Jan11 2003 Board Minutes

Minutes of CCSCNE Board Meeting Saturday, January 11, 2003

DISCLAIMER: Approval of these minutes by the CCSCNE Board is pending, and until they are approved, they are provisional and not binding.
Rhode Island College Providence, Rhode Island

ATTENDING: Dick Close, Larry D'Antonio, Frank Ford, Tim Huang, Danny Kopec, Scott McElfresh, Ingrid Russell, Karl Wurst, Charlie Welty, Richard Wyatt

APOLOGIES FROM: Amruth Kumar, Ralph Morelli, and Viera Proulx

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I. MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER MEETING

1. M/S (MS/CW) Accept minutes of the September 2002, board meeting. Passed unanimously.

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II. REPORT FROM NATIONAL
(In the following minutes, all text taken from the agenda is in regular font and all text from the meeting is in italics.)

National has not yet approved the minutes of their October board meeting
but, assuming they do, here are the items relevant to us:

2. National has allocated $2000 for a database server.

3. Spring conferences attendance are up; Fall conferences look very
healthy.

4. CCSC is now a 503c5 organization and so tax-deductible donations can be
made to us.

5. There is still no action from our bank on our being able to accept
credit cards for registration fees (or other payments).

6. Regions with Bank of America: Bill Myers can provide an ATM card that
allows deposit only. Then the deposit slip(s) can be forwarded to the
Membership Coordinator with information on all income.

7. National is pursuing "In-cooperation with IEEE"; they appear to be
interested.

8. All regions are to have Bylaws/Standing-Rules which must conform to the
following guidelines:

   Any Bylaws/Standing-Rules created by/for a CCSC Region must be
   consistent with CCSC Bylaws and Standing Rules. They should include:

   i. Name and Purpose of the Region. This section must include "to
   provide one yearly conference in the CCSC: XX Region."

   ii. Governing Body (suggested name: Regional Board; hereafter this
       name will be used in these guidelines).
     (a) Membership: define the make-up of the Regional Board.
     (b) Define how Regional Board member positions are elected/appointed;
         how to remove/replace Regional Board members; and the position terms.
     (c) Define how the Regional Board is to meet and what constitutes a
         valid meeting.
     (d) Responsibilities must include the running of the yearly conference.
         The Regional Board may delegate tasks and responsibilities to other
         Regional members.

   iii. Regional membership is defined by the CCSC National Bylaws and
   Standing Rules.

   iv. The Regional Bylaws/Standing-Rules must define at least the
   following five positions: Regional Representative, Treasurer, Editor,
   Webmaster, and Registration Chair. The positions of Treasurer and
   Registration Chair must be filled by two different people (due to
   auditing reasons).

   v. Define how changes in the Regional Bylaws/Standing-Rules are
   approved.

   Comments:
   A. More than one of the positions specified in the Regional
   Bylaws/Standing-Rules may be filled by one individual (with the
   exception of Treasurer and Registration Chair).
   B. It is recommended that a Region establish a Regional Board and a
   Conference Committee. The Regional Board charge is to provide regional
   continuity beyond the charge of the Conference Committee, the charge of
   which is the running of the regional conference. These two bodies may
   have common members.

Our NE Bylaws are substantially in conformity with these guidelines, though
they need to be reviewed. The name, certainly, needs updating to reflect
our new one.

I suggest that the task of so reviewing the Bylaws be incorporated into the
charge of our current subcommittee on creating an operating document (see
below).

Discussion.

9. Our 2004 has been approved.

10. There is now a moratorium on the formation of new conferences and
regions until there is an updated mechanism for creating new conferences
and regions. An exception was made for the Mid-South 2003 Conference.

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III. OLD BUSINESS -- UPDATES, REPORTS, REVISITS

11. Update on Future Hosts
a. 2004 -- Union College is set.

   b. 2005 -- Dick Close checked to see if the US Coast Guard Academy was a
   possibility and it is not due to new security procedures that would make
   our conference there essentially unworkable. Though, other things being
   equal, it would of course be desirable to have a venue we have not
   visited before, Frank very generously offered to look into hosting
   again at Providence College. Plans have progressed and the venue is, at
   present, essentially secured. Frank:
       My vice-president says I can offer to have the 2005 CCSCNE at
       Providence College. The final approval will depend on the date. I
       don't think this will be a problem as long as we meet late in the
       month. We have an open house for accepted students and their
       families on an early Saturday in April and the population of the
       campus about doubles. Everybody works on that and nothing else can
       be going on at that time. For one thing, the nearest available
       parking is miles away.

Send email to all attendees asking if their school could be a site for a future CCSCNE conference.

12. Camera ready preparation of final papers

From the minutes of the last meeting:

    Camera ready preparation of final paper on Web was discussed. Dick said
    this is not critical. That real problem was tracking Stunts' papers. It
    was suggested Larry and Dick discuss the idea further.

John Meinke wants a separate file for each figure in a paper. Karl will work on the Web submission software so it conforms to this policy.

13. Best Paper Prize Winners. How and when should this be decided?

From the minutes of the last meeting:

    Presentation is only to confirm Paper Prize Winners. Only content
    should decide. Not paper presentation style. Yet style (if very poor)
    could be a factor. This needs further discussion in terms of criteria
    (for paper and then presentation.

M/S (FF/RW) Best paper awards will be decided ahead of time based on content. Papers must be presented in order to win the award. Authors will not be notified that they will be receiving an award. Passed 7 – yes, 1 – no 2 abstain

M/S (DK/ ) Authors should be notified that they will receive an award if they are present. Died, no second.

14. Free Hotel Rooms

From the minutes of last meeting:

What is the best way to distribute them? And to whom?

M/S (CW/MS) free hotel rooms will be assigned first to invited speakers and any remaining rooms will be left for the conference chairs to decide.
Passed unanimously.

15. National CCSC Board Positions.

One Position is currently available: Publications Chair. Anyone interested?
We need to know ASAP. I'll will forward any nominations to Ingrid.

No interest at present. Members should contact Ingrid if you become interested.

16. Operating Document.

From the minutes of last meeting:

    Policies on the Web? Who will be responsible for each policy? Committee
    of Frank, Karl, and Amruth formed to review what should go on Web in
    terms of policies decided upon from previous minutes.

Interim report form Frank, Karl, and Amruth.

I propose extending the charge for this committee to include updating
the bylaws and making certain that we are in conformity with the new CCSC
guidelines given above.

Item tabled (Frank is charged with making sure that the meeting occurs.)

17. Status of the Conference Committee for 2004.

We seem to have enough volunteers for the 2004 conference committee.

We must get an announcement of the 2004 conference to this year’s SIGCSE Conference. The CCSCNE conference date for 2004 is either April 16/17 or April 23/24. We will not know until late March. The announcement should state that the date is in April and point to the web site for specific dates. Website should get date ASAP.

Scott will put together a general announcement document for this and future SIGCSE distribution and we will just fill in the blanks.

Karl wants to work on the web page to make papers totally web accessible.

18. Size of Board.

From the minutes of last meeting:

    Arguments: Smaller Board (as per today's meeting) is more
    efficient. Larger allows involvement despite no Conference
    responsibilities for a Board member in a given year. Discussion to
    continue.

The NE Bylaws stipulate that the number of board members "may be no more
than 20". Is this restriction adequate?

The current board of 14 members is:
     Richard Close
     Lawrence D'Antonio
     Frank Ford
     Timothy Huang
     Danny Kopec
     Amruth Kumar
     Scott McElfresh
     Ralph Morelli
     Viera Proulx
     Ingrid Russell
     William J. Taffe
     Charles Welty
     Karl R. Wurst
     Richard Wyatt

Discussion. (Aside: Matt's and Laurie's names need to be removed from the
Board NE page.)

19. Vendor Freebies.

From the minutes of last meeting:

Not every Vendor's freebies should be accepted. Open to further
discussion.

Vendor’s chairs will use their best judgment. (No motion but well received.)

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IV. NEW BUSINESS

20. Paper Acceptance Rate.

What should be our paper acceptance rate? One member has suggested that
it not exceed 50%:

     Last year our acceptance rate was 46%. I'd like to speak strongly in
     favor of keeping the acceptance rate around that number, at least not
     to have it exceed 50%. Of course this doesn't mean we should reject
     good papers to keep the rate this low. But we have some leeway with
     border line papers. Several folks ask us about our acceptance rate
     for promotion and tenure purposes. I also think that if we remain
     competitive, the word will spread out and more people will submit
     quality papers to our conference which will in turn help the quality.
     We can always increase the number of tutorials and panels to fill in
     sessions.

I tend to concur. We should set a policy on this important matter.

The message to the outside world should be something like: In recent years the acceptance rate has been around 50% and the board would like to see that continue.

21. NE Membership Chair

Danny will update us on his activity to consolidate and enhance the NE
membership list and on any other of his activities.

Danny has gotten the email addresses from Ralph and Ingrid. He has consolidated them and removed duplicates.

Membership chair should contact members for session chairs.

We need to expand the list and Danny (with help from a student) will get the email addresses of all faculty at schools that had an attendee. Scott objected to this, but it is now the policy.

22. Enhancing Web-based features.

Frank reports:

At CCSCEast, they are using a web based "menu" (ha!) for participants
to select what they want for the Friday dinner.

Interactive registration was suggested. This is useless without credit cards. We need added security to run it on line. Right now can only have card-swipe machine at conference or signed paper registration with card number (which is entered by whoever does the registration). The credit card companies charge more depending on how many ways it is possible to charge something.

Suggestion: Have PayPal do the work for interactive registration.

Richard will raise the issue at National.

23. Student Web Design Competition.

Frank reports:

     I just got my CFP from the Central Plains Conference. They have a web
     design competition for students with cash prizes. What do you think of
     this idea? I'm not a web design person and I could never judge such a
     thing. Is this an idea for us in the future?

Board is against it if it is only a visual design contest. Could be contemplated if criteria change in future years.

24. Participation Lists

A member reports:

     What happens to them [the participation lists]? We haven't been
     distributing them to attendees. We used to distribute [them] on
     Saturday. I'd like to get a copy.

We should continue generating a participation list for this conference and the future until national gets the database together so they can generate the lists. The list should be distributed at the conference The conference registrar is in charge of this but has assigned it to Frank for this conference.
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Added agenda item.

M/S (IR/FF) The conference chair will decide each year on whether secretarial staff and other support people should be recognized. A present of up to $50 could be given to such staff. Passed unanimously
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25. Extended Abstracts

Should we implement submission of extended abstracts before submission
of the paper?

Little or no support.

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26. Special Sessions Instead of Tutorials

Should we refer to ``special sessions'' instead of ``tutorials'' in our
CFP?

Little or no support.
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27. Faculty Poster Sessions

Should we have faculty poster sessions?

Little or no support.
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28. Travel funds for Australian speaker. A total of $450 is available this year. $300 is the honorarium and $150 for a hotel room. She will not need a room. We will give her $450 as travel reimbursement.
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29. Meaning of tutorial, workshop and panel. No real headway made.
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30. Web site: Want 1 person to have overall control of organization and design. Karl is willing. All Web issues now go to Karl.
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31. M/S (SM/CW): (The following was reworded for clarity after the meeting. The sense of the motion is retained).

Change the travel policy to allow for airline tickets, train tickets, or rental cars. Thus, the policy would be (additions in all capital letters at the end):

The following can be paid by CCSCNE for Board and Committee member expenses to travel to the September or January meetings subject to amount budgeted specifically for travel.
1) Hotel - up to $80 per person, with receipt, if the person must travel at least 3 hours in each direction.
2) Meals - up to $30 per person, with receipt.
3) Travel - up to $50 per person, which may include: - passenger vehicle tolls, with receipt- mileage at current IRS rate OR gasoline, with receipts; MASS TRANSPORTATION FEES, OR CAR RENTAL COSTS (EXCEPTING INSURANCE).

To cover travel costs, Board and Conference Committee members are encouraged to seek their own institutional support at first.
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Adjourn: 4:05 PM, January 11, 2003. By acclamation.

Respectfully submitted by Charles Welty, Secretary