Alaska State Update
by ALASFAA President Peter Miller,
University of Alaska - Anchorage

My first newsletter article as the Alaska State President! First, I'd like to say thank you to everyone that came to Alaska and made the WASFAA 2000 conference a big success. I hope that you were able to get out of Anchorage and see just why we all love living up here so very much.

The ALASFAA membership was energized by the WASFAA 2000 conference and has hopes to increase membership, increase volunteerism and provide more training opportunities. Fall is rapidly approaching and the association's conference committee is hard at work planning our next get together.

A big "Thanks" to Marianna Deeken for sticking with us as we changed schedules, rooms, etc., while trying to set up training with the Department of Education. The training team will be coming to Alaska June 19th to the 23rd, to provide training on a variety of topics including Application Processing, RFMS, NSLDS and others. So, if you didn't make it to Alaska for WASFAA 2000 (or you did and you'd like to see what it looks like with summer in full swing, and you want to go fishing) here's a half-way decent reason to come to Alaska.

One of the first tasks of the incoming ALASFAA Executive Council is the awarding of our association scholarships to the WASFAA Summer Institutes-Basic and Advanced Track. ALASFAA awards one scholarship for each institute and the selection is underway. This year, we received eleven applications for the Basic Track and two for the Advanced Track. Thank you to those who took the time to apply; best of luck. On behalf of ALASFAA, I would like to thank Carrie Burford for serving as President and Linda Williams for her service as our Secretary/Treasurer last year. Also, congratulations are in order for Barbara Burnett, President-Elect, and Sandra Gravley as our new Secretary/Treasurer.

Last, but not least, thank you to the WASFAA Conference Committee for donating 46 fire extinguishers to the Anchorage Fire Department. The Anchorage Convention Center required that each booth have it's own fire extinguisher. To accommodate this, they were more than happy to RENT them to us for $10.00 each. Instead, the Conference Committee determined we could purchase them for $8.00 each and later donate them to a worthy cause. Now, thanks to WASFAA, some Anchorage residents have new fire extinguishers and safer homes. [One side note, the Anchorage Fire Department mentioned that no one had ever donated fire extinguishers before, but they were glad we did and thought it was a great idea.]