The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

54 F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L / MA R CH 2 0 1 0 AFSA Annual Report 2009 Y E A R I N R E V I E W D espite operating without office spaceor access to its archives for the first three months of the year, the Foreign Service Journal continued topro- duce monthly issues without interruption. The Journal took a significant step forward inupgrading itsWebpresence by contracting with a local company, Texterity, toput each issue ina format that ismucheasier touse and search, and is also more attractive. Partly as a result of our enhanceddigital capabilities, wemore than doubled the amount of online advertising wehadprojected for 2009, a trendwehope to build on in the new year. During 2009, 18,773unique visitors, or an average of 1,800 per issue, sought out the new-format FSJ online. They read, on average, 11 pages per visitor. Given that, in general, 15 percent of the visitors each monthwere returnees, we estimate that the Journal has a core online readership of between 250 and 300. Among e-readers, the most popular issue, by far, was the March issue on coping with unaccompanied assignments, with 2,826 unique visitors. Next inpopularitywas the July-August issue featuring summer fiction, with 2,658 viewers, followed by theMay issue onFAS andFCSwith2,352. TheApril focus on “NATOat 60” and the October issue on public diplomacy each had more than 2,000 viewers. One goal inupgradingour online pres- ence is tomake the FSJ ’s resources on the Foreign Service and the practice of Americandiplomacymore accessible to the broader public. So we are happy to note that by the end of the year, approximate- ly 17 percent of our e-readers came to the FSJ via the major search engines — look- ing for informationon“USAIDforeignser- vice” or “foreign service,” to cite twoof the topsearchterms. We look forwardtopush- ing that number up in 2010. —Steven Alan Honley, Editor Scholarship Program Highlights U nder the oversight of the AFSA Committee on Education, the Scholarship Program bestowed $35,700 in Academic and Art Merit Awards to 25 Foreign Service high school seniors in 2009. Meanwhile, 74 children of Foreign Service employees received AFSA need- based Financial Aid Scholarships for undergraduate college study in the 2009- 2010 school year, totaling $160,050. Between these twoprograms, AFSAhas beenprivileged toassist 99 students in2009 with aid totaling $195,750 — the most AFSA has ever bestowed. In 2009, Ambassador Rozanne L. (Roz) Ridgway established a Perpetual Financial Aid scholarship, andMr. Stephen Hubler renewed his scholarship. Mr. Norton W. Bell added to his scholarship, andMr. EricMelby increaseda scholarship honoring his parents. DACOR increased its Financial Aid Scholarship support by $5,000 to offer a total of $40,000 in scholarships in its name. Finally, AFSA continues to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign and UnitedWay. —Lori Dec, Scholarship Director Foreign Service Journal : A More Accessible Web Presence Foreign Service Books: Inside a U.S. Embassy S ales of AFSA’s popular introduction to the ForeignService, Inside aU.S. Embassy , were strong in2009. Rising interest inForeignService careers, coupledwith renewedenthu- siasm for public service sparked by President Barack Obama’s election, has boosted book sales for the year to 6,400. This brings the total number of books sold since its 2003 debut to about 73,000. Inside a U.S. Embassy has been adopted for more than 40 univer- sity courses, and a Chinese publisher is translating the book into Simple Chinese. An all-new edition of Inside a U.S. Embassy , subtitled Diplomacy at Work , will be pub- lished in the fall of 2010. AFSA received four offers from publishers for the new edition, but determined that the best path was to maintain our own role as the publisher. In con- nection with this decision, this year AFSA has partnered with Potomac Books for distrib- ution of Inside a U.S. Embassy and established Foreign Service Books as the book publish- ing division of the association. —Shawn Dorman, Editor/Publisher, Foreign Service Books AFSA student merit award winners at the Foreign Affairs Daymerit awards reception, AFSAHQ, May 1. Back row (left to right): Amb. C. Edward Dillery, Chairmanof AFSACommitteeonEducation; Adam Scott,ZacharyCharles, JoshuaDownes,ArjunDheer, Christopher Wilson, Joseph Kenny and AFSA President John Naland. Front row (left to right): Stephanie Hunt, Rachel Midura, Megan Tribble, TorrinMarquardt,KatherineNeitzkeandAnnaLeah Berstein-Simpson. FRANCESCA KELLY