Meeting Notes for SRP Board Meeting
Teleconference – Sunday October 30th 2005
1) Coral Gables Meeting
We have chosen not to try to reschedule the Coral Cables Meetings, but rather to focus on the San Diego meeting, for the following reasons:
1) Practical –
a. Scheduling hotels is hard to do on such short notice.
b. Members already have travel plans and obligations for winter travel.
c. There are holidays and other standing meetings that could interfere with scheduling.
2) If we did reschedule, we might actually split the attendance between the rescheduled meeting and the next yearly meeting, as some people may only go to one or the other since they are too close.
2) Terms of Current Officers and Board Members
The board discussed the issue that changing officers without the occurrence of the annual meeting could lead to a number of practical dilemmas. For example, if we changed officers now, next year’s meeting with have all addresses doubled, which would really change the nature of the meeting and may make it difficult to have any other invited talks at the San Diego meeting. Thus, the Board voted to recommend that the terms of all Officers and Board members be extended for one year. This motion will be presented to the membership via a vote through a website set up by Michael Young.
3) Scientific Program
The board discussed what aspects of the Coral Gables meetings should be carried over from this year to next year’s meeting in San Diego. The board voted to recommend that all of the invited addresses and the activities related to the 20th anniversary be carried over to the San Diego meeting. However, the board voted to recommend that all other talks, symposia and posters go through the normal selection process. All though the Board noted that members who were scheduled to give non-invited talks or symposia may be disappointed at not being able to present this year, a virtual meeting website will be available for members to post their PowerPoint or PDF slides. Further, it was felt that carrying over the entire program from this year to the San Diego meeting would preclude any meaningful involvement of the new program chair for the San Diego meeting in creating next year’s program. This recommendation will be presented to the membership for voting via the website set up by Michael Young. Members will be asked to vote yes or no. In addition, if a member votes no, they will be ask to provide comments or suggestions as to alternatives to the recommendation put forth by the board. In the event that this recommendation is disapproved, these comments will be used to develop a new recommendation to be put before the membership.
Michael Pogue-Geile is willing to serve as consultant to next year’s program chair.
It was also noted that San Diego will be considered the 20th annual meeting rather than Coral Cables, as the Coral Gables meeting did not occur.
4) Smadar Levine Award
The board discussed whether the Smadar Levine Award could be awarded based just on electronic submissions. Michael Young noted that this was already done in one previous year. It was decided that the Smadar Levine committee would ask finalists (chosen based on text submissions) to forward their posters to the Smadar Levine Committee. If the committee felt that further discussion was needed with the candidates, then they would contact the candidate by email or phone. The final decisions will thus be based on a combination of the electronic submissions, poster copies and email or phone conversations with the candidates. The winners will then be announced on the website and the list serve.
5) Posters from Coral Gables
The website committee is working on getting a virtual poster session (any PowerPoint presentations as well) set up, and is very optimistic that this will be feasible. The session will be limited to pdfs and PowerPoint presentation formats. The mechanism would be almost identical to the mechanism for the job-posting site. This will help with the issue of how to cite these presentations for the individuals who were to have presented at the meeting. If an individual has posted their presentation on the web site, then we would consider it a presentation for the purpose of citing the conference presentation on their CV.
6) New Membership
The Board voted unanimously to approve the applications for new membership forwarded by Jack Blanchard, the membership chair. Michael Young will send the new members an email congratulating them and reminding them to pay their first yearly dues.
7) Continued membership of SRP in the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological & Cognitive Sciences (The Federation).
Michael Green provided a report on Barbara Cornblatt’s (our representative to the Federation Board) impressions of the Federations activities during the last year. Barbara Cornblatt’s impressions were very favorable and she recommended our continued support of the Federation. She noted that they were very organized and proactive in their advocacy activities. For example, the Federation organized an information session about psychological research for the new head of CSR at the NIH. As presented at last year’s meeting, our membership in the Federation involves a three-year period in which fees increase each year. During the first year of membership, it was a flat fee of $500. During the second year of membership, we need to pay 1/2 fee for each full American member (full fee is $11). During the third year, membership dues are the full fee of $11 for each member. If we decide to maintain our membership in the Federation, we may need to raise SRP dues to cover some or all of the costs per member for Federation membership. However, if was recommended that we not increase dues this year, as we are in a financial position to cover the 1/2 fee cost for this year. The board decided to recommend to the membership that we continue our involvement with the Federation for another year, with more extension discussion of our continued involvement in the Federation at the San Diego meeting. This motion will be put before the membership for a vote via the website developed by Michael Young.
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8) Placing motions before the membership.
The board discussed how to place the motions described above before the membership. Michael Young volunteered to create a website voting forum that will allow members to vote yes or no (with comments as appropriate) for each of the motions described above. The motions will be drafted by Michael Green with feedback from the board. The text of the motions will then be sent out over the list-serve, the instructions for how to vote, including the URL for the website.
9) Next Board Meeting
The board agreed to have another telephone conference on Friday, December 2nd at 8:00 am PST to address the remaining business items that would have been covered at the Coral Gables meeting.