Free Student Membership Program

APA’s popular Free Student Membership Program is about to enter its sixth year. Recently, with the help of planning faculty and staff, we began to enroll incoming third-year undergraduates and first-year graduate students in more than 70 colleges and universities with PAB-accredited programs. We hope to have as many as 2,500 new student members signed up by the time this semester’s enrollment window closes on September 28. Learn more about our Free Student Membership Program, here.

I hope that you will do everything you can to welcome these new members, involve them in APA and chapter activities, and share your appreciation of APA membership. In the fall, we’ll let you know how many students joined APA from schools in your state or region. We’ll also make some suggestions for ways you can engage these enthusiastic new members early in their free year.

Please make it a point to reach out to the leaders of Planning Student Organizations at nearby colleges and universities and encourage them to promote APA’s Free Student Membership Program among incoming students. Remind them that the free year is just the beginning of our Early Career Program that offers five years of enhanced APA benefits at zero or low cost for students and new professionals who keep their membership current. Click here to learn more about the Early Career Program.

Our Free Student Membership Program is only one element of our ongoing efforts to work more closely with the planning academy. Another component—enrolling full-time faculty at PAB-accredited planning programs as APA academic members—is well under way for the 2010–11 academic year. Learn more about APA’s academic membership program here.

I look forward to working with you to welcome our new student members.

Sincerely,

Mike Welch
Director of Leadership and Component Services