Board Meeting -- Minutes

Providence College, April 23, 2005

Attendees

Item Pre-empting Agenda

Motion (RW/DK):

Passed: 10/0/0.

I. Minutes of January Meeting

1. Motion (FF/MG):

Passed by acclamation.

II Reports

2. Chair's Report: Larry

Submitted Report

I. Report from National

1. The previous meeting of the national board was held February 23-27, 2005
at SIGCSE in St. Louis.

2. The next national board meeting will be held October 21-22 in the Rocky
Mountain meeting at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

3. Based on a request of the CCSCNE board, I brought up the possibility of
the national board placing ads in major publications such as CACM. The
national board seemed interested in the idea and charged me with looking
into the matter.

4. The CCSC board received a presentation from O'Reilly about a new
initiative called SafariU. This is a web-based platform that allows faculty
to compile custom books with chapters and sections of chapters from
thousands of texts. Besides O'Reilly, other publishers who may become
involved with this effort are Prentice Hall, Addison Wesley, Que, Sams,
etc.

5. A very long discussion was held about the current state of the national
membership database. A lively exchange took place between Kris Powers and
the DBA, Brent Wilson. The main point is that Kris feels that the database
is far short of what it needs to be for her to effectively do her job as
membership chair. The board decided to pay for students to assist Brent in
improving and documenting the database.

II. Future Conferences

1. 2006 Conference at Holy Cross

We will get an update from Laurie King on preparations for the 2006 meeting.

2. 2007 Conference at R.I.T.

After much heartache and travail we finally have a host for 2007. The
Rochester Institute of Technology has agreed to be the host. Paul
Tymann. Since Paul was a conference co-chair for SIGCSE 2005, our meeting
should seem like a piece of cake!

One major problem with R.I.T. is the two planning meetings that we have. It
seems that it would be a major inconvenience for the board and conference
committee to travel that far. Paul and I have already discussed this. I
suggested having the September meeting at R.I.T., but having the January
meeting at a closer venue (Paul suggested Ramapo). In any case, having a
meeting at R.I.T. will require some effort on our part to attract faculty
who are relatively near R.I.T. (especially since we will probably lose some
of our traditional faculty).

3. Future Conferences

Williams College is still a viable candidate for being a host for
2008. Amruth and I have talked about having a future meeting at Ramapo
(perhaps 2010).

Additional Remarks from Meeting

The following remarks were made about future conferences:

2006 -- The 2006 January Board meeting will be held on January 7. 2006.

2007 -- RIT (in New York) has submitted a 100% firm offer to host. In view of the firmness of the RIT offer, Brooklyn College was rejected as a candidate for 2007.
Motion (RW/AK): That the Board accept RIT as the host institution fro 2007.
Passed: 9/0/1
The location of RIT was discussed, and although many agreed that it was a little further way from our usual venues, it was agreed that the location was perfectly acceptable and might even attract attendees from nearby institutions who might not normally attend CCSCNE conferences.

2008 -- Williams College is apparently "very interested" in 2008.

Other institutions which have serious expressed interest in hosting are: Staten Island College, Salem State (MA), and Ramapo College.

3. Editor's Report: Michael

Submitted Report

This has been an interesting, annoying, and learning experience.  Special
thanks go to Larry who helped out tremendously in a time of crisis (see
below).

We accepted 20 papers out of the 42 submissions to this year's conference,
keeping our acceptance rate below the desired 50%.  We also have four
panels/tutorials (down from last year's seven) and 46 posters.  The decline
in the number of paper submissions (there were over 50 submissions last
year) is a bit disconcerting, as 20 accepted papers seems to me to be about
as low as we would want to go for the conference.  The online submission
seemed to go smoothly, as I received very few questions about submitting or
formatting.  Getting copyright forms also caused no major trouble; in fact,
I got the most calls from authors in a panic to get their forms in on time!

The original submission due date in November was extended to December 1
after receiving only 37 papers.  We received five more during the extension
period, along with one revision of a previous submission.

There was a problem when it came time to send the information to John
Meinke for the journal publication.  I sent out several emails to John in
February using the email address meinkej@acm.org.  I didn't hear from him,
but didn't get any bounced email either, so I thought things were ok.  In
March, I received an email from Larry saying that John had not received any
information yet.  I re-sent the information to meinkej@faculty.ed.emuc.edu
which worked immediately.  What I didn't know was that by that time, the
printing due date was imminent.  John, with much help from Larry and a
little from me, scrambled to get the journal done on time, which ultimately
did happen.  Lessons learned: make sure to follow up when you don't hear a
response and check if there are other email addresses which may work
better.

The online submission system seemed to work well.  There were no major
problems.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael Gousie

4. Webmaster's Report: Karl

5. Treasurer's Report: Scott

6. Memberships Chair's Report: Danny

7. Registrar's Report:Frank