A Global Community

Introduction

The Las Vegas Conference of the Allied Academies turned out to be yet another great conference! We had numerous compliments on the conference hotel as well as the presentations. We had around 200 registrants with a little more than 20 people taking advantage of the Internet Division. We had participants from all over the United States and from seven different Countries. We would like to thank all of you who participated as it is the authors and the conference participants who make the Allied Academies successful. We greatly appreciate your support and positive feedback.

As you know, Allied Academies is a not for profit corporation and is not sponsored by any university or organization. We are dependent upon conference registration fees, and contributions from interested and supportive groups. Our mission is to support and encourage the exchange of ideas in higher education throughout the world. To that end, we sponsor conferences and publish journals. In addition, we maintain this web site which has developed into an important communication medium for our membership and for scholars from around the world. We publish our journals simultaneously in hard copy and on the web page, and you can view conference proceedings, newsletters and academy information there as well.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES

Spring International Conference - New Orleans

There has been a great deal of talk about where we were going to hold our Spring 2006 conference (April 12-15) due to the recent hurricane damage incurred in New Orleans. We had gone to far as to choose an alternative hotel in case we needed to break our contract with the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. However, through several talks with hotel representatives, we have been assured that the area surrounding the hotel, including the French Quarter, sustained relatively minor damage and the businesses are all already opening up for business. Apparently the majority of the damage was in areas that visitors to the city never see, but the media has been focusing primarily on these areas. However, we did not want to take their word for it and put our financial livelihood on the line, so we polled our membership to see where you wanted to go. The overwhelming majority wanted to do their part to help the struggling economy in New Orleans by holding the conference there, so that is what we are going to do and we hope you all will do the same.

Summer International Internet Conference

Our Summer 2006 International Internet Conference (July 17-31) will be held again next summer and it has proved very beneficial for those of you who lack travel funds yet have papers ready for consideration in the summer. It has been growing in popularity among our members and gives us the opportunity to try out new features for enhanced participation. As we strive for continuous improvement, please e-mail us to let us know if you have any suggestions.

Fall International Conference in Las Vegas

Due to the favorable response we received from our participants, and our own positive experience with the hotel, we have decided to return to the Riviera in Las Vegas for the Fall 2006 International Conference. Our typical dates were unavailable so we will be holding the conference October 4-7, 2006 instead. We hope this gives you all adequate time to make the necessary arrangements and that we will see you all there.

Spring 2007 International Conference in Jacksonville

The Hilton Jacksonville Riverfront was our back up choice if New Orleans did not recover, so we have chosen them to be our location for the Spring 2007 International Conference. It is currently slated for April 11-14, 2007. The hotel looks quite nice and has a built in Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. They have also offered us a guest room rate of $105 per night. We hope to see you all there as well.

JOURNAL NEWS

We hired a system designer who has just started on phase one of a multi-step process to update our web site technology. Phase one involves revamping our membership process so that only current members and institutional subscribers will have access to our online Journals. This will provide multiple benefits to our current and past members. 1) It will enable us to update all of the online Journals so that the current issues are available for viewing. We have been reluctant to do this without some layer of password protection. 2) It will also enable us to allow institutional subscribers, such as libraries and other online databases, to have access. We think this will tie in with our plans to get our Journals listed with the major databases and subscribing organizations that AACSB is beginning to require for publication consideration. We hope to have phase one of the project completed by mid January.

After the completion of phase one, we hope to have our document tracking system revamped. This will give us better control over papers as the flow through the journal and conference submission process. We will keep you posted on our progress and hope you all will find the new system much more user friendly. This project has been in the works for a couple of years now and it is finally underway now that we have found a system designer who seems to know what he is doing.

LAS VEGAS CONFERENCE AWARDS

Creative and Innovative Teaching Awards

The Academy of Educational Leadership sponsors special awards to recognize creative and innovative teachers. To be eligible for consideration, an individual must be nominated by a member of the Allied Academies and undergo evaluation by the Teaching Awards Committee. The following individuals have met the criteria and have been judged by the Committee to be worthy of the designation, Distinguished Teachers. We extend to them our sincere congratulations.
Nathan Adams, Middle Tennessee State University
Wil Clouse, Vanderbilt University
Wayne Gober, Middle Tennessee State University

Creative and Innovative Education Award

The criteria for recognition include the on going delivery of outstanding instruction and education, and, the practice of innovative and creative education. Any academic unit of a college or university is eligible for consideration, but a unit may not win the award more than once. The following unit has met the criteria and has been judged by the Committee to be worthy of the Distinguished Education Award. We extend our sincere congratulations to the faculty and staff who support this exceptional unit. The Entrepreneurial Village Project, Shaw University.

Fellow's Awards

These individuals have been supporters of the Allied Academies for many years. They have been ambassadors at large, recruiters, good friends and colleagues. They well merit Fellow status.
Phil Olson, Northwest Training Resources

The Carland Outstanding Dissertation Award

The Carlands reward the outstanding dissertation in entrepreneurship with a plaque, a journal article in the Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal and a check for $1,000. We are happy to give that award this year to....
Robert Carton
For His Dissertation Entitled:
"Measuring Organizational Performance: An Exploratory Study"
Under the Direction of Charles Hofer, University of Georgia

Distinguished Research Awards

We would like to congratulate the Distinguished Research Award Winners. The competition was extremely rigorous and intense. After extensive review, the panel of judges awarded distinguished research status to 25% of the manuscripts. The authors of the following works will receive engraved plaques, and the manuscripts will be published in the next regularly scheduled issue of the appropriate journal.

Conference Photos