Associate Director
Lisa Brochu
December 2007

Certification
The CIT workshop held in Hawaii in early December had 23 of 24 spots filled with folks from federal agencies, one zoo, two aquariums, the Pacific Whale Foundation and the countries of China and Japan. They all braved one of the worst storms on record for the Big Island to attend, but at least they stayed focused on the classroom!

The 2008 schedule for CIP and CIT workshops has been completed. Deb is finalizing logistical arrangements for those workshops and should have them all posted in the next week or so. We will kick off the new year with a Host Trainers workshop in the national office January 17-18.

A reminder to incoming board members - you are entitled to one free registration at a certification workshop offered by the national office during your term of office. You do not have to apply for certification, but it is offered as an opportunity for you to learn more about this important program for NAI. There is a policy for board members (established by board motion in 2002) that if you choose to exercise this option for a CIT workshop and then subsequently earn fees from holding CIG or CIH workshops, you would need to reimburse NAI for the registration fee (currently $475).

International
The Panama ecotour will be offered April 18-29, 2008. It is being coordinated by ANCON Expeditions of Panama. The registration information should be available next week.

The national office hosted a group of Korean National Forest superintendents in late October. We appreciated Deb's husband, Duncan Rollo, providing volunteer support to tour them around the Front Range. Due to their visit to the national office, we anticipate that they will become significant sponsors of the Korea conference in May. This past week, we welcomed our first international intern, Jung-Mok Hwang, a graduate student from Suncheon University in Korea, who will be helping us from December 17-March 17 with arrangements for the Korea conference and learning more about NAI operations in the process so that he can help with the growth of NAI-Korea.

Contracts & Speaking Engagements
Tim and I have been asked to participate as primary authors in the development of a world heritage interpretation and tourism book to be funded and distributed by World Bank in cooperation with the World Tourism Organization.

Travel Update
Travel schedules are frequently subject to last-minute change, but we attempt to update the staff travel schedule monthly. View my upcoming known travel at http://www.interpnet.com/resources_leaders/staffschedule.shtml.