The EdTA Board of Directors spent a day in a workshop designed to improve its own effectiveness, approved a proposal for a change in the organization’s fiscal year, and reappointed board member Kenneth Washington to a new three-year term during its January face-to-face meeting.

The EdTA Chapter Board of Missouri has recommended Jennifer Forrest-James to take over as chapter director when current chapter director Debbie Corbin takes a seat on the EdTA Board of Directors next August.

Forrest-James, theatre teacher at Parkway South High School in Ballwin, Missouri, has thirteen years of classroom experience in middle and high schools and serves on the Missouri Chapter Board. She would complete Corbin’s unexpired term, which runs until July 31, 2013.

Ben Cameron will be the opening keynote speaker at the 2012 Educational Theatre Association’s Conference in San Diego, September 20-23. The program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York City, Cameron is one of America’s most outspoken and influential arts advocates, known for his dynamic and compelling presentations on the value of the arts.

The generous response to its Best Gift campaign to raise funds to send a troupe of students to the Thespian Festival has encouraged EdTA to double the campaign goal and try to give even more students the gift of a Festival experience.