December 17, 2020

The pandemic has had a particularly hard impact on the engagements that the Educational and Resource Committee has been working on, given that key programs the committee focuses on depend on face to face connections with groups of students on school campuses.

The Government Advocacy Committee of AIA Wyoming continues to meet periodically via conference call as required to address topics as they arise. We have also been observing selected legislative committee meetings remotely over the internet.

This year has been very unusual for everyone, including the Public Awareness Committee. In a time where we are social distancing to stay well, most of what we do to educate the public about architecture can still be sustained. We have continued with the calendar and publication to reach out, but we did have to cancel our National Architecture Week events due to Covid-19. We will pick up more in-person events next year as time allows. AIA Wyoming is a resilient group that is always thinking of ways to reach out to the public and membership to keep everyone involved and educated.

So many of our AIA members have contributed to AIA Wyoming over the years. This September in Casper, we watched your contributions in action at our Annual Fall conference with colleagues, peers, and mentors.

2020 has been a unique year, to say the least. While it is easy to see the negative of everything that has happened this year, we as Architects are trained to look deeper. We can still find the positive side of events, regardless of how small that side may be sometimes. While we can’t ignore the negatives, I choose to focus on our victories this year and our triumphs over individual adversities. For example, we don’t have to worry about murder hornets anymore…ha.