SRP Board Meeting
Thursday September 25th, 2008
Present: Scott Monroe, Keith Nuechterlein, Jill Hooley, Michael Young, Michael Pogue-Geile, Wendy Heller, Martin Harrow, Tom Oltmanns, Sheri Johnson, Ann Kring, Kate Harkness
Secretary report: Deanna sends regards! Voting went well on-line. Tom president-elect. Kate & Howard elected to board. Suzanne King will replace Tom on board.
Treasurer report: The dues collection is going as usual. Attendance this year is 256 (same as 2006; last year 232). Probably all people registered already due to disincentive to register on-site. It is a good idea to maintain disincentive as this makes treasurer’s job easier. Michael Young reviewed that the 2006 meeting was expensive, net in black. The 2007 meeting was inexpensive and made $20,000. Michael also reviewed that 90% of SRP expenses are meeting –related. Additional expenses include bank fees for credit card and Paypal transactions.
Marty reported on investments: Investment value down. Market was down 25% in last year, but SRP still ahead 7-9% from start. We’re well diversified and are maintaining money and making a little interest
Scott initiated a discussion about whether to engage a meeting planner or continue to have local hosts plan the meeting. Eric noted that it is much more expensive to hire a company. Ann noted that SPSP has an outside organization plan the meeting and thus we should ask them what they do. Michael Pogue-Geile suggested that if the money is right, it would be a good thing to engage a company as planning takes a good deal of time. No action was suggested by the group.
Local host report (Michael P-G): 95 are registered for the banquet so far. Registration will close at noon on Friday. This is a record for banquet attendance. We hit the max for hotel rooms: 379 room nights (125 rooms). $25000 food/bev, a/v $9000, hotel $8000, printing $2000 = $40-45000. Less expensive than San Diego, but only $5500 in grants. Box lunches: 150 box lunches b/c 150 students registered. CE credits: WPIC approved by APA to give CE credits. $25 for 13.5 credits. This money goes to WPIC. We don’t make anything from it.
Scott initiated further discussion in regards to CE credits. If we want to continue to pursue CE credits we should formalize it into SRP. This is because some pharma grant funding is tied to CE (i.e., letter for funding has to come from CE agency). The group asked whether UCSD could do it on a continuous basis? Eric noted that this would require us to have a UCSD person on program committee for meeting every year in order for UCSD to do CEs. UCSD would charge ~ $700 for us, though this may be negotiable. We would need to draft learning objectives, and provide a post-questionnaire survey (satisfaction, what did you learn). Speakers must sign form saying they didn’t have conflict of interest. CE office might initiate letter to pharma saying we’re pursuing CE so that we could pursue pharma grants. Eric will continue to pursue negotiations with UCSD to have this formalized into SRP on permanent basis. Ann noted that our process of providing CE credits should stand on its own financially even if we don’t ever apply for pharma again.
Membership report (Jack): 2008: 16 associate, 6 full, 22 students. All applicants meet requirements. Applicants are supposed to get recommenders to contact Jack, so Jack would like to get rid of email box on web form where applicants enter email of recommenders so that applicants won’t think that Jack will contact recommenders. Otherwise, website worked well to help Jack download submitted documents. The board voted unanimously to accept new members.
Program committee (Kate): 5 symposia submissions – all excellent and accepted. 30 papers submitted; accepted 15 – voting was unanimous; accepted all poster submissions (papers submitted not accepted, were accepted as posters. Didn’t hear back from 2 of these). 160 poster submissions. Smadar Levin submissions down to n=30 this year. Problem with website – box to check on this for Smadar Levin didn’t work for many. Howard Berenbaum is the chair of the Smadar Levin committee. Box lunch for students new this year on academic jobs. We had the usual difficulty with getting guest speakers. One cancelled at last minute. Based on survey results, the program committee went with overlapping sessions – n=2 this year, but didn’t need more overlapping sessions.
Eric initiated discussion about possibility of rejecting posters in future: poster boards very expensive part of meeting, plus it is difficult to find a room that is big enough to hold these. Thus, it is good to have/accept all posters, but there is a cost to doing so. Keith noted that we don’t have to worry too much about costs, so we should only cut back on posters if it affects the tone of the meeting. In some past meetings, posters were rejected, and the program chair got blasted. Kate suggested the possibility of capping the number of student posters that members can sponsor. The consensus was that we would continue to monitor situation and revisit issue if necessary.
Website committee (Junghee): Last year there was the suggestion of coming up with better listserves. Aaron said not so straightforward to create email list. Instead, Deanna created email list for voting – individually pulled from web.
Problems with website were enumerated: Kate: Smadar Levin button didn’t work for some people; Sheri: take Sheri off as local host; Ann: remove Ann from getting emails at support@psychopathology.org; Kate: remove the automatic reply text – congratulations your abstract has been accepted. Keep this area blank; let program chair fill in whatever she/he wants. Kate: never got password from Aaron Burke despite repeated requests; she used Junghee’s instead; Eric: suggest that Aaron generate generic usernames and passwords – e.g., program chair; president; secretary; treasurer; web committee; archivist; that are passed down from year to year; Wendy: add link to hotel on program information page
Scott asked how it went with Aaron this year. Junghee noted that it was better this year as there were no major agenda items for website development. Aaron knew about the two big deadlines, but still did not respond to little requests for passwords, etc. Keith ask about search functions and the website, and the email list, and Junghee noted that these were still not resolved. Kate suggested that it would be helpful to have a list that is searchable. Junghee will create lists of full, associate and other people who registered for the meeting. Scott noted that the archive information is funny in that award winners are listed in alphabetical order rather than by year, and asked whether this could be fixed. Junghee noted that we needed another person on the website committee to help with all of these issues. It was decided that volunteers would be solicited at the business meeting.
Publication (Jason Schiffman): The student driven publication proposal was discussed. Deborah Walder, Craig Neumman, Michael Green & Jason Shiffman were the committee. A pilot project last year invited 4 students to interview zubin award winners, prominent members, etc. The interviews were to be written up in newspaper/magazine and published on the SRP website. The submissions would be edited by committee, and the committee would work w/ students on interviewee selection. We would like input into content and logistics for going forward. Keith noted that the most appealing part is it is a way to get students involved in SRP. The consensus from committee was that we should email the listserve and ask members to ask students who is interested. In addition, we will make an announcement at the student lunch/social hour. Jason suggested that we give students membership on a committee (student membership). We would also give interviewees a prompt that they’ll be interviewed (by president). On the program we would block off 15 mins or so for interviews so we would need to coordinate with the program chair. The project is on hold for this year’s meeting as publication committee sorts out logistics and collects more feasibility data, but will likely be implemented for next year.
Officer transitions: We need to get the Secretary and the Treasurer positions off the same cycle. Therefore, Michael will serve this year & then we will elect another treasurer at next election next year. Scott will check by-laws to see if we need new election if Michael decides to step down. We may elect treasurer-elect in Spring who will help preparing next year’s meeting (as apprentice). We need to find someone who has been active as this position requires some institutional memory. Michael Young suggested that SRP needs an audit and that time might be right while Michael Young is transitioning. The board agreed this is a good idea. Wendy suggested that maybe should have accountant do taxes every year. Michael Young said that he would get a quote from accountant. Michael Young will develop treasurer’s manual. The board suggested that Deanna also make a secretary manual/timeline.
Future Meetings:
2009: Minneapolis (Angus MacDonald). The dates are 9/10 to 9/13/2009.
2010: Seattle (Ted Beauchaine)
2011: Boston: nice hotel downtown, but $$. Christine Hooker (new member) could be local host. Ithaca hard to get to (flights). Board converging around Boston but will call for vote in business meeting.