Message from 2nd Vice President

Dear Academy Members

It’s time to start thinking about any persons whom you may wish to nominate for Academy membership in the upcoming round. It is anticipated that the call for nominations will be made in October 2009.

Prior to this date the forms that have previously been used for nominations will be reviewed to determine their effectiveness in informing Academy members of the candidates’ achievements. Following the submission of applications, the candidates will be informed about the 2009 Conference at La Rioja and invited to attend and to present a research paper. To give the candidate every opportunity to place the event into their diaries and to prepare a research paper for presentation, you can inform your candidate in advance to do this.

At the final business meeting of the Academy members at La Rioja, the membership will vote on those candidates who will be invited to become Fellows of the Academy. Candidates shall be selected by at least two-thirds (2/3) votes and minimum of fifty (50) percent of voting fellows plus one (1). Only “yes” and “no” voting options are permissible.

While the existing nomination forms are a good guide to the type of information required of candidates, there may be some changes which will be indicated in the next newsletter.

A new recommendation of the Executive is a Junior Scholar Program. For future Academy Conferences, up to 4 young scholars will be invited to attend the event (except business meetings) but will not be candidates for membership. The scholars will be selected following recommendations from members and will be confined to excellent young scholars (as judged by publications and potential) from areas of the world where we have little representation in the Academy. The ideas behind this initiative are to reach out and provide some mentorship to promising young tourism researchers in these areas. This will also provide more visibility to the Academy in these parts of the world. The junior scholars should be encouraged and may be expected to become the future leading researchers and potential Fellows of the Academy. These junior scholars will be expected to pay their own way. More information on this will be provided in the next Newsletter. In the meantime members are encouraged to send their views on this proposal to me at l.dwyer@unsw.edu.au.

Larry Dwyer, 2nd Vice President