14 February 2024
In accordance with the ASNT Bylaws, ARTICLE VII Amendments and Revisions, this is to notify the members of ASNT’s intent to revise the Bylaws as described below.
Description of the Proposed Revision
The Executive Committee proposes the following changes:
Combine the positions of President and Chair of the Board, under the title of President.
Change the terms of office for President and Vice President from one year each to two years each.
Eliminate the position of Immediate Past Chair.
Add the President of ASNT Foundation to the Executive Committee.
Rationale for the Revision
Currently, the elected officers include the Chair of the Board, the President, and the Vice President. Each serves a one-year term. The Immediate Past Chair, while not an officer position, also serves a one-year term.
This structure causes several problems.
First, there remains role ambiguity and confusion between the Chair of the Board and the President. Who is in charge? It depends on who holds those positions and how they negotiate the distribution of duties. Each pair of volunteers tends to negotiate a slightly different division of duties between them. While this practice may not have created much conflict to date, retaining the practice could result in future conflict between the Chair and the President. Within U.S. technical societies, separating the Board Chair and President roles and duties is unusual. Typically, the senior elected member is the President, who also serves as the Board Chair for governance purposes.
Second, one-year terms result in rapid turnover in the senior elected volunteer position. Given the scope and complexity of the strategic plan and ASNT's operations, volunteers spend very little time in their respective roles before they are expected to assume new roles and responsibilities.
Third, as ASNT increases activities in the international community in support of Pillar 5 Global Growth of the strategic plan, we have observed discontinuities between ASNT's officer practices and those of other national societies, which create confusion and impacts relationships. As noted in the first two factors above, title and role confusion as well as one-year terms creates challenges when engaging in the international community, where most foreign societies are led by Presidents who serve three- to five-year terms.
Fourth, the Executive Committee believes that with the extension of officer terms to two years each, as described above, there are few benefits from retaining Past Chairs on the Board for another year, while it extends the volunteer’s personal time commitment to potentially 11 years (6 years as director, 4 years as VP-President, and 1 year as Immediate Past Chair).
Fifth, with the combination of the Chair and President positions, the Executive Committee would be reduced from four members (Chair, President, Vice President, and President of ASNT Certification Services) to only three members (President, Vice President, and President of ASNT Certification Services). To retain the size of the Executive Committee at four members and following the precedent and current practice of including the President of ASNT’s major subsidiary (ASNT Certification Services), the Executive Committee proposes adding the President of ASNT’s second major subsidiary – the ASNT Foundation – to the Executive Committee.
The impact to the Board of Directors would be reduction in size by up to two positions, depending upon when in their terms Directors are elected to Vice President.
Next Steps
Members are invited to submit questions and comments on the proposal before April 16 to Secretary Jill Ross at secretary@asnt.org.
The Secretary will respond, and the Board of Directors shall consider, all questions before the Board votes to adopt the revision. All questions, comments, and responses will be published on ASNT's website for transparency purposes.
ASNT will conduct a virtual Special Meeting of the Members on 14 March 2025 at 10:00 a.m. ET to allow members to question or comment on the proposal. A meeting link will be sent to all registrants via email.
Register for the MeetingContact
For any questions, contact Secretary Jill Ross at secretary@asnt.org.
