Board Meeting -- Minutes

Rochester Institute of Technology, September 16, 2006


(Note: Text from the agenda or reports is indented.)

Attendees

(Only Board members are listed.)

Lawrence D'Antonio (LD) (Chair)
Frank Ford (FF)
Michael Gousie (MG)
Amruth Kumar (AK)
Scott McElfresh (SM)
Karl R. Wurst (KW)
Ingrid Russell (IR)
Richard Wyatt (RW)


I. Previous Meetings

1. Minutes

Motion: To accept the minutes of the September Meeting.
Passed: 6/0/2

II Reports

2. Chair's Report: Larry

Submitted Report

CHAIR'S REPORT I. Report from National The next national board meeting will be held at Eastern Washington University, October 5-7, 2006. The national board has been pretty quiet this summer. Myles McNally of Alma College is the new President-elect. II. Future Conferences 1. 2008 Conference at Wagner Adrian Ionescu from Wagner and Amruth Kumar will prepare the 2008 budget for approval at our January board meeting. 2. Future Conferences 2009 Meeting Lonnie Fairchild and Tim Fossum have volunteered to co-chair the 2009 meeting. The conference would be held at SUNY Plattsburgh. There is work to do before formally bringing a proposal to host before the board. I plan on visiting SUNY Plattsburgh in the next few months. I think that Lonnie and Tim would do an excellent job hosting the meeting. I would like to finalize this by the April board meeting. Future meetings. I would like to get some idea of who may want to host the 2010 meeting (which will be the 15th anniversary of CCSCNE).

Additional remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Chair's Report

• Wagner College (2008 venue)
The dates for the conference are April 11-12, 2008, assuming we have it on the usual Friday/Saturday (and not a Saturday/Sunday) schedule.
A motion to move the conference to a Saturday/Sunday was withdrawn.
A straw vote of those in attendance at the meeting revealed that 6 of 16 are "willing to try" a Saturday/Sunday schedule instead of the usual Friday/Saturday schedule.
A survey of previous CCSCNE attendees will be conducted to determine the level of interest in a Saturday/Sunday schedule.
• The 2009 Conference
SUNY Plattsburgh is a candidate. Lonnie and Tim will work with Larry with the aim of submitting a formal proposal.
• The 2010 Conference:
The venue is currently open.

3. Membership Chair's Report: David Hemmendinger

No report given.

4. Webmaster's Report: Karl Wurst

No report given.

5. Registrar's Report: Frank Ford

CCSC-NE Fall 2006 Board Meeting Registrar’s Report The registration procedure for presenters, regular, and student attendees is working well and the database handles these well. Any problems we have are with the registration of programming teams and the handling of vendors. The problem with programming teams is that the registration of teams and students for the teams needs to be separate because many people are unable to pick their teams when they register. This is not the fault of the team coaches but is simply a fact we have to accept. Last year, we had some names that we did not get until the conference itself. This makes it hard to prepare folders and order meals. I will probably have to call coaches to expedite this problem. The vendor situation is very difficult. Vendors will not commit until the eve of the conference. Then, it takes a long time to get the checks from the vendors. I don’t think it would help if the checks were sent directly to the registrar. These problems may also be problems beyond our control. Maybe, we could find an incentive to get vendors to register early. One minor technical problem was with the meal options last year, One registration form got out with the options as "Option 1", "Option 2", etc. We need to avoid making early forms without all the information.

6. Treasurer's Report

The following remarks were made:
• As regards the 2006 conference, we made a profit.
• As regards the 2007 conference, there is no increase in the conference fee for regular attendees.
• As regards the 2008 conference, the student registration fee will increase to $45 (up from $40), and no one registering as a student is to receive the proceedings.

III. Old Business

7. January Board Meeting

We still need to decide where the January conference/board meeting will be held.
The Meeting will be held on January 13, 2007 at Union College.

8. Plagiarism Policy

I communicated with Ronald Boisvert, Chair of the ACM Publications board. Since the CCSC Journal is part of the ACM Digital Library, I asked whether the existing ACM policy on plagiarism would be applicable. He said that that question has come up before and that the ACM policy only applies to material that ACM holds the copyright on. So that means I will need to discuss this further with the CCSC board. The main problem with taking the ACM policy and adapting it to CCSC is the liability issue. The ACM policy has rather severe penalties for plagiarizers (including notifying the offender's Dean or Chair). This raises the possibility of litigation and I don't believe that CCSC currently retains legal counsel.
There was no action except that the CCSCNE web site will henceforth contain a statement to the effect that our stated policy for authors regarding plagiarism, which follows that of the ACM, is "merely" a something we prefer, as opposed to demand.

IV. New Business

9. New Board Members

(The agenda had two items numbered "8", of which this is the second.)

I have solicited applications for board membership from Hemant Pendharkar, Worcester State College and Jim Teresco, Williams College. Both are interested and have submitted a letter of interest which has been circulated to the board.
Motion (in 2 parts) (RW/FF)):
(a) To accept Jim Teresco as a member of the CCSCNE Board.
Passed: unanimously
(b) To accept Hemant Pendharkar as a member of the CCSCNE Board.
Passed: unanimously

The meeting was reminded of the fact that, speaking very broadly, the criteria for Board membership are: interest in CCSCNE, energy, and ideas.

10. CCSCNE Travel Policy

(Item 9 on the Agenda.)

A question arose about the CCSCNE travel policy. Here is the current policy The following can be paid by CCSCNE for Board and Committee member expenses. (1) Hotel: up to $80 per person per night, with receipt (2) Meals: up to $50 per person per day, with receipt for actual meal expenses incurred. (3) Travel: up to $100 per person, which may include: - passenger vehicle tolls, with receipt - mileage at current IRS rate OR gasoline, with receipts OR mass transportation fees, or car rental costs (excepting insurance), with receipts. This policy applies to all CCSCNE events and meetings, including those at the conference, provided the claim made under the policy is for activity related to conference or board committee work. The question concerns reimbursement for the April conference. A situation arose that the Treasurer asked me if a certain application for reimbursement was legitimate. I believe that the language of the policy should be sufficiently clear that there rarely if ever be a need for the CCSCNE Chair to adjudicate a claim. That puts the Chair in a potentially awkward position. I would ask the board for some clarification of the language "activity related to conference or board committee work".
After a little discussion, it was agreed that, beginning with the September meeting for the 2008 conference, the dollar amounts in the policy for the hotel and travel should increase to $120 and $150 respectively.

It was further agreed, by way of clarification of the existing policy, that as both Conference Committee and Board members are expected (if not required) to attend the conference, the above policy is to apply explicitly to the conference itself (standardly held in April), as well as to the other Conference and Board meetings (standardly held in January and September). By way of further clarification, it was noted that many Conference and Board members will be at some of our conferences for two nights (and conceivably even three nights on rare occasions) and will be so reimbursed.

Motion (RW/MG)): That the CCSCNE travel policy be:

(1) Hotel: up to $120 (but up to only $80 for CCSCNE-07) per person per night, with receipt.
(2) Meals: up to $50 per person per day, with receipt for actual meal expenses incurred.
(3) Travel: up to $150 (but up to only $100 for CCSCNE-07) per person, which may include: - passenger vehicle tolls, with receipt - mileage at current IRS rate OR gasoline, with receipts OR mass transportation fees, or car rental costs (excepting insurance), with receipts.

This policy applies to all CCSCNE events and meetings, including the conference.

Passed: 9/0/1

11. Conference submission dates

(Item 10 on the Agenda.)

David has brought up a suggestion which I think is a good one and would like to make board policy. We should be able to finalize all dates relating to author submission for a conference at the previous April board meeting. This would allow us to get the CFP done sooner, among other things.
Larry reported that this has already been done.

12. Additional Item Not on Agenda -- Speakers

It was noted that speakers receive $350 for travel and a $300 honorarium. It was agreed that in view of the differing distance the two speakers for 2007 must travel, some of Andries van Dam's travel money is to be allocated to Mary Jane Irwin.

13. Motion to Adjourn

(Item 11 on the Agenda.)

Passed: by acclamation.

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Respectfully submitted,
Richard Wyatt
(CCSCNE Secretary)