From the Immediate Past President
December 2009
Dear CLTA Members,
I am very proud to have served as CLTA President during such an exciting time in the life of our Association. Our goals for the past year were to establish closer ties with the regional CLTAs, increase the number of member financial awards, ensure that our 2009 annual conference would run smoothly, and set up closer working relations with our sister organization — the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-elementary Schools (CLASS).
Thanks to the combined efforts of the members of our Association, I feel we performed well in achieving our goals. We succeeded in formulating a set of principles relating the national and regional CLTA organizations, thanks to the efforts of Claudia Ross, Cathy Wei and Adam Ross. New, continuing and increased award support was gained thanks to the benevolence of Cheng & Tsui, China Sprout and other generous funding sources. The marvelous success of this year’s conference owes to the capable hands of Janet Xing and Sharon Wen, and our joint CLTA/CLASS Forum — at which CLASS President Chaomeng Yuan and I presided over presentations of K-12 and post-secondary articulation — served as a testament to our close positive working relation with CLASS.
I wish to extend a hearty welcome to CLTA’s new Executive Board members Derlin Chao, Julia Kessel, Sue-Mei Wu and John Jing-hua Yin, and my heartfelt thanks go to our retiring Board members Qinghai Chen, Chu Chengzhi, Audrey Li, Madeline Spring and Xiaohong Sharon Wen for all their service. I am confident that our new Executive Director Yea-Fen Chen and incoming Vice President Chuanren Ke are more than equal to the tasks that lay ahead of them, and last but certainly not least, I offer a great vote of thanks to CLTA’s outgoing Executive Director Cyndy Ning.
In passing the CLTA leadership gavel to Dr. Claudia Ross, I feel I am leaving our CLTA in the capable hands of a leader who is extraordinarily competent, has an visionary view of where our Association should be headed and has the best interests of our organization at heart. I have tried to leave our organization in good stead to implement Claudia’s vision. I am sure that, a year from now, we will all feel confident that such was indeed the case.
Sincerely,
Jerry Packard