One of my duties as your CCCPSAA President is to file, by August 1st, an annual report on our activities.  Preparing it gave an interesting insight into the impact of the virus on our association. 

While the report requires detailed listings of activities over the 2019/2020 fiscal year ending on June 30th, I can summarize by saying that we conducted approximately 38 service projects.  By adding in chapter members who volunteered at Hintz, the Sports Museum, and Arboretum, the donated hours total over 13,000.  In addition, we held 35 events to benefit the chapter members.

These volunteer efforts by the members of our chapter are truly impressive!  Especially considering that nearly all of the people-intensive activities were curtailed over the last 3 ½ months of the fiscal year due to the COVID-19 shutdown.

Bottom line – we should all be proud of what we accomplished as representatives of our university!  Once again, we have distinguished our Centre County Chapter as one of the best PSAA organizations in the world. 

Looking forward, we need to recognize the new reality – that social distancing may be in place for quite some time – and we need to evolve our programs to reflect that new reality.  One such evolution, was that Spend A Summer Day, normally held in July and August to welcome potential students and families to the campus, was not possible due to the virus.  Instead, we had 3 volunteers record brief “welcome messages” to share as part of a video tour of Penn State for these prospective families. 

If you have ideas on how we can evolve some of our past activities to accommodate the new environment, let us know.  If you have ideas for new activities (whether service to the community or member support), let us know.   I have been contacting other chapters to share ideas, and, haven't found many new or different inventive ideas so we look to our membership to provide some.  One we will likely pursue is to hold a virtual happy hour with another chapter, possibly from a distant location. 

I would love to hear your ideas!

Mike Erdman, President, CCCPSAA