John Buccheri
Suitable For Framing
For Christmas, my children gave me The Anatomy Coloring Book, a collection of 161 plates arranged into sixteen chapters illustrating the body's organization and functions. They told me that I would find in it every body part imaginable, though the two of particular concern at my age are nowhere to be seen: the "potbelly" and the "double chin" (sorry, I don't know the Latin for these). It is nonetheless an impressive tome, and I've splurged on a beautiful set of 120 colored pencils in anticipation of the daunting but fascinating task of working color into each of the wonderfully detailed black and white line drawings.
Your Executive Committee has recently been mulling over a CMS organizational chart. We've made a few drafts, trying to represent the various structures and functions of the Society. A while back, I became preoccupied with creating my own chart while preparing to describe the Society to a group of university professors from a variety of disciplines at a meeting of CASTL (Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning). This version appears below. At the risk of sounding like a politician, let me be perfectly clear: the chart you see is not an officially approved representation of 1,100 the organizational structure of CMS. It is one I created for myself, to help me form a sense, if you will, of the body's organization and functions.
As you study it, I hope you will be impressed, as I was, with the number and diversity of activities and services implicit in the many substructures and sub-substructures shown. My very rough estimate is that there are at least 150 people actively participating in making this organization hum along, from the national office staff who work daily for the benefit of the Society, to the several committees concerned with a variety of specific issues and programs, to the regional chapter officers who keep the local fires burning. The most recent additions to this structure appear at the bottom, under "Task Forces." By their very nature, Task Forces are constituted to undertake specific projects, the completion of which spells the dissolution of the group itself. I will be using my next President's page to tell you about the exciting work of these five Task Forces.
In the meantime, lay in some of your favorite colors to make the chart more suitable for framing!
