The major goal of the Education Standing Committee is to enhance research animal welfare by supporting outreach, education and training of highly qualified laboratory animal veterinarians.

One of the strategies to meet this goal is to promote harmonization of knowledge and skills required for a newly boarded laboratory animal veterinarian. Thus, each Member College has developed a document that lists the knowledge and skills required of a newly boarded laboratory animal veterinarian. Although there is agreement across Member Colleges on the required knowledge and skills, the documents are not identical because specific knowledge of national and regional regulations differ and there are differences in emphasis on certain species in different regions. See the links below for each College's RDD document.

RDD ACLAM, ECLAM, ICLAM, JCLAM, KCLAM, PCLAM

More information of the harmonization of knowledge and skills required, across the Colleges, can be found in the article Toward Global Harmonization of Training and Certification of Specialists in Laboratory Animal Veterinary Medicine.

Another strategy is to harmonize the minimal requirements for research and publication for board eligibility. The Colleges have agreed upon the following minimal research and publication. All Colleges agree that at least one original article as first author in an English language international scientific journal on a topic related to laboratory animal medicine or laboratory animal science, or basic biology research is required.

Further strategies that the standing committee is working on include harmonization of alternative residency requirements, harmonization of residency training program requirements and harmonization of examination methodology.

One of the strategies to meet IACLAM's goal of ensuring that we are an efficient and effective organization, was to establish IACLAM as a non-profit organization (NPO). Registration requirements were evaluated in several countries. Ultimately the IACLAM Board of Directors (BOD) agreed with the OSC recommendation to establish IACLAM as a NPO in the USA. In May 2022, IACLAM was formally registered as an NPO in the state of New Hampshire, USA.

The OSC was also tasked with revising IACLAM’s constitution and bylaws to add appropriate committees. A review of the Constitution and By Laws was completed with the review of the structure and content. The result was a gap analysis which was reported to the Board of Directors. The report recommended that the overall content was generally acceptable, but that some editing and additions/ deletions could be made. Two recommendations were accepted and approved by the Board:

1. Create multiple Standing Committees and include their roles and responsibilities in the newly revised By Laws. The New Standing Committees recommended were Finance, Nominations, Communications, and Training and Certification. Others Standing Committees could be added in the future as needed and as approved by the Board.
2. Revise and edit the bylaws. Submit changes for further review and comment by the Fall 2022 meeting of the Board.

The Organizational Task Force was established in December 2020.

The Organizational Task Force became Organizational Standing Committee from November 2021

The Nominations Standing Committee was established in November 2021. The NSC made the following recommendations to the IACLAM BOD:

1. Create a slate of candidates for Officers of the Board of Directors.
2. Create a new officer position named the President-elect. The President-elect would be elected by the Board by a majority of the Full Member vote and have a term of two years. The President-elect would then move into the President role at the conclusion of their two-year term. Approval would be by affirmation and by stated willingness of the President elect to move into the President’s official role.
3. Officer positions and terms would be: President (2 yrs.), President-elect (2 yrs.), Past President (2 yrs.), Vice President (2 yrs./ re-electable), Secretary - Treasurer (2 yrs./ re-electable). This structure was intended to foster continuity and long-term consistency of IACLAM leadership. It was envisioned that workload of leadership duties could be shared or delegated more, and consultations amongst the Officers enhanced.
4. A slate of Officers was proposed for election by the Board. An election was held in July 2022. The newly elected officers will start their new terms at the 2022 annual meeting of AALAS in October 2022.
5. All vote counting and election results were confidential and were performed by Google vote and tallied by the Chair of the Nominations Standing Committee (Hilton Klein, Past President).
6. Those elected were Patricia Hedenqvist for President, Seung Hyeok Seok re-elected for Vice President and Gary Borkowski elected for the President Elect position. Koji Hanai (Secretary/ Treasurer) is currently in year one of a two-year term. Michele Bailey will automatically move from the President position to Past President.
7. It was recommended and approved that the Past President will chair the Nominations Standing Committee and oversee the election of Officers according to the needed schedule for elections. The intent of this decision was to help avoid and minimize any conflicts of interest.

In February 2021, it was agreed by the IACLAM BOD that we need to move the review and upgrade of the IACLAM website further up in our strategic planning process. Rationale was that an easy-to-use, up-to-date and informative website was key to supporting new Colleges and to fulfil our strategy to communicate our expertise.

The IACLAM BOD investigated website support of other laboratory animal groups and evaluated proposals/ support.

A Communications Task Force was established in May 2021. The foremost goal was to revamp the IACLAM website to ensure that it was provided information that is informative, helpful to developing colleges, and up-to-date.

After the Communications Task Force was established, they reviewed the website and made suggestions for updates, content removal, content update and new contents.

In August 2021, the IACLAM BOD voted to accept the proposal of the Communications Taskforce to proceed with revamp and management of the IACLAM website in India for a 2-year period.

In February 2022, the Communications Task Force became the Communications Standing Committee.

IACLAM’s new website was launched in July 2022. The Communications Standing Committee and the IACLAM BOD will continue to update the website and welcome any suggestions for improvement.

The Finance Standing Committee was established in September 2022.