It’s hard to believe that my term as president has come to an end. The year went by too quickly! I have enjoyed my time in office and am thankful for the opportunity to have served HNS in this capacity. I won’t be leaving the Board just yet, as I will serve in the role of Immediate Past President over the next year. Sadly, Tedd Judd (Past President) and Pedro Saez (Student Representative) have rotated off the board. We are truly grateful for all of their contributions and hard work. Both of them will be sorely missed at our monthly board meetings. Shelley Peery (Secretary), Leo Shea (Treasurer), and Kristin Krueger (Member-at-Large) will remain on the board over the next year. Laura Gutierrez, whose enthusiasm is unmatched, will be transitioning to the Student Representative position and Gilbert Martinez will be transitioning to President. We are all looking forward to the continued progress of our organization under Gilbert’s leadership.
Below I have outlined what we have been up to over the past year and how you can become more involved with HNS in the coming year.
Meeting at NAN: HNS had a mini conference at the NAN meeting in Marco Island, Florida (11/16 to 11/19) where we co-sponsored several events, including a dinner. A special thanks to James Choca, Kristin Krueger, Juan Carlos Arango, and Lillian Flores Stevens for their presentations. We all came away from the talks having learned some very valuable information. There was a lot of networking done at the dinner on Friday night by the 40 HNS members in attendance (see pictures below). I hope that we can all do that again soon! I was unable to attend the diversity rounds on Saturday afternoon, but have heard a lot of positive things from several colleagues. Thanks to Shelley Peery, Antonio Puente, and Valerie Hoese for representing HNS.
Website & Member of the Month: Based on your feedback, we rolled out a new website in July with many new features including a members-only section and member of the month. The latter has been really helpful in building a stronger sense of community. We are currently working on updating some additional features for the website, like the public directory and the test database.
Education Committee: Karen Torres recently volunteered to chair this committee and has proposed some projects that will be available via our website and will be a great resource to our membership, including: compiling a list of education system format by Spanish-speaking country, providing Spanish-language clinical resources such as informed consents, release of information, caregiver handouts, etc. If you are interested in helping with these or other related projects please get in touch with Karen (kren.torres@gmail.com).
Test Database: Thanks to Xavier Cagigas, we can now begin to migrate our test database (currently available on our website) into a wiki. This new system will also allow us to provide each other with feedback about the various Spanish language measures available and share research data. If you are interested in assisting with this project please get in touch with Gilbert Martinez (glbrmart@aol.com).
Mentoring: The mentoring committee has created an HNS-funded student award to promote the training of students in the assessment of Spanish speakers. The application is available on our website (http://www.hnps.org/announcements/hns-student-grants-application-due-february-1-2012). The first deadline is February 1, 2012. Kristin Krueger would like to recruit interested members to the mentoring committee to implement greater mentoring opportunities for students and professionals at all levels. Please contact her if you would like to join this group (kris2blink@yahoo.com)
Listserve: The HNS member listserve has become increasingly active over past year. I have enjoyed all of the scholarly discussions and appreciate everyone’s participation. If you have not yet joined the listserv you may sign up at the following link. http://www.hnps.org/resources/for-clinicians-join-the-hns-newsgroup/
Along with an organization update, this letter also serves as the recruitment letter for our annual membership drive. We now stand at about 155 members, which is impressive as approximately three years ago we had about 40 members. Along with reaping the benefits of the efforts detailed above, you also receive the journal Applied Neuropsychology and are part of the community that is committed to improving access and quality of neuropsychological services for Hispanics in the U.S.
As always you can renew your membership online at: http://www.hnps.org/membership/membership-application/
On behalf of the HNS board, thanks for the opportunity to serve you! HNS provides a great service to our community, made even better by your contributions. I invite and encourage you to take an active role in our various committees and activities and look forward to seeing you throughout the year at our events.
Warmest Regards,
Laura Renteria, Ph.D.
HNS, Past President
