SEGS

Save the Date – more info to come: 

Feb 25/26 - 2012 SEGS Annual Meeting and Field Trip to Florida Caverns State Park, Marianna FL.

- NEW – Fall 2011 newsletter – click here

Elections completed for 2012 SEGS Officers 

- ballot initiative passes for membership dues -

Congratulations to the incoming Executive Committee officers for the SEGS in 2012!  Marc Hurst of Winter Haven, FL has been elected as Society President, and he is joined by Vice President John Herbert of Gainesville, and Harley Means has been reelected to the post of Secretary-Treasurer to complete the lineup of incoming officers. Past President Andy Lawn will also be active on the Executive Committee board, and a special thanks is extended to Roger Portell for serving as SEGS vice president last year. Roger was instrumental in facilitating special field trips, and we are fortunate to have his continued support and involvement in the coming year. Plans are already in the works for the 2012 annual business meeting and field trip, as well as many other possible field trip events this year.

In addition to the officers elections, the ballot question to enact a modest increase to the membership dues has been approved by a super-majority of active members.  Thank you everybody for your participation, we appreciate the continued support and involvement with the SEGS, and will continue to make our society beneficial to its members.

2011 Annual Meeting recap 

We had a great meeting and field trip  for the 2011 society Annual Meeting event. A healthy-sized  group arrived at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FMNH) on the University of Florida campus that Saturday morning to meet our hosts and take a guided tour of the museum exibits. The afternoon time was spent at the Haile Quarries in Newberry where Roger Portell, SEGS Vice President and FMNH invertabrate collections manager, explained the multitude of important and significant fossil discoveries across the property. Everybody got some up close and personal rock-hammering time with the Ocala Limestone in the quarries, enough to satisfy the field geologist-at-heart in all of us who spend most of our time in front of a computer screen these days. 

The evening business meeting included a catered dinner at the FMNH, exclusive access to the museum exibits, and a very interesting dinner presentation by Dr. Richard Hulbert on the Haile Quarry fossil vertabrate fauna. Quite an unbelieveable and rich treasure trove of Pliestocene skeletons! A wrap up of the business meeting was conducted by society president Andy Lawn, with a discussion of our accomplisments over the past year and a half, and what can be done further to improve SEGS in continuing  to serve the geological community. More details of this and other society happenings will be posted with the 2011 SEGS newsletter in August. Thanks again to the Executive Committee for organizing the annual meeting and special thanks again to Roger and the museum for the hospitality.  

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SEGS Constitution Revisions Approved

The proposed revisions to the Constitution and Bylaws for the SEGS have been approved by our members, and will go into effect for 2011. By a margin of 98% of the votes cast on the October 2010 ballot, revisions to how the Society will now conduct business were approved by our members. A second ballot question, asking SEGS members for an increase in the annual dues, did not meet the two-thirds super majority approval for adoption, but a return of 58% indicated our members may be receptive to a dues increase in the future. For now the Executive Committee will continue to improve the benefits and services to our members, and this question may be revisited at another time. We are pleased to have our Constitution and Bylaws updated so we can move the Society forward and keep working on rebuilding our membership rolls. Thank you everybody for particpating in the voting!

The new constitution that was revised by the 2010 Executive Committee makes changes to how the society conducts business, including the make up of the Executive Committee, the official fiscal year of the SEGS, and how we will communicate with our members in the future. Old provisions in the Society constitution required mailout ballots for elections, and other business correspondence, which is cumbersome and expensive to do. We will be working in 2011 to accomplish most of this electronically via the SEGS website and by email correspondence. The Society newsletters will likely also be distributed by email and posted on the website, although there may still be a few members who wish to have it mailed to them, which we will try to accommodate.  As always, we want to know what you think, so please don’t hesitate to contact us and we will post the comments we receive, where appropriate. Thank you for your continued interest in the SEGS, and we hope to see many of you next year at our Annual Meeting and field trip events!