The 77th annual American Classical League Institute took place from June 27th to June 29th, 2024, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The university and the city of Tucson were both wonderful hosts for ACL, providing convenient access to facilities, hotels, and great food. The Institute brought together nearly 200 combined in-person members and ones attending virtually.
There were many sessions that centered on pedagogy and specifically teaching better reading skills as well as building the critical thinking skills in students so that they can continue doing productive tasks with texts relative to their overall proficiency level. One of the highlights, though, was a series of regional round tables held in order to bring together and facilitate cooperation and partnerships among the various regional organizations. I’m looking forward to our potential collaboration with CAAS and CAES over this next year, especially with our annual meeting being held at Yale University next March. CANE has quickly become renowned for the quality of presentations and workshops at the annual meeting and we, hopefully, will be able to share our expertise with a number of CAAS and CAES members in 2025.
In Board of Governors news, longtime CANE Executive committee member, Mark Pearsal, has begun his term as the Vice President of Programming and Impact for ACL. He is looking forward to expanding both the frequency and breadth of programming as well as forging new partnerships with the regional organizations to provide more benefits for members.
At the state of the ACL plenary session, president Jennie Luongo detailed a number of important issues regarding the League as a whole. First, the Board of Governors is considering adopting a refined mission statement that continues to bring alignment of the organization’s actions with their ideals. Members can comment on the refined missions statement at the following link: bit.ly/aclmission2024
Membership in the organization is up to pre-COVID levels, sitting just shy of 1800 members as of Institute. While membership is up, as well as operating revenue, the operating costs have also risen. There has been some reduction in operating losses due to cutting in-person Board and committee meetings but the overall operating loss per year is still almost $270,000. As a result, Jennie Luongo has created an ACL Development Committee to examine how the American Classical League can grow its development and fundraising operation through various methods (including but not limited to annual giving, planned giving, and endowment gifts) and to form an action plan for fundraising in order to make recommendations to the ACL Board of Governors. I have been asked to serve on this committee with the hope of helping the American Classical League become financially stable in the next few years.
As always, the American Classical League Institute is a must-attend event if you are interested in continuing to develop your teaching craft. Next year’s Institute will be hosted by Loyola University in Chicago from June 30th to July 2nd, 2025. I hope to see more CANE members there next year!
Respectfully submitted,
Kevin Ballestrini
Executive Secretary