Taku Fuji, Kerrie Serben, Emily Hart Hayes, April Markiewicz, Paul Dinnel, Bruce Hope, Bill Williams, Bruce Duncan, Angela Coyner, Julann Spromberg, Angie Obery, Rick Cardwell, Doug Henderson, Tracy Collier, Lorraine Wilde, Linda Logan, Jenifer Mcintyre, Karen Kinnee, Jeremy Clark, Heather Brunelle, Colin Dietrich (21 members).
We will ask Michael Blanton about organising the 2003 meeting in Sequim or in Port Townsend.
Alternatively, we could just decide where we want to have the meeting and divide the organisational tasks among the board members. Lorraine did not like the idea of us dividing up the work and deciding on a location without a host.
Possible locations for the 2004 meeting are: White Rock, Simon Fraser, Sand Point at NOAA in Seattle (Tracy Collier), MontLake (Tracy Collier), Seattle Center, Jasper, and Alaska ferry.
An e-mail will be distributed to the membership, asking for volunteers to host the 2003 and 2004 meetings.
Our current date in mid-May conflicts with SMARM and SETAC Europe.
The proposed new date is the third week of April. We should check for other meetings around this time so there will not be any conflicts. The proposed dates for the next meeting are April 17 to 19, 2003.
Bruce Duncan, Tracy Collier and Jim Meador are willing to help on the committee.
April will send out an e-mail to the people who have come forward and also send an e-mail out to all the members asking for more volunteers. Karen will try and find some Canadian volunteers.
73 people attended the meeting; this was an increase from last year. Angie is still waiting for some cheques for sponsorship and registration. We received $900 for the short course from SETAC-NA. Overall, we had $6000 in bank last year.
Angie will be compiling the total cost for the meeting. At end of this meeting, there will probably be approximately $6000 in the bank account. We want to maintain between $3000 and $5000 in the account. This allows us to have an annual meeting without worrying about making money or allow us to have the meeting in a unusual location (e.g. Calgary, AK). We could also do fund raising for this (t-shirts). We could have a meeting in Alaska as they have some monies and we could do a special session on Effects of Exxon Valdez. Another possibility is to have a joint meeting in 2005 in a faraway location.
We need to register federally for exemption as bank account is greater than $5000.
Rick Cardwell mentioned that there are approximately 300 scientists in Newport and also lots of scientists in Corvallis. Some of these people are not toxicologists but they may be involved in other associations. This would be good for outreach. He will report on this in November and the 2006 or 2007 meeting could be a joint meeting with another association.
Paul Dinnel will approach the President of the Pacific Estuarine Research Society and ask when we could have a joint meeting with them.
We need to prepare an SOP on how to interact with other associations.
Historically, NWTAG just used the left over rooms. Donations for the NWTAG meeting are tax deductible if made through SETAC. If it works without incurring costs, then NWTAG can come have joint meetings with PNW-SETAC, but if there are additional costs for NWTAG then the president of NWTAG will be contacted in the November before the meeting by the meeting organiser. This will also apply with other associated groups with the chapter if there are many of the same members in both associations.
Rod Parrish was concerned about privacy issues and misuse of the information when the directory was sent out by PDF file to the membership. The board discussed this and did not think that this was an issue as we had advertised in 2 newsletters that we would be sending it out by email. There were no negative responses to this. A privacy clause has been added to the directory.
Taku suggested that a legal statement regarding privacy could be included in the directory and he will look into this.
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 is transferring her responsibilities of e-mailing the membership to Karen. Lorraine will send out an e-mail to the membership announcing this and then Karen will send out an e-mail to the membership to remind the members to send the e-mails to her.
The positions that will be open in 2003 are the Student Board Member, At-Large-Private, Secretary and Vice President. Burt and Taku will run for VP and Karen will run for Secretary. We need to recruit someone for At-Large Private Position. Kristen Lawrence, AMEC/OSU and another student from OSU are interested in Student Board Member position.
Biographies and photos of the nominees will be in the June newsletter. Ballots will be distributed in the Fall newsletter and elections will be completed by November.
We had a raffle last year which was a good idea and we will have another raffle this year. We need to make the booth exciting to attract SETAC-NA members who are not chapter members. Some people think that if they are a member of SETAC-NA, they automatically become members of the chapter. Perhaps we need to send out an e-mail to non-Chapter members explaining this policy.
We could also sell PNW-SETAC T-shirts at the booth for fundraising. Julann Spromberg and Bruce Hope will look into prices for t-shirts and fleece vests.
Karen will improve the PNW-SETAC banner and get it printed on cloth.