We discussed two projects that the Chapter is working on. The first was a Science Museum of Virginia Starlab portable planetarium to visit Elizabeth Scott Elementary School in Chesterfiled County on April 7th. The second was for a Lloyd C. Bird High School trip to Huntsville Space center for the Student Rocket Launch Initative in late April.

The executive committee selected Katherine Kelley, a 7th grade science teacher at Colonial Heights Middle School as the chapter’s Teacher of the Year.

We discussed our meeting schedule for the next year. We will be having 2 evening meetings and 2 day meetings to try and get more people to attend. The evening meetings will be held in the second quarter, May or June and the 4th quarter, probably in November. The luncheon will be in the 3rd quarter—probably in September.

We will be hosting the AFA state meeting in November again and hope to possibly have this function at the Hilton Gardens Hotel, as we did in the past.

A plan to develop a brochure about the chapter, its past officers, etc was discussed. It is hoped that this would bring some real ownership in the chapter for members and it could be used as a membership recruiting tool.

The AFA state meeting is in Danville on the 8th of March.

AFA is still undergoing changes and some of these will be discussed at this meeting.

Two teachers sponsored by Leigh Wade were awarded teacher grants by AFA; Melinda Kelley,Colonial Heights Middle School and Tim Couillard, James River High School. There were only 8 teacher grants awarded in Virginia this year..