Membership at its best
Dr. Ali Erdemir | TLT President's Report February 2017
Why has STLE succeeded for 73 years? In a word: Value.
Since its foundation in 1944, tens of thousands of professionals from around the globe have embraced STLE as their principal professional affiliation.
© Can Stock Photo / frender
STLE HAS MAINTAINED A LONG TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE in not only attracting but also maintaining a stable membership pool representing many scientific and engineering disciplines. Since its foundation in 1944, tens of thousands of professionals from around the globe have embraced STLE as their principal professional affiliation.
These members have been the lifeline and the key reason for STLE’s very existence for all these years. Furthermore, these committed members helped STLE in many ways, often taking active leadership roles in promoting STLE’s key mission to advance the science of tribology and best practices in lubrication engineering.
Undoubtedly, maintaining a strong membership base is critically important for the vitality and long-term viability of a professional association. Hence, attracting and recruiting new members, while at the same time retaining existing ones, is imperative. However, this is not an easy task as the landscape for associations has lately become very crowded and highly competitive due in part to the emergence of many new associations with overlapping interests. This is particularly true for STLE, as its members come from many different professional backgrounds. However, such diversity also is what makes STLE unique and perhaps its strongest point. STLE has done quite well in meeting the needs of such a diverse membership base.
STLE also attracts prospective members through its technical meetings, local affiliates, online membership drives, social networking and Webinars. Our members are often the most valuable recruiting resource, as they can tell prospective members what is unique about STLE and the long list of member benefits.
To make sure that its members are fully satisfied, STLE conducts regular surveys asking members for their opinions on multiple fronts. So far STLE has scored very well with more than 80% of our members confirming their satisfaction with their membership experience. These surveys also give STLE important clues on what most matters for our members and how we can better serve them in the future.
Compared to other organizations, STLE’s value proposition—Connect, Learn, Achieve—stands loud and tall. Through its singular technical content, archival publications, digital resources, important news items, education, certification and training courses, STLE offers top value for a reasonable fee. Our technical meetings are among the very best an association can offer. Extensive and exciting outreach and scholarship programs for students from K12 to STEM, from undergrads to post-graduates, are all rated as among the very best. This is perhaps one of the most important reasons why our members renew their memberships year after year to further enrich their professional lives.
Since its inception, STLE has enjoyed the privilege of having many dedicated and loyal members. Going forward, we need to boost our membership base further, especially among new and younger members. Member-to-prospective member communication works best in expanding our membership base, as a face-to-face conversation goes a long way toward conveying the message of who we are and what we offer.
If you have not yet done so, please visit STLE’s totally redesigned and greatly enhanced Website at
www.stle.org to see the wealth of membership benefits that await you and your colleagues. Also, please share this link with your friends and colleagues. We would love to hear back from you to find out what your concerns are and how else we can meet your needs.
STLE thanks you for your unwavering support and reiterates its commitment to serving you even better in the future.
Ali Erdemir is a Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. You can reach him at erdemir@anl.gov.