Board Meeting -- Minutes

Holy Cross College, Worcester MA, September 13, 2014

Attendees

Lawrence D'Antonio (LD) (Chair)
Mark Bailey (MB) (non-voting guest)
Frank Ford (FF)
Michael Gousie (MG)
Mark Hoffman (MH)
Stoney Jackson (SJ)
Laurie King (LK) (non-voting guest)
Bonnie MacKeller (BM)
Sandeep Mitra (SM)
Hemant Pendharkar (HP)
Jim Teresco (JT)
Karl Wurst (KW)
Richard Wyatt (RW)

I. Previous Meetings

1. Minutes

MOTION (FF/MG): To accept the minutes of the April meeting.
Passed: 11/0/1.

II. Reports

2. Chair's Report: Larry D'Antonio

I. Report from National

1. The next national board meeting will be held November 13-14, 2014 at York College of Pennsylvania.

2. Hala ElAarag, of Stetson University, is the new CCSC Vice President.

3. National discussed low attendance issues at conferences. Issues raised in 
regards to low attendance included: the continuing viability of 10 
conferences, budgetary concerns, and publication rates.


II. Future Conferences

1. 2016 Conference

Our 21st meeting will be held at Hamilton College, in Clinton NY. Mark Bailey will be conference chair.

2. Future Conferences

MassBay Community College has expressed interest in hosting the 2017 conference. They are located in
Wellesley Hills near Boston. I will visit their campus and report back at our April board meeting.

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

RE: I: Larry reports that although the NE is doing well, overall CCSC conferences are getting lower attendances.

RE: II 1: As regards the 2016 conference, the revised dates are 29-30 April. The venue for the plenary sessions could be either the Performing Arts Centre, or the College's chapel: it was agreed that it will be the chapel. Hotels are "OK".

RE: II.2: One negative issue for MassBay CC is that it is near Boston, which means that hotels will be expensive and, it was thought, about $200/night. So at least some cheaper hotels will be needed.

3. Webmaster's Report: Stoney Jackson

Fall 2014

ccscne.org
    +  URL for CCSCNE 2015: http://ccscne.org/conferences/ccscne-2015/
    +  Updates
        -  Updated WordPress and related plugins.
        -  Updated color scheme.
        -  Added last modified date and chair email to each category page.
    +  Category chairs may modify their pages directly.
        -  Go to http://ccscne.org/identify and click "Lost your password?"
        -  Enter chair email, and a link will be emailed, allowing you to "recover" the account.
    +  Alternatively, category chairs may email me new content for their pages.
        -  Please do email me your revised content --- "Please replace the
           important dates section with the following..."
        -  Please don't email me general instructions for fixing your
           content --- "The dates are wrong, please fix them."
    +  If someone would like a page, please let me know, I'll create
       him/her the page and an account that has access to that page.

submit.ccscne.org

      Current submission system
      When do we need this reset?

review.ccscne.org

    +  I have completed a working prototype of a new submission-review system.
    +  I will have a working demo at the above site by the time of our meeting.
    +  Source code will be up on GitHub by the time of the meeting.
    +  Consider this an alpha release (experimental; bugs are likely).
    +  We may want to have a smaller category give it a test run this year,
       with email as a backup.

twitter.com/ccscne

    +  I'm not sure how best to effectively use this account. Suggestions
      welcome.

Remarks from the meeting on, or made at the time of the discussion of, the Webmaster's Report

III. Old Business

4. Update on a new submission system

Postponed.

5. Student Poster Judging

There were some questions raised about the student poster judging in
Providence. For example, the judging was scheduled too early on Friday. One
suggestion would be to extend judging until 1:00 pm. Also, the question was
raised as to whether students should be present for the judging.

It was agreed that we should do the judging without the students being present; and further the judging should begin at 11.30 and be finished by 3.30.

It was reported that in general there are not enough reviewers

There was discussion on whether to retain the term "undergraduate research" in the guidance description provided for student posters, and it was agreed that it should remain for the present and that the Student Posters chairs are free to change it they so decide.

6. Papers Possible Models for Conference

At the April meeting it was noted that the conference was becoming
increasingly student oriented. A committee, made up of Mark Bailey, Paul
Tymann, and Larry D'Antonio, was formed to study to study possible models
for the conference. This discussion needs to be forwarded to the next board
meeting.

Postponed as the committee has not yet reported. There was a little discussion on the matter but no decisions were reached.

IV. New Business

7. Student programming contest

It was initially thought that the contest at the Holy Cross meeting would need to be conducted on
student laptops. That turns out to not be necessary, but Karl Wurst suggested that a committee be
formed to investigate the feasibility of having the contest take place on student laptops.

( 8. There was no item 8 on the agenda.)

9. Final financial report for 2011-2014

Attached are the final accountings for the 2011-2014 conferences. As can be
seen, we have run a substantial profit at each conference.

10. Paper Submission Data

                      Year     2011   2012   2013   2014
Number of papers submitted      33     37     40     30
 Number of papers accepted      17     16     20     13
       Acceptance rate (%)      52%    43%    50%    43%

11. Motion to adjourn