Minutes of the SRP Board Meeting
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Overview of meeting and welcome of new members (Eric and Wendy) – Scott Monroe
Scott thanked Keith for his work over the past year, and welcomed Eric and Wendy and Jill to the group.
Final updates from local host and program chair – Lee Anna Clark and Bill Hetrick
Lee Anna noted that she would update the handbook to note that the local host may need to check on wireless access. Lee Anna also noted that about 18 people did not show up for the Banquet despite having paid.
Bill thanked everyone for the privilege of being the Program Chair. Bill felt a good deal of support in the process. Bill said that he got a little bit of flack about the timing of the paper sessions (some folks feeling that they wanted more time). Bill took attendance at a number of the sessions and felt that the attendance was quite good. The numbers tended to revolve around 140, with some give or take and seemed to have spread out nicely. In general, Bill felt that the Dual tracks went quite well. We discussed how to balance trying to fit in all the submissions with not having too many dual track sessions. We discussed the fact that currently there is no financial benefit for membership, in that dues + registration = nonmember registration, so that this is not an incentive to become or maintain your membership. It was proposed that we make the fees more beneficial for members to provide a more concrete benefit to maintain one’s membership. However, we also do not want to discourage outside people from attending so do not want to make the fees so high as to discourage them. Bill noted that it helped to have a somewhat larger committee that covered many different content areas to help provide feedback and a broad perspective.
Debby Levy reminder Keith that we had agreed for the winner to send a copy of their poster to Smadar Levin’s mother and former husband. Her former husband is making yearly donations to cover the award and they are considering a bequest in a will.
Deanna will post the names of the winners of the award on the website and Ann will forward copies of the posters to Smadar Levin’s family.
Program Chair for 2008:
Kate Harkness will be the program chair for next year. Bill will remain as a member of the program committee.
Jill was informed that she would need to choose a program chair for the following year 6 months before the 2008 meeting so that they can meet at the next meeting.
Further suggestions for Website development:
Can we set it up so that we can attach the poster for the Smadar Levin winners on the website. Mike Raulin let Keith know that he would be willing to serve on the website committee.
Oral Presentations and Symposium Presentations:
The rule should be one first author submission, with the Program Committee having the option in special circumstances to let a member give more than one presentation. Deanna suggested we move that section on only one presentation per member up to earlier in the call for abstracts. Deanna also suggested that we change the wording to say that members should also submit one as a first author, but Lee Anna felt it might be better to allow members to submit more than one with the understand that typically only one will be accepted. Scott felt that there may be a good amount of variability in how many submissions we get, so that we should allow for greater flexibility.
Bill felt that the upcoming program chairs should start coming to the Board Meetings so that they hear about the issues and concerns that arise in planning the program. This would include both the Thursday and Sunday meetings.
The use of Sunday Morning SRP meeting.
Bill said that he believes that starting and ending with poster sessions on Thursday and Sunday helps to anchor the meeting and ensure that people are here Thursday night and Sunday morning. We have survived this in the past and it has seemed as if we have a good attendance. When we surveyed people last year, there was strong sentiment to think about changing Sunday. However, we did not ask what people wanted instead, it was not possible to make any decisions about what one might change it to. The draft survey for this year has a number of options of what we could do. However, there was a strong sentiment on the board that the poster session is the best option for Sunday morning for a variety of reasons. Bill only had two requests to switch from Sunday to Thursday poster presentation. The consensus was that we should remove it from the survey as it does not seem that there is another feasible option.
CE Credit. Lee Anna said that they only had between 6-10 for the generic, and it did not seem worth it if we could have APA or CME credit. Lee Anna said that CE credit may have been easier to do had she started earlier (the program handbook currently says that we should not bother). It would have involved getting from the presenters a list of objectives and CV. It was not clear whether you had to do this for every single speaker, or for symposiums as a whole, though Lee Anna’s experience in other conferences is that you do have to have it for every speakers. Keith suggested that the local host check early as to how it is handled at their University and what type of work it would incur. Eric was going to ask if we could always run it through UC San Diego. Michael will look into how feasible it is at Pittsburgh. Michael Young suggested that if we do decide to purse CE credit on a regular basis, we should have a CE chair so that it does not become an additional work load for the Program Chair or the Local Host. Keith suggested that we appoint Eric Granholm to be CE Chair given his experience and knowledge of how to do this.
We decided that Jack Blanchard should send people who applied notification that they were accepted for membership. Lee Anna suggested that we make an announcement at one of the sessions, or some posting of the individuals who have been accepted.
Draft of web-based Survey:
We made a number of suggested changes to the survey. Deanna will input via Survey monkey and send it to the membership.
Future meeting sites and setting meeting dates:
Michael Pogue-Geile said that the two options on starting on 9/26 and 10/16. He has proposals from several hotels and he will compare and contrast.
Angus MacDonald will be the local host for Minnesota and Ted Beachaine will be the local host for Seattle.
Jill offered to look into Boston. Scott received mixed reviews of Ithica, with most of the concerns centering on travel ease. Scott will do some research on flights and find out if prior issues with flight access have resolved over the years.
The first meeting of SRP was held in Cambridge, but the idea was hatched in a bar in Ithica. 2011 will be the 25th meeting since the first meeting.
Boulder and Chicago also offered.
Locations of future meetings
– 2008 Pittsburgh, PA – Update from Michael Pogue-Geile. The dates will either be 9/25/08 or 10/15/08
– 2009 Minneapolis, MN
– 2010 Seattle, WA
– 2011
– 2012?