April 2023

MidAmerica Region Nominating Committee Annual Report

Hello, everyone! My name is Mel Priese, my pronouns are She/They, and I am one of the co-chairs of the MidAmerica Region Nominating Committee, along with my wonderful co-chair Helen Dwyer. I am so honored to serve this region in my position, and I am so honored to have my wonderful co-committee members by my side.

This year, we have made some wonderful strides on the Nominating Committee. We have worked to widen our net of engagement with the region regarding recruiting candidates. We have been able to find a much fuller slate of candidates this year, and we have even more plans to improve our process and execution next year.

Like I said, our biggest focus this year was to expand the way we gain candidates for our process. We were able to gather more recommendations from third parties, and that was a huge help. We did still struggle with candidate interest, but this comes as no surprise, as it has been a common theme since I joined this committee in 2020. This being said, I am so excited to announce that for the first time since I have joined this committee, we were able to secure a full slate of nominees!

Our committee has also been focusing on our processes, and making our onboarding and training of new committee members more comprehensive and accessible. This includes better documentation of procedures and a greater focus on training earlier in the year. We decided to do this after speaking as a group and identifying which steps of the Onboarding process we wish were better fleshed out from when we all joined the committee.

This coming year, we plan to continue to build up our outreach, and our internal processes. We’re also hoping to explore and seek new ideas to create more diverse slates of candidates for the future.

Now, on to our slate. Please bear with me, as I will read the entire slate of candidates, and once I am complete, I will hand off the voting to the facilitators of this meeting.

Slate

Board of Trustees

• Dorit Bergen - Incumbent
• Autumn Mahoney - Incumbent
• Terry Mark
• Barbara Gutsch

Nominating Committee

• Helen Dwyer - Incumbent
• Rev. Dr. Mary Shelden - Incumbent
• Carol Torrens
• John Lunsford - Incumbent
• Mel Priese - Incumbent
• Rev. Daniel Miyake

Midwest UU Conference

• Rollie Hanson - Incumbent
• Rev. Molly Housh Gordon
• Rev. Alex Jensen
• Diana Tarver
• Diane Hubbard Kennedy

I am so excited to welcome all of our new candidates to their new positions, and I would like to thank you all for your time and your commitment to this region!