Department Membership Renewal and Lifetime Memberships

By John Reinard, WSCA Executive Director

With the beginning of the fiscal and academic years for most of WSCA’s member institutions, now is an ideal time to renew Department memberships. These memberships carry great benefits including reduced rates for convention program and journal announcements, a link to the department’s web site on the WSCA web site, free posting of position announcements on the Western web site, representation in the WSCA Legislative Assembly, a reduced rate for participation in the Graduate Programs Open House, and copies of all WSCA journals for the Department’s professional library of resources. Any one of these benefits would be sufficient to justify a Department membership. In combination, the appeal of a Departmental membership is irresistible. An annual Department membership is only $80 and may be secured by completing the membership form located at http://www.westcomm.org/join/2010memform.pdf.

Lifetime membership—still one of the biggest bargains in WSCA—will continue with a finance plan whose fees for multi-year payments have been reduced to minimize expense and maximize value to members.  Many new faculty members in the Western region are provided with start-up allocations to permit them to become established as members of the field. The investment in a WSCA Life Membership is an ideal way to use such funds to receive professional benefits over the lifetime of a member. In addition to reduced Convention fees, life carries with it subscriptions to all WSCA publications.  By action of the WSCA Executive Council at its most recent meeting, the schedule for lifetime memberships is:

•  $2000 if paid in one year
• Two annual payments of $1050 if paid over two years;
• Three annual payments of $700 if paid over three years;
• Four annual payments of $525 paid over four years;
• Five annual payments of $420 paid over five years.