Tuesday, January 13^th 2009 Meeting Minutes

The January meeting for our group started off with a quick introduction of the officers. We have a few new officers, as well as a couple that carried over from past semesters. Attendance was great, we had 18 students present, and many of these were attending their first meeting. This number nearly doubles the attendance for the previous few months.

A few announcements were made before our guest speaker took the floor. These included a reminder about the MLK day service plunge. On MLK day, January 19^th, our group will be participating in the service plunge at the Dorothy Day house. There is no school this day, so anyone is welcome to join us. For more information feel free to ask or e-mail any of the officers.

The next announcement was about the Student Organization Presentation day. This is a great way for our group to get out there. We are still looking for volunteers to cover a few hours at our booth, and if you are interested contact any of the officers. The hours are from 10-2pm on Wednesday the 21^st.

Another announcement was about the North Central Regional Student Conference and Games. This event takes place at the University of St. Thomas over the weekend of March 27^th and 28^th. If you would like to learn more about this event visit the website http://www.shrm.org/students/HRGames/CMS_026919.asp#TopOfPage . We will be talking about this more as the time approaches, but if you are interested you may make contact with any of the officers about further information.

There was also a brief announcement about the SHRM Conference in New Orleans, and those who are interested may e-mail Josh at Joshua.kaiser@ndsu.edu . He will be sending out a brief e-mail when a solid price range can be presented.

The guest speaker for this meeting was Lisa Fitzgerald, the Directory of Human Resources at Eide Bailly. She gave a presentation called Leveraging Generational Diversity, which touched on the different generations in the workplace today. She was a great speaker, and really brought to life the different generations, their characteristics and some ways on how to work with the different groups. She pointed out that as the baby boomer generation starts to retire over the next 16 years that generation X and millennials will have to cover a large gap in numbers in the workforce. Knowing how to handle the different generations and making the adjustment for the large number leaving the workforce will be key components for the HR departments for years to come.