Present: Burt Shephard, Bruce Duncan, April Markiewicz, Emily Hart Hayes, Lorraine Wilde, Doug Henderson, Angie Obery, Karen Kinnee
Guests: Alan Chartrand, Debra Denton
Absent: Paul Dinnel
Usually NWTAG uses the room after the short course at the PNW-SETAC meeting because the room is usually paid for that day and is not used anyway. There is a valuable association between NWTAG and PNW-SETAC, as most NWTAG members are also members of PNW-SETAC and so it is beneficial to the members. There may be costs for food for the NWTAG meeting, but corporations often can sponsor this.
If there is all day short course, there could be a conflict for room space. The board will not have to supply a room if extra charges have to be incurred.
The meeting organiser should co-ordinate with the NWTAG representative to have access to the meeting room. We should write up a new section in the meeting SOP so that the meeting coordinator is aware of how this situation should be handled. This should be done at the National SETAC meeting.
Five people responded to Emily’s outreach campaign to universities. These people will be added to the membership list. Emily suggests that we should do this outreach every year.
This year we have 11 student presentations and usually we have 6 or less. This is the most student presentations we have ever had. The contribution of the student representative seems to be increasing since we have had a student board member.
Lorraine wants students from Oregon to keep participating in the meetings.
All board members should meet with the student members as they will soon be people with jobs and could be potential board members.
We will have $500 available for travel allowances and if we want to increase the amount, then we can. This will be assessed on an as-needed basis.
Doug will review and collect the applications again next year.
We could sell T-shirts to provide more money for student travel awards.
The current policy is to raffle the books off to the students. Other chapters sell the books and donate the funds to students. This should be written up formally in the meeting guidelines.
The updated brochure that Burt has produced is now ready for distribution. We will save it as an Adobe file so that it can be posted on the website. April has several people who want brochures and we will send them out to them. We could increase the font size or add a picture so there will not be a blank page. The Board should review the brochure and send comments to Burt.
Items on the website that will require regular updating will include: upcoming elections, meeting information, job postings, and newsletters.
Karen will contact Cheri at National SETAC to get the questions answered from April 11, 2002 and then she will coordinate with Doug about getting the website moved to the national SETAC page.
Angie would like to talk about this at the chapter meeting.
It is easier if members renew their membership through SETAC-NA. Many people overpay their membership and it is applied to follow year’s membership.
The label on the newsletter shows the last time a member paid their membership dues. This information is also in the new membership directory. We could e-mail the membership to tell them to check their label on the newsletter. Effective 2003, we will discontinue sending newsletters to members who have not paid for 2 years.
Free meeting registrations will be provided to the Short Course Instructor, Meeting Coordinators, and the SETAC-NA board member for a total of up to five free meeting registrations per meeting. This policy should be included this in the meeting guidelines.
We should include information about free dues for student volunteers on the registration form.
Michael Blanton, Sequim, WA could be a potential for the 2003 meeting. If we can’t find anyone, we could always organise the meeting amongst ourselves. Karen is willing to collect the abstracts and prepare the meeting program.
We should also ask for volunteers at the Chapter meeting tomorrow for 2003 and 2004.
We could also set a meeting theme that would include the work of the lab in Sequim. Nancy Kohn of Batelle could be a potential contact.
Debra Rudis, Department of Fisheries, AK may be willing to host a meeting. Juneau, AK.
We should try and coordinate dates so there is not a conflict with SMARM and SETAC Europe.
It was decided that the meeting should be held in the third week in April.
We need to form a committee to organise the technical aspects of the meeting. We have also been asked to ask to help with the social program and the short courses. The meeting will held at the Portland Conference Center. Free Spirit boat cruise would be an idea.
Ann Fairbrother and April Markiewicz will be helping with the meeting.
Input from Debra Denton: The committee should have a broad geographical committee with people from diverse backgrounds and they decide on theme, keynote speakers, hot topics, social events etc. The short course and student coordinators are always on the committee. The chapter will need to decide who the co-chairs for the meeting will be. Once this is decided Rod Parrish should be contacted and a letter with proposed committee with proposed theme, social events etc. will be distributed. Rod arranges for rooms etc. The committee needs to arrange technical aspects of the program.
The committee will go to Florida and review abstracts in June. The people on the committee will be very busy at the meeting and probably will not have time to go to the sessions. Local flavours should be highlighted in the meeting, both technically and socially. It is helpful to have people on the committee who have previous national organisational experience.
It was proposed to have a tri-chair system, as it makes sense to have one person from each of the three sectors (business, industry, and academia). Only one person will be in contact Rod Parrish. We will ask the members at the business meeting tomorrow if anyone if interested in chairing the 2004 SETAC-NA meeting. It may be good to have a representative from the Pacific Rim because it is a World Council Meeting.
The Board decided unanimously that the Chapter should not apply for a credit card.
Angie said that the reimbursements for expenses incurred by the members was going smoothly.
It was decided that since we are independent from SETAC-NA and therefore we could send out directory with privacy caveats for electronically.
Lorraine wants to step down from doing the newsletter and April will do the newsletter on her own. If she finds that she needs help, she will notify the membership and ask for volunteers.
Lorraine will also be stepping down from doing the e-mail notification. The Secretary will be responsible for e-mail notifications to the membership. This will be added to the Secretary’s job description.
The positions that will be open in 2003 are the Student Board Member, At-Large, Private, Secretary and Vice President.
Burt will run for VP and Karen will run for Secretary. Gretchen Kruse was approached and said she may interested in a board position next year. Emily has a student in mind. Jill Thomas, Julann Spromberg and Taku Fuji are also potential board members.
We decided that the Board should buy the meeting coordinator(s) a present, as a token of appreciation for organising the meeting. Bruce will buy something for Taku, Bill and Bruce. At subsequent meetings, this will be the responsibility of the Vice President. This will be added to the meeting guidelines and the responsibilities of the Vice President. The cost of gifts should be between $7 to $10 per person or up to $15, if there is only one meeting organiser.
Bruce suggested that the gift should fit to the volunteer (aka "poor soul, who in a moment of weakness/brilliance [yourchoice] volunteered to lead our chapter into the light of knowledge").and could be bought in the host meeting city or before the meeting. April suggested that we could always prepare a nice certificate that has our logo on it or buy on-line gift certificate (e.g. from Amazon).