2021 RETA Breeze March-April

MESSAGE FROM DON TRAGETHON I was invited to write a message about the importance of the association, the volunteers, the staff, and board of directors. I discussed the importance of the association in the January/ February Breeze. Now I’d like to celebrate the volunteers, staff, and board of directors.

As a former staff member, I find it difficult to decide which of these three entities to highlight first, or expound on the greatest. Like a three-legged stool, all three legs have to be in place and strong enough to carry the load applied to the seat. I could say that the staff is most important – but if it were not for the work of the volunteers and Board, we there wouldn’t be a staff. Let’s talk instead about how things get done at RETA. The association exists to enhance the professional development of operating and technical engineers in the field of industrial refrigeration. We are concerned about the health and safety of these people that work on and around these systems and the machinery employed to provide safe food for the people of the world to consume. We are also concerned that the companies that employ the operators are profitable and continue to provide opportunity to the operators, technicians, contractors, design engineers, and customers. To that end we have a chapter network, an education network, a certification network, and an annual conference where people participating in all these different facets of the organization come together to share and learn from one another. These different activity bases (membership, education, certification, and conference) operate in a committee structure. The participants are volunteers and serve the purpose of their interest by working together with others with similar interests. These volunteers are precious. Some of their activities are high-profile (Conference) while others are not so evident. A person serving a committee has an interest in what the committee produces and strives to see satisfying

results from their effort and contribution. The committees are led by volunteer leaders – many times the chairperson is a current elected serving member of the board of directors. Today RETA has a policy that a committee chair is a member of the board however the chairperson does not have voting privileges if not a current elected member. The advantage of chair-people having a seat at the board is they receive first-hand information regarding the opportunities and challenges the association faces at the time. The committee volunteers might graciously give dozens of hours to the association in a given year. The volunteer writing teams that have been working on our flagship products over the years have given an unmeasured amount of time in the quest for providing the best educational material we can provide our industry. The same is true for the volunteers on certification, membership, and conference. RETA would not be viable without the people that volunteer. The staff exist to execute the policy and program that the board of directors (all volunteers) direct. RETA is fortunate to have persons that have a primary responsibility to a given committee. There is: Membership — the default thinking is to the Chapter network. We have staff whose responsibility is to have an eye toward the needs of the chapter leaders and the needs of our membership that do not have a relationship with a chapter because of geographic limitation. Staff publishes a monthly resource document that is sent electronically to the chapter leaders throughout the organization. Another service the membership staff provides is to work with groups who wish

14 RETA.com