We would like to see a Safey person listed on our Committee page just as we have Chair and Equivalency

"Emeritus" has been used by the climbing committee to award a "Climb Leader Emeritus" badge to people who were past climb leaders in recognition of their past service.

"Past Chair" badge recognizes people who have served as activity or branch chairs in the past.

So, two different terms used to for the same thing: recognition of past service. I assume these never expire because one never stops having history of having been.

I think that what is being proposed is a committee role of immediate past chair who remains involved in committee business. This is a temporary assignment, removed when the person is no longer in that role.

I know I'm comparing badges to committee positions but this is not comparing apples to oranges. There is sometimes a relationship between positions and badges. Active chairs get badges denoting that position. Past chairs get badges denoting that position. The relationship between active chair and the badge is 1 to 1. You get the badge while you hold that position. The relationship between the propose "past chair" position and the existing "past chair" badges is not clear but it is not 1 to 1. Should there be a relationship or not?

What is the best wording to make the relationship clear? If "Emeritus" or "Past" were used consistently to recognize past service (a persistent badge) then we could use the other word as a committee position (limited time) with out implying relationship to the badge.

We could change the wording on "past chair" and "past officer" badges to use "emeritus". Thus we use "emeritus" everywhere to denote the honor of having had this status in the past. It might not be hard to make those changes.

We could use a new term for the committee position, such as "advisor". "Chair Advisor", which the active role of advising the current chair.

Or go with "Immediate Past Chair". But I like "advisor" because that indicates the role.

I'd like to modify the proposal to suggest adding "Immediate Past Chair" instead of "Chair Emeritus". A quick scan of all committee charters visible via search on the Mountaineers website showed several that use "Immediate Past Chair" and zero that use "Chair Emeritus". Thanks to Peter H for pointing this out during a discussion about the proposal among the Seattle Branch Council.

The same scan of committee charters showed some that use the term Co-Chair instead of Vice Chair, so perhaps adding Co-Chair to the list of committee positions is worth considering as well.

To Thomas' point, a general Specialist role could accommodate such variations, if the specialty could also be indicated.

In the Seattle Sea Kayak Committee we also have the positions of

Fixer - responsible for fixing things, getting things done, and remembering how to do things.
Sage - responsible for providing sage advice when asked

On one hand this is a joke. On the other, we have people who perform these functions, our committee operates better for having them, and assigning these job titles recognizes their contribution. Every committee would benefit from having a fixer and a sage.

For Committee rosters people can be associated with one of a hard-coded list of positions and can be advertised as a public committee contact in that position. The way Mountaineers Committees are typically administered has changed over the last few years. We are proposing that the list of positions be extended to better support current common practices.

We propose adding the following positions:

Safety
Vice Chair
Chair Elect
Chair Emeritus

"Safety" is meant to indicate the Safety Officer. Most Committees are now basing their Committee Charter on the Clubwide charter template, which specifies that the committee have a Safety Officer. Adding such a position allows the committee's safety officer to be publicly visible on the committee page, and could set the stage for automatically sending safety reports to that person in the future. We think the term "Officer" is weird, and propose just calling the role "Safety", similar to how the Leadership Chair role is just called "Leadership".

The standard committee charter template also specifies that committees have a Vice Chair, hence the addition of that position too.

The Chair Elect and Chair Emeritus positions are becoming more common as committee succession plans become more mature and more committees adopt the three-person Chair Elect/Chair/Chair Emeritus leadership model.

I would like to show a committee position of Outreach Coordinator.

A few things to consider:
• If we make this open text, we have no control over what folks might enter and will lose consistency across the website. That’s very bad.
• If we add to the list, we need to be sure that what we add can be understood by the people who add them and users who may view them. We need org-wide buy-in for any additions, changes or removals.
• If committees need to track more roles and responsibilities, we do have the “notes” field for each committee member.

Has there been any movement on this? I'd like to see it moved up in priority. I really dislike showing my co-chair on the Photo committee page and having it just say "leader."

The issues seems to be that a contact's title is limited to the set of roles supported by the website. Why not make the title arbitrary text? Larger committees with activity-specific org structures have the need to advertise contacts for roles that are specific to that activity. For example Seattle Scramble has a whole "Winter Scrambles" subcommittee with it's on subcommittee chair, members, training, etc. No other activity is going to have a "Winter Scrambles" role. Other diverse activities such as Sea Kayaking and Folk Dancing may also have the need to advertise contacts with titles that are specific to that activity and/or branch.

good idea.

This is a great idea!