other logistics including communication platforms and archival procedures. The workgroup will also ascertain whether there are committee procedures that should be linked to the RCAA policies and also if it should be identified as a committee or a project team. The RCAA has specific bylaws for committees and leadership tenure and in some instances, there may be value in identifying work within a project team title.

The goal of the workgroup is to gather this information in a format that can be easily updated as changes occur, but also to consolidate it for strategic planning purposes, and to increase transparency for our membership as to the work the committees do and what the committee roles entail. If we facilitate a better understanding of the many facets of RCAA, we increase the opportunities to strengthen our succession planning and efficiencies as a club.

The workgroup will be contacting Directors and Committee Chairs for Committee information and input in the upcoming weeks. We will also be providing updates on different platforms including strategic planning sessions that will be scheduled in January 2027.

Thank you in advance for your support of this initiative and please contact Dawn Johnson or any member of the project team with questions, dawnlynn@umich.edu.