Hello Everyone!
Thanks for all who attended the Feb. SHRA meeting at
Concordia. It was nice to see a few new people at the
meeting.  Kristin told me to apologize for her
directions and she is very sorry if anyone had trouble
finding the building and room.

Our speaker for February was Jean Thompson, the
Director of HR at the City of Moorhead. She spoke to
us about her experiences with Labor Unions.
She previously worked at Dakota Heartland for 26 years
and was there when a Union was voted in and went
through 2 years of negotiations which ended in the
Union being voted out when no agreement could be
reached.
At the City of Moorhead, Ms. Thompson is basically in
charge of Union negotiations and deals with Police and
Fire Depts as well as the Clerical workers.  She had a
lot of good insight and experience in dealing with
unions.

At the meeting we also sent around sign up sheets for
a couple of volunteer activities that we are looking
at doing this semester.  The first one is Ushering for
NDSU's Little Country Theatre (LCT). We would like to
do this on Tuesday, February 26th.  The show starts at
7:30pm amd goes until approx. 10pm, but ushers are
asked to be at the LCT by 6:30pm.  We have 5 people
signed up and would like to get 5-7 more volunteers,
so reply to this message if you are interested in
helping out and I will send the volunteers additional
information and directions if anyone needs them.

The second volunteer activity we are planning to do is
the "Relay for Life".  The relay takes place on April
13th and 14th from 8pm to 8am at Concordia campus.  It
is a community based event designed to celebrate
survivorship and raise money for the American Cancer
Society.  Each participant is asked to raise $100 by
selling $10 luminaries (paper bags filled with sand
and a candle with the name of a survivor of cancer,
someone battling cancer, or someone who has lost the
battle to cancer written on the bag). These luminaries
will then light the path we will be walking.  There
are also other events going on such as live
entertainment (bands), and catered in food...and the
more people we have the less each of us will have to
walk, but at least one person from each team has to be
walking at all times. We would like to put a team
together of 8-15 people and right now we have 9
people, so again if anyone else is interested please
reply to this message and let us know.  Faculty and
advisers are invited to join with us students if you
are interested!!!

Kristin also wanted me to mention the HRCI (HR
Certification for PHR) exam that is coming up and if
you have any questions you can reply to this message
and she will get back to you.  Applications to take
the exam need to be postmarked by Feb 22nd,2002. Also,
Kristin has put together a study group that will be
meeting to help those taking the test prepare...so if
you are interested in joining the study group let her
know.

One last thing...we will be holding elections at the
April meeting so be thinking about that and recruit,
recruit, recruit!!!  I know many of our members are
graduating in May so we need all the new members we
can get!  Thanks in advance for your help with
this!!!!

See you all at the March meeting (March 5th at 7pm),
which will be held at NDSU.  We will be talking about
Diversity and Relocation Services.

Sorry for the super long e-mail!!!  Please let us know
if any of you are able to help with the LTC's Ushering
or Relay for Life volunteer activities!!!

Taska O'Connell
SHRA Treasurer