Presidential responsibilities

The face of ASURA

The President is the face of the Association relative to the University and is the contact point for many inquiries and/or questions from both within and outside of ASURA. The President need not make all the decisions relative to these inquiries but is expected to decide the processes that will be used to address the issues and direct the inquiries and/or questions to the appropriate person or group (e.g., Business Manager, Board, etc.).

One other task associated with being the face of the Association is an expectation that the President writes a short article for each of the three Prime Times. There is no defined content for these articles. See Prime Times calendar to find out when the articles are due to the Prime Times editor.

Signature authority

The President is required to sign a variety of documents during the year. Some of the documents require an original some an electronic signature. In most cases when a signature is required the Business Manager will contact the President. The chair of the Scholarship Committee contacts the President to initiate the letters to the scholarship recipient and Scholarship Office. The following table lists some of these required signatures along with information on the type of signature and when the signature is typically needed.

Read about using digital signatures

Table of Required Document Signatures for ASURA President

 Executive Committee meetings

 The President is responsible for calling and chairing all meetings of the Executive Committee. The past few years these meetings have been held an hour before the Board of Directors meetings.

• See Executive Committee duties

It is often helpful to review the Operations Checklist during this meeting, to ensure that necessary tasks have been assigned and are being taken care of.

• View the Operations Checklist

Board of Directors meetings

The Board of Directors meets the second Tuesday of the month from September through March and in May. There is usually no Board meeting in April because the Annual Meeting is in that month. The President may also call special (extra) meetings of the Board as needed to handle business in a timely way. See Board Meeting Procedures where the general meeting process is described. 

The duties in this area are:

• Preparing for a Zoom meeting, if applicable.
  
  Two weeks before the meeting the President or designee sets up the Zoom meeting. Once the meeting has been saved, the meeting address (link) is sent to the Secretary.
• Preparing the meeting agenda.
  
  The Secretary generally sends you a copy of the "standard" agenda asking for any changes and additions. The current Agenda may be available in the BoardMeeting folder in Wild Apricot (see accessing Wild Apricot Files). While an agenda template is available, in practice the agenda is generally a modified version of the previous month’s agenda. The agenda file is updated by the Secretary while working with the President.
• Presiding at the meeting using Robert’s Rules of Order.

Engage Vice President

The only specific duties specified in the Bylaws for the Vice President are to succeed the President automatically and in the case of temporary absence or disability of the President, to perform all the duties of the President. And the only other duty is to help the newly elected Board members become part of the Board. This has generally meant the Vice President has little to do during their term as Vice President.

To address this situation, the President may assign the Vice President tasks to keep them engaged and give them a better understanding of how ASURA operates, making the transition from Vice President to President easier.

What sort of tasks are assigned changes from President to President and depend on what the President needs. Some example tasks are:

• Chair the Events Committee.
• Work with all the committee chairs and liaisons to make sure the material on the Volunteer Help website are current and correct.
• Be the lead ASURA contact for the Tri-university meeting

Financial transactions

The ASURA Bylaws give signature authority to four officers: President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Immediate Past President. The President tells the Business Manager the order of authority (i.e., who is the first, second, etc. on the authority list) to use during their presidency. There is a steady stream of requests for approval throughout the year.

The ASU Foundation is the bank for ASURA and all financial transactions pass through the Foundation. There are two types of financial transactions that have to be approved: credit card expenditures (after the fact) and direct payments from the Foundation (before the fact). The Business Manger keeps the ASURA books and all transactions are approved by the Treasurer or a backup approver, usually the President or Vice President, using the Workday app (see Treasurer Duties for information on logging into Workday).

Annual Meeting

The President is responsible for the Annual Meeting that is held each year in April. The President works with the Luncheon and Special Events chair as needed. The Operations Checklist shows the following tasks associated with the Annual Meeting.

Venue arrangements

For an in person meeting

The Annual Meeting, which until 2018 was held on Saturday on campus, has in the past few years moved to off campus locations (Phoenix Art Museum, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications). Agility 360 was reserved for the 2020 meeting, but cancelled due to the pandemic. 

The meeting has always had some type of food. Tradition has been that the food include a carrot "birthday" cake, with the number of years that ASURA has been in existence written in the frosting. By late March the President (or delegate) must formalize the catering for the meeting. 

In early March the President should request the Events Chair to advertise the Event on Wild Apricot.

For a virtual meeting

If the meeting is virtual then the President works with the Seminar Committee and Technology Manager to arrange for the creation of the Zoom meeting and the running of the actual meeting.

Create the Agenda

The agenda for this meeting is not fixed and has changed over the years. Until recently the meeting has generally featured a speaker (e.g., Lattie Coor). The past few years the work of the Video History Project has been highlighted. If a speaker is desired, work on getting the speaker should probably start in the fall. The Video History folks will need at least a month (two months is better) to prepare the clips, so the President needs to let them know if they are to be on the agenda.

Prepare the Annual Report

The Annual Report is handed out at the Annual Meeting. Sometime in early February a request should be sent to all the liaisons and committee chairs requesting material for the Annual Report. Once all the material has been collected the President (or delegate) merges the material into a single document which is sent to the ASURA Mailing Operations Manager for printing and distribution at the Annual Meeting. A digital version (a PDF file) should also be sent to the ASURA Websites Committee for posting on the ASURA website.

Tri-university meeting

Over the years, the three retiree associations for ASU, UofA, and NAU have meet to share ideas and discuss issues germane to their associations. ASURA has found these meeting useful. For information on how the meetings are organized and run see the Tri-University meetings page.

Appointing chairs and identifying liaisons

One of the first tasks for the President is “staffing” the various ASURA positions: the committee chairs and the Ex-Officio members.

Chairs & Liaisons

The timing is not fixed but it is advantageous to have the committee chairs and liaisons in place by the May Board Meeting. Once the names have been established any new names are sent to:

• the ASURA webmaster to update the webpages
• the ASURA Secretary to update the Wild Apricot Committee Chairs and Liaisons Group.

Ex-Officio Members

The ASURA Bylaws (Article IV.B) state: “To facilitate communication between ASURA and ASU organizations (as determined by the Board), representatives from those organizations will serve on the Board as ex-officio members in a non-voting, advisory capacity. Ex-officio members have automatic Honorary Member status in the ASURA for the duration of their service.”

The President does not pick Ex-Officio members but rather contacts the appropriate ASU organization and requests a name. The Ex-Officio members are more likely to be new in the fall and so confirmation generally waits until late August. Any new names are sent to:

• the Membership Committee to add them to the database as Honorary members. Note: This is not done if the person is already an ASURA member,
• the ASURA webmaster to update the webpages 
• the ASURA Secretary to update the Wild Apricot Ex-Officio Members Group.

Member recognition

ASURA is an all-volunteer association and it is the President's job to continually think of ways to recognize the contributions of the members. This can range from a simple thank you given during an event up to a small gift or luncheon. Some of the recognitions are on-going traditions, while others are one-time events. Examples of past recognitions:

• Creation of a plaque with the names and dates of service for all the Past Presidents (an ongoing tradition)
• A Gavel Plaque given to the outgoing Presidents
• A lunch for Past Presidents
• A lunch for Dick Murra attended by past presidents
• A staff appreciation luncheon. This was held for several years, with attendees being sometimes the office staff and other times also the committee chairs or Executive Committee members

ASURA websites

ASURA's websites contain information that needs to be current and correct. The President has responsibility of reviewing the following pages at least once:

• Board policies
• Why join or renew?
• ASURA Bylaws
• ASURA History
• This page