[Reading-hall-of-fame] Open Letter to RHF Membership on Move to LRA from ILA

[Douglas Ray Reutzel]

July 17, 2017

Dear Reading Hall of Fame Colleagues:

I am writing to give you further information about the continuing discussion around moving the Reading Hall of Fame Breakfast, Induction Ceremony, and Inductee Inaugural Presentations from the long standing relationship and association with ILA/IRA to LRA in the future.  Members of the Reading Hall of Fame who attended the ILA conference discussed this matter further on Sunday morning, July 16th, 2017 at their annual RHF Business Meeting.   We were encouraged by those present to advance and continue this discussion but wait to make a decision until more information from both LRA and ILA is made available.  In what follows, I share with you the essence of the discussions we had at that meeting for your information.  Vicki Risko, RHF Secretary, will also post the RHF Sunday morning meeting minutes to the RHF website.

LRA President, Gay Ivey, and an RHF member, informed the group that as President of LRA she is repurposing the Saturday morning of LRA for alternative format, organization cosponsored sessions, etc., to facilitate more time and space during the regular LRA program for inclusion of vetted sessions and papers.   Most of us already know that LRA has grown to a size that it is now constrained by space limitations for accepting papers and sessions on the program.  Gay’s idea was to give RHF a space and block of time, roughly from 8-10:30AM on Saturday, the last day of the LRA conference for the breakfast, induction ceremony and for inaugural addresses by the previous year’s inductees.  RHF members present at the ILA breakfast raised questions about whether RHF members would indeed stay to attend the RHF functions if these were placed on the last day of the LRA conference.  If last day on the program status was what LRA could offer to the RHF for their future events, it was thought that the move to LRA may prove to be less attractive to majority of RHF membership.

RHF member, Diane Lapp, indicated that ILA was hearing that the RHF was considering an exit from ILA.  Upper ILA leadership had expressed to her, Diane, that they wanted to have us wait out announcements about some upcoming changes before making a final decision.  Many RHF members, especially those traveling internationally, expressed problems with attending ILA meetings in summers when travel prices are much higher.  Diane indicated that a “time of year” change was being negotiated for ILA in 2019 because the summer dates just weren’t working out.  Furthermore in a follow up meeting with current ILA President, Doug Fisher, I learned that this is indeed the case.  Doug was most eager to retain the RFH at ILA meetings and asked what it would take to have us reconsider our decision to move to LRA since the purpose of having the RHF meeting at ILA was to accomplish our stated mission of conveying the findings of research to practitioners to close the research-practice gap.  Doug asked that we go slowly on this decision so that they, ILA, could hear what changes we would ask them to make to retain RHF at ILA in the future.

In consequence, I plan to send out an anonymous survey to RHF members with a series of open ended questions to gather more information to inform the discussion about a potential move to LRA.

At the same time, I propose we continue to work with LRA and LRA President Gay Ivey to frame a proposal for RHF to pursue a potential move to LRA.  This proposal would need to address the constraints and conditions that would be a part of the decision to make a move or not make a move from ILA to LRA.  In any case, I believe the mere discussion of an RHF move has heightened awareness of the Reading Hall of Fame and its intrinsic historic and intellectual value added to any conference or organization.  It is indeed nice to be “wanted.”

Please respond when the survey comes out in subsequent weeks so that we can capture information in a summary fashion to share with the membership of RHF and with ILA and LRA to inform our decision making process.  If there are other concerns you’d like me to address as we proceed with this process, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Best,
[cid:9CB67686-BCC3-4565-8DB1-91CC7F8F5BBE]
D. Ray Reutzel
President
Reading Hall of Fame 2017-2019
ray.reutzel at uwyo.edu<mailto:ray.reutzel at uwyo.edu>

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