Presidential Matters 9th  tried to be at the cutting edge. We were one of the first state components to fully computerize, one of the first to have our own database for membership, one of the first in the country to have a website, and I am proud to say that today we have a substantial presence on the internet with our website, along with social media, such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. With the opening of Touro College of Dental Medicine and the ever-increasing numbers of recent graduates in the area, now more than ever it is imperative to find a better way to get these new and future dentists more involved. Being the second largest component in New York State, those numbers may look great on paper, but we still have significant issues getting these young dentists more involved. The Ninth District with its five counties is spread over a sizeable area, which also adds to the difficulties that we have in making ourselves more accessible to our membership. During the past few years we have made a concerted effort to move some of our general meetings to locations further north – to the other counties outside of Westchester. Most recently we have, at the urging of our current President, Mary Ellen Lukaswitz, found alternate locations for our Board of Governors meeting, in order to make travel a little easier for those board members, committee chairs and past presidents that do not reside in lower Westchester County. I will continue to do the same in the coming year. In real estate where the mantra is location, location, location, for associations of any kind the mantra is membership, membership, membership. During the last ten years alone, the dental landscape has changed dramatically. Demographics bear this out, and according to the ADA, as of 2016 there were 196,441 dentists in the United States, of those 30% are women, 39% are under 45 years of age, and 17% or 32,000 of those are under 35 years of age. Therein lies the challenge we face today. As our core members age, organized dentistry is having more difficulty maintaining the numbers. Our younger members and potential members are so busy with their personal lives and their careers they hardly have any free time to get involved in organized dentistry. But, we have recently had a number of highly successful programs for both women as well as new dentists. The most recent New Dentist Reception held in September had over 60 attendees – a huge success. Two years ago, Frank Vigliotti stood up here and told us how the future of organized dentistry is the new dentists and that we had to get them involved. With the urging and guidance of Frank followed this year by Mary Ellen Lukaswitz and the hard work of Membership and Communications Committee Chair Renuka Bijoor, Vice Chair Jason Sauer, New Dentist Chair Amrita Patel and Vice President Minerva Patel the Ninth District has presented these tremendously successful programs. A new sub-committee of the Membership and Communications Committee is the Mentoring Committee which is chaired by Past President Roland Emmanuele – this committee and its dedicated members is tasked with matching students at Touro with practicing dentists in the Ninth District to help them gain a practical and professional perspective of operating a dental office. So, as you can see, we are working hard at increasing our membership. With these new programs and the dedicated members working on them, along with the other 29 standing committees that we have, I believe that the future is bright for the Ninth District. BUT, the Ninth District and organized dentistry can always use more help and participation. As I mentioned earlier the competition for what limited free time the new dentists have is fierce, so much so that we have noticed that even our highly successful evening CE program has been impacted. Many of our members can’t always make it to headquarters to take the courses that we offer. So, I am pleased to announce that beginning in 2018 we will be incorporating live and on-demand webinars as part of our Continuing Education Program. We had a very successful test run a few months ago with the help of Ed Feinberg – who has been invaluable in this process. Our goal in the coming year is to begin to offer some of the evening courses at headquarters simultaneously as live webinars that will then be archived for on-demand viewing. We will be getting more information out in the not too distant future, but we are very excited about this new project, it was something that many of our younger members have been asking for and surprisingly, many of our more “mature” members as well. I would be remiss if I did not thank the current members of the Board of Governors and those that completed their terms while I have been MARCH 2018  13