What a wonderful annual meeting we had in Denver in November! The topics were interesting and speakers were very engaging. Have we ever had an ANCDS luncheon in such a spectacular location?! The snowy Rocky Mountains on a sunny day are majestic. And what fun it was to surprise Anita Halper from the Rehab Institute of Chicago with the Honors of ANCDS!

The coming year brings new resources to the Professional Affairs and Research Writing Committees. My term as chair concluded in 2015 and Laura Murray will now take the lead of the group. In addition, two committees have new chairs: Maya Henry will chair the Progressive Neurogenic Communication Disorders (formerly Dementia) Committee, and Deanna Britton will chair the Dysarthria Committee. Returning chairs are Kirrie Ballard (Apraxia of Speech); Therese O’Neil-Pirozzi (TBI) and Mary Purdy (Aphasia). Two publications appeared in 2015 (Apraxia of Speech and TBI). Each committee has a project in the planning or implementation stages.

We are six months into an exciting year for ANCDS. It has been a year of considerable transition and I am happy to report that the transition has gone very smoothly. In December we thanked Frances Laven for her many years of service to ANCDS and in January we welcomed Sheryl Hazard and her staff at Association Development Service (ADS) of Minneapolis, Minn., who have taken on the administrative support duties for ANCDS. ADS is learning the new terminology surrounding all things speech-language pathology and neurogenics. Their expertise has been so helpful with updating procedures and practices in ANCDS. First and foremost was their assistance in revising our website.

I am pleased to inform you, there are currently six board-certified applicants in different stages of the board certification process. Of these six, one applicant has passed both of the case study submissions and will progress to the oral defense stage in November during the ANCDS/ASHA Convention in Denver. Of the other applicants, three have submitted their first case studies and are in various stages of review by their assigned committee members. The remaining two applicants have had their applications approved and have yet to submit their first case study.

The Membership Committee is pleased to report that membership applications are now submitted electronically though the ANCDS website (ancds.org/become-a-member). Since the online membership application process went live this spring, we have approved nine full memberships and five student memberships. Currently, we have 245 full members, 38 student members, and 14 life members, for a total of 297 members. Information about becoming a member can be found under the About Us tab on the ANCDS website.

The 2015 ANCDS Annual Scientific and Business Meeting, November 11, 2015, the day prior to the ASHA convention, will be split between two topic areas. The morning presentations will focus on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Lenore Hawley and Jody Newman from Craig Hospital, a Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems institution located in Englewood, CO, will share their findings from a multisite treatment study targeting social competence in adults with TBI. In the afternoon, two separate presentations, one by Katerina Hilari from City University London, and the second by Carolyn Baylor of the University of Washington, will center on recent research targeting the nature and assessment of aspects of the quality of life for individuals with neurogenic communication disorders.

The members of the Communications Committee (Edie Babbitt, Michael Biel, Renee Fabus, Miriam Krause, Katy O'Brien, Yvonne Rogalski, and Meghan Savage) have worked on many different projects within the past few months. These projects include the new web-based newsletter and the website redesign, which now includes resources for our members. We are working on launching a podcast and are collaborating with the Scientific Affairs Committee to coordinate the ANCDS Facebook page, which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/JoinANCDS.