President-Elect Roles & Responsibilities

The President-Elect serves a two-year term, automatically assumes the office of President for two years, and remains an additional two years on the Board as the immediate Past President.

The President-Elect:

  • Prepares to assume the office of President; this may include self-directed activities to address organizational areas that are unfamiliar.
  • Presides at meetings of the Board of Directors in the absence of the President.
  • Assumes the office of President should that office become vacant, and subsequently fills the office of President for a regular term.
  • Serves as a member of the Executive and Finance Committees.
  • Administers the executive director evaluation process in collaboration with the President and Past President.
  • Attends national and international meetings to represent the organization.
  • Writes articles as necessary to communicate to the membership via the e-newsletter.

Qualifications & Commitments

  • As prescribed by AAA’s adherence to best practices, to be eligible, candidates for president-elect must have served on the board of directors
  • Candidates should be in an active, extramurally funded research program and have name recognition in the chosen area of research; success at obtaining national funding serves as a measure of peer review of the candidate and provides credibility for a position that may be called upon to present to Congress and various federal agencies in an advocacy process.
  • Candidates should have experience teaching any of the anatomical disciplines (Gross Anatomy, Histology, Neuroscience, Cellular & Developmental Biology, and Embryology); teaching is an important component of the duties of our members, but a candidate should not be selected solely for teaching recognition without a significant research record.
  • The President-Elect is a member of the Executive Committee, a committee of the Board of Directors; the Executive Committee meets as needed to conduct business between meetings of the Board of Directors.

Time Commitment

  • The President-Elect typically spends three to five hours per week on AAA communications and business.
  • The President-Elect must attend Board meetings (three each year – one in the fall, one in the spring immediately preceding the Annual Meeting, one in the summer) and participate in conference calls and the Annual Meeting. He/she as a representative of the Publications Committee must also participate in the annual face-to-face meeting with the journals publisher.
  • In addition to Board meetings, the President-Elect may also choose to represent AAA at meetings of other organizations such as American Association of Clinical Anatomists, Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Neurobiology Chairpersons, Human Anatomy and Physiological Society, and International Federation of Associations of Anatomists. Overseas travel may be required.

Reviewed March 2023