Society of Flight Test Engineers

Proposed SFTE Constitution Updates

One of the objectives this term for the Board of Directors was to incorporate the Policy Letters into the Constitution, Bylaws, and Code of Ethics.

During the previous Board term, all three documents were updated to be electronically compatible, use gender neutral terminology, and fix some other long standing formatting issues. These updates were approved at the Annual Business Meeting (ABM) in 2022.

During that review process, it became clear the traditional method of using Policy Letters to “revise” the Constitution, Bylaws, and Code of Ethics was not authorized in any of the documents. There were good reasons for adopting the Policy Letter approach early in the life of the Society, but the advent of electronic documents and communications has provided opportunities to simplify our revision process. Consequently, the Board incorporated the Policy Letters into the body of the three documents and updated other process to modern modes (e.g. “postal mail” references were replaced with more generic “communication”).

A significant amount of history is contained in the Policy Letters regarding how the Society grew and evolved and all Policy Letters are being retained – but only for historical purposes.

Today we are presenting an updated version of the Constitution for Membership review prior to being voted on at the 2024 ABM – which is being held during the 2024 Symposium in Seattle. Updates to the Bylaws and Code of Ethics will soon follow.

Voting will be held in a combined fashion - delegated representatives will cast votes for each chapter proportional to the membership of each chapter, and at large members will be afforded the opportunity to cast votes electronically in advance.

Two forums have been hosted to allow chapter representatives to review and provide feedback on the proposed changes, and comments have been noted and discussed. A wider feedback opportunity will be opened to allow you to ask questions and provide feedback on the proposed changes. We look forward to those discussions.

We encourage comments to be submitted in advance of the forums in order to allow early review by the board.

Relevant Documents

Submission of feedback is encouraged using the form at the button below. Formal comments received by this method will be reviewed and responded to. Ad hoc or verbal comments will be addressed as able.

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