A SUMMARY FROM THE 2009 PHOENIX CONFERENCE PLANNING COMMITTEE

Greetings from the 2009 Phoenix BPD Conference Planning Committee! We have assembled a team of educators from around the country who hope to make our 26^th annual conference the best ever!  We recognize that our 2008 Destin 25^th Anniversary Conference is a tough act to follow! Thank you to Jack Sellers, our Conference Chair, Mit Joyner, our 25^th Anniversary Celebration Chair, and Marilyn Cosetti, our Program Chair, for their hard and dedicated work in Destin.

For 2009, our conference planning committee is:

            Sue Bowden (Conference Chair), Michigan State University

            Carol Boyd (Program Chair), University of Mississippi

            Alinda Sledge (Ads and Exhibits Chair), Delta State University (MI)

            Bill Clouser (Registrar), Lewis- Clark State College (ID)

            Anne Summers (Board Liaison), Missouri State University

            Suzanne Bushfield (Local Planning Committee Chair), Arizona

                                    State University

We will be working closely with BPD President Freddie Avant and Association Manager Amanda Scott.

We are especially excited about our theme:  BSW GENERALIST PRACTICE: THE FUTURE IS NOW!  As one of the newest states in the union with strong ties to the past, Arizona is the ideal site to plan for the future of BSW education. We hope to partner with GADE in establishing special sessions to help doctoral students prepare to be our future educators. We want to examine and improve on how we educate our students about generalist practice. We want to take advantage of our sunny locale, with its proximity to Indian reservations, retirement villages, and the Mexican border, and educate all of us on how to best teach our students to deliver services to older adults, immigrants, and Native Americans.  Arizona is struggling with unprecedented population growth, and educating students on how to deliver services in an ecologically sensitive manner is also an important conference focus.  So, we encourage all of you to submit abstracts (the deadline is June 15) and MOST IMPORTANT SAVE THE DATE!  We will see you in Phoenix!