National Leadership Opportunities in Dermatology for Students

DIGA Leadership: Structure and Available Positions

This leadership was conceived to maximize the longitudinal continuity and diversity of representation in DIGA, to help ensure that it becomes a permanent national organization.

Leadership selection will occur by an application process, rather than an election process. Elections are difficult with so little actual interaction between members from different states, and will make it nearly impossible to preserve the diversity and class structure outlined below.

Terms will span January-January, as the DIGA annual meeting will be held each February at the AAD meeting. Applications should be submitted electronically to the current board of directors using the website or email.

Board of Directors
Each member of this group should come from a different school, preferably from a different state. The class requirements are to help maintain continuity and smooth transitions in leadership. All members of this Board are responsible for attending and planning the annual meeting in addition to their responsibilities below.

President: Responsible for overseeing and administrating/ delegating over all aspects of DIGA.
Vice President: Responsible for assisting the President in planning/ administration.
Treasurer: Responsible for obtaining funding and managing the budget.
Web Supervisor: Responsible for maintaining the website, posting updates, and checking the discussion boards regularly to make sure nothing grossly inappropriate is left on the site.

Regional Representatives:
The regional representatives can be from any class; their role is to communicate with individual chapters, recruit new school participation, and encourage use of the website/forum. These individuals are responsible for coming to the annual meeting as the key liaisons between the board of directors and individual schools for sharing information about upcoming projects, events, and meetings. They also will be responsible for quarterly updates to the board regarding the activities of each chapter in their region; they will obtain these by contacting each interest group in their region for a brief email update. This information will be posted on the website. Furthermore, if we’d like, each region can put together an annual poster of their regions’ DIG activities; perhaps DIGA can obtain permission from the AAD to display these at the annual meetings.

Region 1 (Western Region): California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
Region 2 (Midwest Region): Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
Region 3 (Southern Region): Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia
Region 4 (Northeastern Region): Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C.

School Representatives:
These are the leaders of the Dermatology Interest Groups at individual schools; each school’s interest group will select this representative individually. The school representatives will be responsible for communicating with the regional representatives, both sharing their chapter’s activities and carrying out collaborative projects at the school level. School representatives are also responsible for maximizing their school’s use of and contribution to the website. They are welcome to attend the national meeting, but are not required to.

Please email me: typoonaw@utmb.edu and I will send you the application form.