Hello fellow CER members:As we move from July to August, still hoping that we might get summer somewhere in the next month or so, I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to bring you up-to-date on a couple of CER issues.The most important is to welcome Liz Townsend as the new CER Director, effective August 1st as approved by the membership at our meeting on June 29. Many of you will have met Liz at CER events over the past year and I'll let her make her own formal introduction; however, I'm not going too far out on a limb to say that all of us at the CER will be able to benefit from the extensive research and administrative experience she acquired at Dalhousie University before moving to PEI. Please join with me in welcoming her to her new role with us.

I'd also like to thank all of you for your continued support for the CER and for your patience during my tenure as Interim Director from February to July. Still very much a work in progress, the CER represents a vision for new possibilities and partnerships for educational research on PEI. Over the past few months I've gained a huge appreciation for the complexity of helping that vision take shape and renewed my belief in its importance. This year, the fifth since the CER was established, will see its first full Senate review and is therefore an opportunity to consolidate our achievements so far as we continue to move ahead.

Finally, I'd like to encourage as many of you as possible to consider taking on active roles in contributing to the CER's development and helping to shape priorities over the coming year. I expect there will be seats available on the Operating Committee, for example. I also expect that the Seminar Series will continue and that the Research Forum will continue to provide a PEI showcase for our work. I am equally sure that many of you will have additional ideas and contributions to make. Please don't hesitate to share them!

All the best for a wonderful August!

Yours truly, Sandy McAuley Interim Director, CER (past)