Chapter Four - Strength from diversity

Abstract

The ASM’s focus on building the microbiology community and providing high quality services to its members saw a number of further advances throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The introduction of paid staff, the employment of professional conference organisers and the purchase of premises for the establishment of a national office facilitated these aims. As the 1990s progressed, the roles and functions of the ASM diversified. Discipline-based Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that had already been formed consolidated and prospered and the ASM was continually called upon to play an advisory role – particularly in the context of policy and regulation. Once again, it was time for change. The National Council had to adapt and evolve if it was to continue to be the voice of microbiology in Australia. Adapt it did. Structural change in the late 1990s saw a new-look National Council emerge – one that could ease the Society into the new millennium and ensure that it could build a strong and dynamic future.