Professional qualifications and AIC

I would like to respond to Mr. McCall's thoughts and concerns about
the AIC and certification.

I truly understand your concerns and your situation in all this as I
could be counted among the passengers on that same boat in regards
to "qualifications". But I would like to state that although there
are voices of those who are obviously elitist oriented and who seek
exclusion within the profession, and that often their voices can
seem the loudest, that I have the utmost confidence and trust in
those who are in the leadership of the AIC and in the Certification
process.

The AIC Board has an outstanding array of genuinely talented and
thoughtful people, and for several years the Board has really been
striving for more and more inclusion amongst the membership--not
less. The Chair of the Certification Task Force, Terry
Drayman-Weisser, has really made an effort in keeping the process
transparent and in inviting opinion and commentary from anyone.

Not only are all of these people intelligent and organized, but they
are among the nicest and most supportive colleagues I know.

The AIC is one of the very few professional organizations where you
can send an e-mail or get on the phone with any member of the Board
or a Committee Chair and get an actual response.

Nothing about certification has been decided other than the fact
that the vote last fall allows the AIC to continue to "develop" it.

I wish you had been to the issues session at the recent AIC meeting.
They organized small "Break-out" groups to discuss five key issues,
certification being one of them. All of the leaders of these
discussion groups asked for volunteers to sign-up to participate in
helping them in their endeavors. I actually wish that more time had
been allotted so that we could attend more than just one of the
groups.

What is most important to say here, is that if you resign your
membership without ever having given voice to your concerns, or to
strive to make positive change within the AIC through some sort of
participation, then has the AIC abandoned you or have you abandoned
it?

There will always be those who "look down" on others, for whatever
reason, and those who "look up". It is a constant of human social
interchange. My personal philosophy is to accept that fact and not
let those looking down at me looking up disturb me in the least.

David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch Street
Denver, CO  80222
303-300-5257


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 17:3
                   Distributed: Friday, June 20, 2003
                        Message Id: cdl-17-3-001
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