College of Medicine University of Lagos Alumni, The Americas Chapter

Venue: Embassy Suites/Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee.

Meeting was called to order at 3:47 pm Eastern time

Attendees:

Yele Osunkoya, Leke Alli, Fred Junard, Tola Kassim, Olumide Aderoba, Dapo Omitoroju and Olumide Anifowoshe.

Opening prayer by Dr Omitoroju

Old Bussiness:

1. Summary of the last annual general meeting by Dr T. Junard the vice president.

2. Motion to approve the meeting by the President Dr Yele Osunkoya, seconded by Leke Alli.

New Business

Letter from the Provost:

We are in communication with the new provost Prof. Atoyebi, unfortunately we were unable to get any letter/update from him before this meeting.

Address from the president Dr Yele Osunkoya: This was a disappointing turnout, On this note we ask if this is beyond us or are we inadequate to contribute and foster progress with our Alma Mata? The answer is no. This is the time to play our part or the go into extinction. Financial statement for the last fiscal year was presented by Yele Osunkoya. ( Click Here for the report)

Discussion:

With the poor turnout, all attendees agreed we have to fine solutions to the lack of commitment by the all CMUL diasporas. With a lot of brainstorming and contributions from all, the following decisions were reached.

1. To change the AGM date from Memorial Day week-end to the 1st Saturday in May, with all present voting in favor of this change.

2. To have the meeting in attractive places for family, on this note, Orlando was picked for the 2010 Annual meeting. Need ways of reminding members every 2months of the annual meeting.

3. Need to be represented at Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA) annual meeting; hopefully we may have a breakaway meeting for CMUL Alumni.

4. We need an ambassador in each year group and State group to be the coordinator at the grass roots level; we need minimum of 2 proactive members for each year and each state. This could be extended to performing social meeting periodically. Each of us should take responsibility of recruiting other alumni.

5. We should consider getting CMUL Alumni onto facebook, good way to reach members.

6. The fair turnout in the 2008 meeting may have been an illusion, today’s turnout indicated we should focus on the goal of improving participation in the next year, mean while we should hold off on all major projects considered for this next year until we’ve archive this goal.

7. Our focus should not be on the physicians alone, other CMUL Alumni groups i.e. Dentist/ Physical therapist/physiologist/Pharmacist/Microbiologists/Masters in Public Health, Post-graduate research and training etc need to feel welcome.

8. We need to emphasis the alumni are for all medical and allied medical science groups on the CMUL website. Try to make the website more user-friendly, find a way to use it as a form of discussion point. We are working on this with the help of Don.

9. We need to meet more frequently via teleconference at least every 2 months. Meeting was adjourned at 7:30 Pm Eastern time

Next meeting Date: By Teleconference To Be Announced Shortly.