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12 | january/february 2014 | Facilities Manager From the APPA Board T o serve in a leadership role for the premier international association meeting the needs of educational facility professionals is a unique honor and awesome privilege. NOT GOING IT ALONE The 22 members of APPA's 2013-14 Board of Directors are a hardworking, energetic and dedicated group of volun- teers, entrusted with the responsibility to strategically plan, guide, and steward an organization celebrating 100 years of existence. APPA has a lofty vision "to become a global partner in learning," and a mission "to support educational excellence with quality leadership and professional management." Addition- ally, this organization espouses such values as integrity, honesty, diversity and inclusiveness, service, quality, and collaboration. PRESSING ISSUES As APPA celebrates 100 years, and this Board serves during a period of rapid change in higher education, we are confronted with changes in technol- ogy and pedagogy, increases in tuition, declining resources, rising energy costs, and an enormous backlog of renewal and renovation needs. Other pressing issues include how to plan for the future when there is uncertainty about how students will be educated in the decades to come. How much campus space will be needed? What kind of space? How will the space be utilized? How will online learning affect brick-and-mortar campuses? Will there be a hybrid teach- ing model? If facility professionals were made to deal with this tidal wave of change alone, they would be putting their pro- fessional careers and their institutions at risk. Back in 1914, a group of farsighted professionals representing 14 Mid- western higher educational institutions formed the association now known as APPA. We owe them a large debt of gratitude! Today APPA offers the best cutting-edge programs, products, and services to equip and enlighten facility professionals toward identifying critical issues and making informed decisions that are in the best interest of their institutions. APPA is the "go to" association of educational facility professionals because for the past 100 years, talented and engaged professionals have devoted time and energy to research, benchmark, and publish books, magazines, and mono- graphs as well as planned and organized educational and training forums. At the helm, over the years, individu- als have stepped forward to guide and direct the association on the APPA Board of Directors. They would not have been successful without the support of an outstanding APPA staff. OPPORTUNITIES + PREPAREDNESS = SUCCESS As we celebrate APPA's 100th an- niversary, and launch into the next hundred years, we do so from a position of strength. We are poised to become an even stronger and more influential organization because of those who have led us in the past, and those currently serving on the Board. The challenges we face, although daunting, are opportunities. And oppor- tunities coupled with preparedness equal success. As the French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, once said: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." So as we travel forward on our APPA journey, we must not focus on isolated tasks, but on the enriching experience of the entire profession and the goals that are truly worth achieving as stewards of educational facilities. Randolph Hare is APPA's President-Elect and director of maintenance & operations at Washington & Lee University in Lexing- ton, VA. He can be reached at rhare@wlu. edu. Leadership That Makes a Difference By Randolph Hare