New Foundations for CMS

williams_david This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , CMS President
Illinois State University, Emeritus

Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the CMS Membership, San Diego, November 2012

Last year's report to the Society was entitled "The Wealth of the Society." I offered five intangible assets that contribute to the "wealth" of CMS and to our collective "quality of professional life" as CMS members. Those assets are:

1. Diversity of our membership
2. Ecumenical or all-inclusive spirit of collaboration
3. Openness to embrace change and innovation in our programming
4. Willingness to use technology to support and enhance all that we do
5. Strength of our spirit of volunteerism and leadership

We also have a tangible collection of assets: the financial, content and information, and membership resources of the Society

Reports from our treasurer, secretary, and the president of The CMS Fund will give us an update on these tangible assets elsewhere in the 2012 Annual Report.

NEW FOUNDATIONS FOR CMS

Robby Gunstream, Executive Director of The College Music Society, and I chatted about the message I might offer for the annual "State of the Society" report. What evolved from our conversation was an awareness of what we might call "new foundations" for CMS. Those new foundation are:

  • Strategic Planning
  • Advocacy
  • Technology

Let me briefly elaborate on each "foundation" as a way to frame the State of the Society message this year.

STRATEGIC PLANNING FOUNDATION

Starting with the leadership of Cynthia Taggart, CMS President 2009-2010, we began a multi-year strategic visioning process that included:

  • Survey of the Membership
  • Development, vetting, and adoption of a Strategic Vision Plan 2016
  • Establishment of an annual method for review and strategic goal setting (The Quick Starts)

This process establishes a "new planning foundation" for the Society upon which to build our future vision for CMS. Such strategic grounding ensures that the core mission of the Society continues through changing leadership roles and committee memberships. It also provides a blueprint for the day-to-day operations and decision making of the Executive Office.

I am pleased to report that we successfully completed the majority of our Quick Starts for 2011-2012 and we are well on our way with a new set of Quick Starts for 2012-2013. More on the Quick Starts progress in a moment. But, suffice it to say that our "new strategic planning foundation" is on firm ground and working well.


ADVOCACY FOUNDATION

Our national topic for this past year was "ADVOCATE!" The term "advocacy" can mean many things. We've seen this in the variety of ways the topic has been addressed in our regional meetings, our national conference in San Diego, and in the very first CMS webinar on advocacy held online, November 9th with some 35 members in attendance. 

I hold a broad view of what "advocacy" means. We are not very good as a professional organization at beating on trash can lids, picketing, wearing sandwich boards and the like.

I see "advocacy" for CMS as any initiative that builds connections and partnerships through groups from within the academy or to organizations from without—those groups whose mission shares a common ground with ours. CMS advocacy is rooted in our professional scholarship broadly defined. Perhaps advocacy for us, as Robby Gunstream shared with me, is about "engagement" through our professional work. This is something we have found in the past few years that we excel at as an organization.

From Without the Society. There are two major initiatives reflected in the Quick Starts for last year and this year that reflect advocacy from WITHOUT the Society: (1) developing alliances with other organizations and (2) reaching out globally with our new international ambassador program.

CMS has maintained alliances with organizations such as NASM, PKL, ATMI, and SMTE for many years. We began to expand our alliances last year through new relationships with Imagining America (thanks to the work of the Community Engagement committee) and with NAMM (a relationship that began with our Summit in Anaheim this past January and continues with the work of the Business & Industry committee). NAMM stands for the National Association of Music Merchants. We have great expectations for this relationship and we continue to work with the NAMM leadership as a key bridge to careers outside the academy.

In addition, past events have set the stage for our next Summit on the "Developing the Artist Citizen" on the SMU campus in Dallas in January 2013. Bill Everett as the Summit chair person and his program committee have arranged an impressive list of participants including Jose Antonio Bowen, Eric Booth, Robert Blocker, Joseph Polisi, Kevin Bott from Imaging America, Gigi Antoni from Big Thought, people from Playing for Change, and more. This cast of participants is an excellent example of our advocacy foundation working to build new partnerships and alliances from without the Society.

After many years of false starts, it is exciting to report that the CMS international ambassadors initiative is finally launched (thanks to our International Initiatives Committee). We have some 43 inaugural ambassadors who have agreed to serve as representatives to a host of countries. We need more to fill in our global advocacy map! We need more volunteers who have expertise in as many world countries or regions of countries as possible.

From Within the Society. Turning now to advocacy from WITHIN the Society. When the 2008 economy tanked, we had a significant drop in membership. Rebuilding our membership is now a high priority for our organization.
Our new "advocacy foundation" provides the framework for building membership "within" at the campus, regional, and national levels through student initiatives (with our Student Affairs Council), and career mentoring for both young professionals and aspiring administrators (through collaboration between our Career Mentoring and Administration and Leadership committees). One major population we lost in membership is those members engaged in careers outside the academy. This latter group is the impetus for our new Careers Outside the Academy committee and the critical importance of our relationship with NAMM.


The sequence of Trotter lectures beginning in 2010 is a wonderful reflection on our "advocacy foundation" both from within and without. We began with our own David Myers in Minneapolis to lay the ground work; followed by Ben Cameron last year in Richmond with his broad and persuasive arts view of the "artist citizen;" then this year, Joe Lamond, signified a new and exciting relationship with NAMM and the music industry; and next year, in Cambridge/Boston, I am pleased to announce, our Trotter speaker will be Dr. Joan Tower, noted woman composer, performer, and academic—a excellent speaker in fitting with our national topic of "inclusivity and invention." Inclusiveness from within and without the Society is also a key component to advocacy and likewise reflected in a Quick Start for this year.

TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATION

The third "new foundation" is the "technology foundation." As Robby Gunstream describes it, our old technology foundation--built in 1995 by the way--was like an old wood-framed house. We could add onto it laterally, but if we added new stories above the structure it would quickly collapse! So enter the new and improved "titanium" CMS technology foundation. Actually, the super structure stuff of the new technology foundation is called "Joomla."
We've a long way to go but the first few floors built on this new foundation are exciting. Key is the ability to deliver CMS content in many ways to fit your personal preference in how you want to access the organizations' publications, news, resources and more. A few of the new resources to note:

  • CMS Website: In case you haven't noticed there is a total new look and navigation to the website and built so that it is content independent and infinitely flexible—write once and publish in many ways. That Joomla super stuff really works!
  • E-Publications: The new e-publication framework based on this foundation is already in use for the monthly "updates" and the CMS "reports," and soon in use for the new Symposium ensemble of publications. The Symposium is ready to accept submissions so feel free to go to its new home on the CMS website and select "Call for Contributions."
  • GooglePlayStoreScreenShotTablet and smartphone apps: We announced the first CMS iPhone app last year at the national conference, the iPad update was released the first of the year, and now we are pleased to announce the availability of an Android version. We have also made use of the Guidebook app and provided conference session management from your smartphone or tablet. The Android app is available through the Google Play Store and all the apps are free of charge.

We now have a strong and flexible foundation to replace the old log cabin! We appreciate your patience as we begin to build new floors on this foundation. Please provide your feedback to help guide us as we add new features and resources to our CMS technology enterprise.

QUICK START OVERVIEW

So there we have it: three "new foundations" all very much interconnected and emerging from the mission critical strategic visioning process over the past four years. Having personally participated in several strategic planning efforts over my career, and seen the plans collect dust on a shelf, it is most gratifying to see CMS's efforts providing rich rewards for us.

Returning to the five intangible assets, one can see these assets shining through the foundations of strategic planning, advocacy, and technology. A key asset in this respect is the Society's willingness to embrace change and innovation. Here is a quick review of our accomplishments this past year:

Quick Starts 2011-2012

1. We developed and approved a CMS Advocacy statement on the value of music in higher education (thanks to Jim Scott and Larry Kaptain and the Administration & Leadership and Higher Education Committees)
2. We have over six (6) student campus chapters officially in place and 12 or more in the works (thanks to Jennifer Snodgrass and Gene Trantham and the Student Advisory Council). Those include Appalachian State University, State University of New York–Potsdam, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Delaware, University of Washington, and Washington College.
3. We launched the CMS International Ambassador program (thanks to the International Initiatives committee and especially to the efforts of the committee co-chair, Alexandra Zacharella)
4. We created a new awards initiative to recognize interdisciplinary student presentations at the national conference (thanks to Faun Tiedge and her ad hoc task force). The awardee for composition was Jessica Rudman for "Certain Octobers" for Piano Trio, CUNY Graduate Center, advisor Tania Leon; for a paper presentation was Scott Dirkse for "Music History Pedagogy in the 21st Century," U.C. Santa Barbara, advisor Derek Katz.
5. We arranged access to Webex online conferencing technology for CMS meetings and webinars. This system has been used for several meetings the past year and we held our inaugural webinar in November on "Advocacy" thanks to the leadership of Larry Kaptain along with presenters William Everett, Jennifer Snodgrass, Douglass Seaton, John Graulty, and Daniel Adams.
6. We planned and realized a new format and delivery system for CMS publications (thanks to David Woods and the Publications committee)
7. We turned on a completely new, redesigned CMS website (thanks to the CMS information technology staff, David Schafer, Beth Mast, and Julie Johnson, with guidance from Peter Webster and the CMS technology committee)
8. We developed a CMS App for iPhone and iPads and, now, an Android version available just this week on the Google Android app store (thanks to a grant with the School of Music at Georgia Institute of Technology and the work of their staff and students, along with guidance and assistance from the CMS App ad hoc committee and the technology staff in the CMS office). (The Georgia Tech grant also provides our access to their WebEx system.) An extra bonus to this Quick Start was the development of a CMS YouTube channel that is also accessible through these new Apps (thanks to Steve Kreinberg and the Video Committee).

I thank all of you who contributed to those exceptional efforts.


Quick Starts For 2012-2013

The CMS Board at its winter meeting in Dallas 2012 reviewed our progress and revisited our strategic vision plan and developed a new set of Quick Starts for this year. We are carrying on the new strategic planning foundation! In this Report to Members you will find a article updating progress toward those goals. Please feel free to offer to get involved with any and all of these initiatives. Don't be bashful!

THE STRENGTH OF OUR SPIRIT OF VOLUNTEERISM AND LEADERSHIP

My work with so many of you over the past year confirms that the five intangible assets of this organization are key to the continued success of The College Music Society. I'm especially appreciative of the fifth asset, "the strength of our spirit of volunteerism and leadership." The Society and I, personally, thank all of you who have served in so many ways and responded to calls for support, participation, and leadership. I will thank each of your personally when we have the opportunity. On behalf of The Society, a heartfelt "thank you" to the Board, the chairs of our committees and task forces, the incredible and dedicated staff in the CMS Executive Office, and to those of you who offered your support in so many other roles as CMS members.

Program planning. The San Diego conference continued our good attendance records. We had some 500 plus in attendance. A special note of thanks to Terry Lynn Hudson for her role as program chair for this highly successful conference in San Diego and the program committees also deserve our thanks for all of their time and talents: John Brobeck, Keith E. Clifton, Constance Cook Glen, Arthur Gottschalk, Michael Millar, Betty Anne Younker, and Rick Schmunk. The Composition Review Committee also deserves our thanks for an incredible series of new music concerts: Arthur Gottschalk, Zae Munn, Robert Deemer.
Looking ahead to Cambridge and Boston, Keith Clifton is our program chair. Our national topic is "Inclusivity and Invention." Our conference in 2014 will be in St. Louis. James Perone has agreed to be our program chair and has assembled an excellent program committee. Our thanks in advance for the leadership Keith and Jim have generously offered as we plan for Cambridge and St. Louis.

CMS Board. I would like to thank the departing members of the CMS Board for their service to the organization: Mary Anne Rees, Treasurer; Susan Conkling, Board Member for Music Education; and Deborah Nemko, completing the unexpired term of Christine Beard as Board Member for Performance.  We welcome new members to the Board: Larry Kaptain, Treasurer; Cathy Benedict, Board Member for Music Education; and Deborah Nemko, Board Member for Performance

CMS Executive Office. And finally, thanks go out to the CMS staff (Peter, Julie, Beth, Robby, and those working behind the scenes in Missoula). They each in their own way provide incredible support roles, not only for the annual conference, but also for CMS activity and support year round. A resounding round of applause and "Thank You" to everyone.


CLOSING

I have been a member of CMS since the early 1980s. As I've shared many times, of all of the professional groups I've been a member of during my 50-year career, CMS holds a special place in my professional life. This is a place where I feel a strong sense of colleagueship and friendship that I will forever value.

I am most grateful to the Society's membership for the honor of serving as your president for the past two years. The time is fleeting—the last few months have had the tempo of the conclusion to a Rossini overture! In hindsight the succession of CMS presidents is more akin to a marathon where we each have a two-year lap picking up the baton from our predecessor and handing it off without dropping it to our successor. Cynthia Taggart and I managed a successfully hand off of the baton. Patricia Shehan Campbell as the incoming CMS president and I will do so come the first of the New Year. It's been an action filled, rewarding, and enjoyable two years working with so many wonderful colleagues and friends among the membership. I wish Pat every success as we continue the presidential marathon that has helped write the success story of The College Music Society for fifty years and beyond.

My thanks to all of you in so many ways for your time, talents, and many contributions during my tenure. As my grandson's favorite hero, Buzz Lightyear, says, "to infinity and beyond" in our hopes and dreams for the Society and its unique place in our profession.