Last year at the 1998 Spring Meeting I outlined five goals for the coming year. Let me share with you the progress we have made on each of them.

Goal 1. Reorganize Committees. This has been completed even though the old committee and working group structure is still posted on our web site. There are no more Working Groups. The Issues and Evaluation Committee, chaired by the President-Elect, Norm Nesheim, has been charged to look at our role in implementing the Food Quality Protection Act.

Pat Hipkins sent a notice to all committee chairs to complete and send in committee reports. I will need these for my final report to you next August. They will then be posted on our web site. I have also asked committee chairs to create a folder they can pass on to their successor. We need institutional memory to make the same committee process more effective.

There are several new committees including Strategic Planning and T&O Service Tech Committee. The Membership and Public Relations committees were combined as were the Recognition and Resolutions Committee. There are no ad hoc committees at this time.

Goal 2. Register and become incorporated as a Non-Profit - Incorporation required that we change the Constitution to an Articles of Incorporation and amend the By-Laws accordingly. That was completed last year when we successfully conducted an electronic vote. Thank you Gene Burgess. In addition to having AAPSE registered in the state of Washington, Carol Ramsay completed and submitted our application to be recognized as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Carol discussed the status of our application with the IRS on Monday to assure them we were an educational organization

Goal 3.Establish more partnerships - I intended to work more closely with the other (3d) extension programs such as PIAP, EFNEP, Water Quality, Food Safety and IPM. Other than explaining who and what AAPSE is to the NPL's for these programs, I have not moved to establish a significant working relationship with any of them.

AAPSE became a Supporter of EPA's Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program. Sara Agar, a new AAPSE member, agreed to serve as EPA's liaison to our Association on matters related to PESP. Sara works in EPA's Certification and Worker Protection Branch.

Mary Grodner continued to effectively represent AAPSE as our liaison with AAPCO. Jim Criswell served as our liaison to ASPCRO. Both members deserve our thanks. Finally, Brian Swingle was appointed by AAPCO to serve as their official liaison to AAPSE. I think we've got the bases covered.

Jake Mackenzie invited AAPSE to help plan EPA's annual Comprehensive PREP courses specifically designed to bring extension Pesticide Coordinators and SLA Certification Managers together to promote understanding, more effective communication and better working relationships. If you haven't participated yet, contact Dr. MacKenzie. He'll be glad to hear from you.

Amy Brown agreed to be AAPSE's liaison to EPA's National Strategy for Pesticides and Health Care Providers. She serves on the Resource Working Group, one of three working groups (Education and Continuing Education being the other two).

I believe our partnership with EPA and our regulatory partners has been successful as we now have at least 14 EPA members and a good number of SLA members. I have asked the membership committee to examine the issue of amending the Articles and By-Laws to allow SLA members to become full members. Marcia Mulkey said we were beyond partnerships, we were family. Well, I look forward to our regulatory members becoming part of the family.

Goal 4. Promote Professional Improvement - Last year we conducted three concurrent training sessions in conjunction with the Spring Meeting. Norm Nesheim and I are already talking about what sort of professional improvement training we can schedule for next Spring. It was suggested that we ask Dr. Andrew Hewitt to repeat the workshop he just completed in Florida on nozzles and nozzle selection. If you have other deas for professional improvement training let Norm know about them.

Perhaps my most ambitious effort to promote professional improvement is related to a proposal to conduct a feasibility study to establish Pesticide Safety Education Centers at three Land Grant Institutions; one in the East, one in the mid-west and one in the West. Briefly, these centers would provide training for PAT trainers and certification managers, particularly new hires to the programs. One thing that surprised me when visiting with you at your regional meetings and working on the GPRA was the number of county agents involved in your program. The qualifications, knowledge and abilities of these and any other extension staff who conduct or participate in PAT are absolutely essential to the success of the Pesticide Applicator Certification and Training program.

In my AAPSE Update I mentioned that the American Crop Protection Association, EPA and the University of California's NIH funded Ag Health and Safety Program had committed funds to conducting the feasibility study. I had hoped that a member of ACPA could have been here today to present their donation ($10,000) to this project.

I hope to initiate the feasibility study in June and have the final report completed in time for the August meeting in Maine. Because the Pesticide Safety Education Center is such a critical component of our draft Strategic Plan, members who will be asked to conduct the feasibility study will also be asked to serve on the Strategic Planning Committee. Please note in the minutes from last year's meeting that several members and non-members were tentatively asked to serve on the Strategic Planning Committee. That list is very likely to change. Please let me know if you are interested in serving.

Goal 5.Outreach - Closely related to Profession Improvement is Outreach. In fact, I wasn't sure just where some outreach efforts such as the Pesticide Education / Internet Committee should be listed, since it really could be mentioned in three different initiatives.

Last year I asked Mike Weaver, Carol Ramsay, Larry Schulze and Paul Guillebeau to serve on a Pesticide Education / Internet Committee. We'll have a report from that committee later this morning. I think you'll like what you hear.

Also, Paul Baker agreed to chair the Turf and Ornamental Service Technician committee to write educational articles for T&O Service Tech, a bimonthly trade journal. AAPSE agreed to endorse the magazine as a "recommended source of educational materials."

That concludes my status report. Let me now take a few moments to comment on a fewer other issues of importance to AAPSE.

National Program Leader Position --Dr. John Impson has indicated that he will be retiring later this year or early next year. AAPSE considers his position to be essential to the PAT program and will write a letter to the CSREES administrator urging that early recruitment be initiated to allow the new NPL to overlap with Dr. Impson. Leaving the position vacant is a disservice to our program and the people it serves.

National Pesticide Applicator Certification and Training Workshop --Unlike past National C&T Workshops, the 1999 AAPSE Business Meeting will not be held in the evening, rather it will be conducted on Tuesday afternoon. Most of us were physically and mentally exhausted at earlier Workshops when the meetings were scheduled in the evening. In fact, as I recall a significant number of our members had difficulty getting to the meeting at all due to dinner delays. As your representative on the planning committee I wanted to make sure we had time to meet and eat dinner.

Certification and Training Assessment Group (CTAG)--Some of you may recall that it was under Mary Grodner's leadership that AAPSE asked USDA and EPA to initiate a review of training and certification programs. That request resulted in a project that brought many of us together for the first time.

I would like to personally thank those of you who took an active role in conducting and analyzing the CTAG survey and creating the final report issued in January. The report is listed on the AAPSE web site thanks to Jeanne Heying and Mike Weaver. I hope all of you have had time to read it and will provide written comments to Jeanne before April 30. Please note that AAPSE is specifically mentioned in several of the proposals. Regardless of what you may think about some of the proposals, I think the report is the most comprehensive assessment of the PAT/C program in the 25 years of its existence. Its proposals range from the obvious to the most ambitious.

I would like to take a moment to recognize several individuals for their contribution to this project. Amy Brown did an incredible job of collating all the surveys in time for our review in December 1997. She and other co-leads, some of whom served on short notice, did a wonderful job making sense out of a mountain of data. I would also like to recognize Jeanne Heying from EPA Headquarters and Richard Pont, from EPA Region IV for staying with this project and making sure it didn't die along the way. Kevin Keaney and John Impson deserve our thanks for finding the time and resources to get the assessment initiated.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you for taking time from your busy schedules to participate in what at times were difficult if not contentious discussions. I think this project helped build bridges between SLA Certification Managers and extension Pesticide Coordinators. Your efforts made a difference. I hope you consider your experience worthwhile.

Strategic Planning-The AAPSE Update presented at the 1999 Spring Meeting focused on where I think AAPSE should be moving. Until I spent a year in Washington, I didn't realize what tremendous opportunities we have to make a difference. Believe it or not, the C&T review created the opportunity to develop the Strategic Plan. At present, the Strategic Plan is only a draft. It needs your input and when the time comes, your commitment. I hope to deliver a more polished version when we meet again in August.

This has been a busy year. Busy or not, I would be remiss if I didn't thank those of you who helped me when I asked you. I couldn't have accomplished a thing without you. And let me thank those who challenged my ideas and made me rethink them. Together we have accomplished much. Together we have much left to accomplish. Mahalo nui loa.