The Mensa Foundation has elected three new officers: Dave Remine, President; Marie Mayer, Vice President; and Joanna Soper, Secretary. They were officially installed at the Foundation Board of Trustees meeting on Nov. 5, 2011.

Dave Remine has been a member of American Mensa for 42 years. He is now the only member to have held the three highest leadership positions in Mensa, having also served as the Chair for both American Mensa and Mensa International. He has been a Foundation Trustee since 1999.

Marie Mayer has been a member of Mensa for 33 years and has held various leadership positions within the organization on both national and local levels. She has been a Foundation Trustee since 2003. Joanna Soper, also a former leader on local and national levels, has been a member of Mensa for 12 years and a Foundation Trustee since 2006. Dr. Michael Jacobson continues as Treasurer, an office he has held since 2002.

The Foundation also honors former President Greg Timmers and former Vice President Phyllis Miller as they step down from their positions. Greg served as President from 2002-2011 and Phyllis served as Vice President from 2004-2011.

The Board of Trustees manages the Foundation’s business and property holdings. The board includes eight Trustees and two ex-officio members — a representative named by the American Mensa Committee Chair and the Chair of the International Board of Directors.

In addition to the Board of Trustees, the Mensa Foundation operates with the assistance of a host of member volunteers who chair and serve on program committees including the Awards for Excellence in Research; the Copper Black Award; and local, regional and national scholarship programs. The Foundation welcomes new, interested members of Mensa to participate in these and other areas.

To learn more about the Mensa Foundation or its Trustees, visit www.mensafoundation.org.

The Mensa Foundation has appointed Don Pendley as its newest Trustee; he is completing the term of a former Trustee who resigned earlier this year. Pendley has been a member of Mensa for 30 years and has served in many areas including finance, development and Internet services.

“I enjoy the camaraderie the organization provides, and I look at this appointment as an opportunity to explore new ways to participate in the growth of the Foundation,” he said.

Pendley has worked for associations for 38 years and rose through the ranks in the marketing and public relations arena to become an association executive. He has been the President of the New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Organization for 19 years and, through his work, serves more than 59,000 patients in New Jersey and more than 1.5 million nationally.

When asked what he hoped to accomplish as a Trustee, Pendley said, “I would like to see us better develop the donation solicitation process including our methods of thanking and recognizing donors. I would also like to see us improve the Foundation’s message and brand in order to increase its visibility. More people need to know what we do because we provide enormous value to society. There is a need, now more than ever, to nurture and recognize intelligence.”

Pendley also serves on the board of Community Health Charities of New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives.

To learn more about the Foundation and its Board of Trustees, visit www.mensafoundation.org.

Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mensa Foundation for her vast contributions to the field of gifted education. The ceremony took place in November at the National Association of Gifted Children convention in New Orleans.

Dr. VanTassel-Baska initiated and directed the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. She retired as the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Education and Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary, where she developed a graduate program and a research and development center in gifted education.

She has served as the state director of gifted programs for Illinois; as a regional director of a gifted service center in the Chicago area; as coordinator of gifted programs for the Toledo (Ohio) public school system; and as a teacher of gifted high school students in English and Latin. She has worked as a consultant on gifted education in all 50 states and for key national groups, including the U.S. Department of Education and the American Association of School Administrators. Her efforts extend across the globe, as she has worked as a consultant in Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Jordan, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Dr. VanTassel-Baska is credited with a number of publications including 20 books and more than 345 refereed journal articles, book chapters and scholarly reports. She is past president of the Association for the Gifted of the Council for Exceptional Children, the Northwestern University Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, and the National Association for Gifted Children. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the National Association of Gifted Children Distinguished Scholar Award in 1997 and the Phi Beta Kappa faculty award in 1995. She was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand in 2000 and a visiting scholar to Cambridge University in England in 1993.

Dr. VanTassel-Baska’s major research interests are on the talent development process and effective curricular interventions with the gifted. She holds B.A., M.A., M. Ed., and Ed.D. degrees from the University of Toledo.

To see past winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award, visit the Programs section at www.mensafoundation.org. To support this and other awards, visit www.mensafoundation.org/donate.

In 2012, the Foundation is proud to offer two Colloquiums: “Bioterrorism Strikes Home,” to be held May 4-6 in Overland Park, Kan.; and “Social and Video Games” to be held July 3 in Reno, Nev. Both events will offer an opportunity for learning and socialization with experts in the field as well as fellow Mensans.

Those who attend the Bioterrorism Colloquium in May will learn about agricultural biological threats to public health, the food industry and strategies to reduce risk to the food system; the challenges faced by the U.S. and the international community in countering naturally occurring and intentionally introduced infectious diseases; the past, present and future of food safety; biosecurity initiatives; and much more. Continuing education credits are offered for this program.

In July, attendees of the “Social and Video Games” Colloquium, a pre-Annual Gathering event, will explore the evolving world of social gaming and how gender issues are changing the development of games. They’ll learn about the gamification of society; how organizations are turning to social games for marketing and fundraising; and how the five dimensions of game addiction might relate to their experiences. They’ll also learn about the history and development of video games from one of the “rock stars” of the industry, keynote speaker Warren Spector, Vice President and Creative Director for Disney Interactive Studios’ Junction Point.

The Mensa Foundation hosts Colloquiums to help further its mission of identifying and fostering human intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Visit www.colloquium.us.mensa.org for more information or to register.

To support these and many other Foundation-sponsored events and programs, visit www.mensafoundation.org/donate.

One of the Foundation’s stated goals is to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity, and part of this effort involves encouraging research into the characteristics and uses of intelligence. Various programs have been established to recognize this research and to publicize its results, as well as nurture intelligence overall. All of the programs the Foundation offers are made possible by generous donations from people like you.

With those donations, the Foundation is able to offer scholarships to students who are college bound; sponsor Conversations with Mensa, the free podcast series where Mensa members talk to experts on various topics of interest; present the Copper Black, the Lifetime Achievement, the Distinguished Teacher and the Intellectual Benefits awards; and support programs for gifted children including www.mensaforkids.org.

Bequests are also a great way to support the Foundation. To make any kind of donation to the Mensa Foundation, visit www.mensafoundation.org/donate.