State of Planning - SCAO
Otterbein College 11:30 am
October 9, 2004

Mary Ann Flannery started the meeting.  She explained why Dr. Jim Applegate could not attend.  The committee would like to take this time and ask all of us to be active and also discuss the direction of our state organization.
She explained the focus of the retreat during the meeting and asked everyone to think about the mission of the organization and the direction the organization should take.
She asked the participant to think weather we should get the high school back on the track and get them involve.  
She also indicated that after reviewing the organization’s mission the board is certain that we are addressing the organization’s mission.  
Historically the president of the organization would be rotated between college faculty and high school teachers.
So we need to decide and address that, do we help and assist our graduate students? 
How do we get the media and professional to focus our graduate students?
We also need to find out what do we provide for our graduate students that Central State and other organizations do not provide?
At the retreat the board also discussed the travel consideration, so the board decided to move the conference to Dayton next year to help the visibility of the organization.

Jeff asked other campus volunteer to host the conference in their campus.  
Lisa Wallace reported the study her students last spring did for the SCAO to find what do we need to do in order to get the high school colleagues more involve.  The following list were the out come of the study.
	Lack of time 
	They would like to see activities at SCAO that they can participate
	Newsletter they get information
	Public speaking competition 
	OHSS contact person
	CEEU credited did not have any more
High school membership decline because of it.  Another reason the high school does not participate any more is due to the school s do not have any speech dept. any more.  The speech dept. has combined with theater dept. In the report the group suggested that we needed to look into the community colleges and find out the strength and weakness at this source.  
High school competition is great idea.  These students do not need money they really like to have recognitions so give them ribbon for their work and competition they are happy.  
The decision end to suggest we focus on two areas 
a.Community colleges
b.Graduate students
Another suggestion came from the floor was promoting Journalism competition this is done in St.Clair and their events is during Feb.  

Another concern of this group was the attendance.  Every year the attendance decreases.