Minutes: UGCIS Council Meeting

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Asilomar, California

1)       Call to order. The meeting was called to order by Carolyn Merry, UCGIS President, at 1pm.

2)       Reports from the Membership Committee. Mary-Lou Larson briefed applications from the University of Mississippi and University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The membership committee reviewed both applications and recommended the council accept both applications. Lynn Usery moved to accept both applications. Francis Harvey seconded. Motion passed.

3)       Revision of, and items for, Agenda.

Lynn Usery moved to accept the agenda. Art Getis seconded. Motion passed.

4)       Adoption of minutes of Tuesday February 11, 2003.

John Wilson moved to accept the minutes. Jochen Albrecht seconded. Motion passed.

5)       Executive report. Carolyn Merry summarized discussions in the board meeting on June 16, 2003, including the newly adopted briefing book and emphasis on strategic planning. Merry also reported major upcoming UCGIS activities. UCGIS participated in an education proposal entitled SPACE last year. Unofficial NSF notes indicated that an education proposal on SPACE would be funded. UCGIS members are invited to submit proposals to conduct SPACE workshops. The announcement of Geomedia grant program called by Integraph was posted at UCGIS website. Proposals should be submitted by September 1, 2003. Funds received from ARDA (through USGS) to sponsor a workshop on data mining and visualization. The workshop aims to open a dialog between government agencies (ARDA, NIMA, NSA, CIA, USGS, and others) and UCGIS researchers. Agenda for the workshop will be available in the next two weeks. Twenty five UCGIS researchers will be invited to attend the workshop. Interested UCGIS researchers should contact Lynn Usery, Babs Buttenfield, Harvey Miller, Shashi Shekhar or May Yuan. Suzy Jampoler is in charge of HUD grant program.

6)       Financial Reports. Suzy Jampoler reported that 2002 audit is almost completed and summarized the current budget, income, and expenses as of May 31, 2003 (the budget report attached). Accounting and auditing constitute the two largest budget items. No expenses have yet budgeted for the next winter meeting because it is still under negotiation. Roughly, we have $100,000 operating budget and $120,000 in three CDs.

7)       By-law Changes. Lynn Usery read the two proposed changes in by-laws: Article IX Standing Committee (on strategic planning committee) and Article V Membership Meetings (to be held at least annually).Mary-Lou Larson moved to approve the changes to Article V Membership Meetings. Francis Harvey seconded. Motion passed. 

The strategic planning committee will be chaired by the president elect with three members appointed by the board. The board discussed the changes and suggested an amendment to remove the reference to the strategic plan approved by the council in June 1998 and change to ‘the current strategic plan.” Art Getis moved to approve the changes to Article IX Standing Committee. Lyna Wiggins seconded. Motion passed. 

8)       Committee Reports.

a.      Policy and Legislation Committee Report by John Shular and Sean Ahearn.

The committee has begun planning on the winter meeting. Sean Ahearn suggested a focus on homeland security to engage UCGIS researchers and government agencies, and even researchers from other disciplines. The meeting will bring federal governments to address homeland security concerns and UCGIS researchers to offer GIS solutions. One potential outcome of the meeting can be a document on potential GIS projects that are fundable by federal agencies to address issues related to homeland security.     

b.      Research Committee Report by John Wilson

                    i.      There were 19 short-term research challenges resulted in the last summer assembly. Since then, 16 research briefs were completed, and each outlined key ideas and agendas in two pages.

                  ii.      Reggie Golledge, the educator award of the last year (2002) chaired the researcher award this year. Max Egenhofer won this year’s researcher of the year award.

                iii.      Twenty eight extended abstracts from 17 universities were received for the student paper competition this year. All 28 students submitted full papers by May 31, among which, 18 papers were included in oral presentations and 10 papers were presented in the poster session.

                 iv.      The research committee discussed the format of the next summer assembly on June 16, 2003. Suggestions were made to include plenary sessions, workshops or tutorials, student paper sessions, and sessions on selected research briefs.

                   v.      Research briefs can be submitted anytime to the research committee. Once approved by the research committee, research briefs will be posted to the UCGIS website for two years and then be archived. Archived research briefs can be revised and posted to the current research briefs webpage again with approval from the research committee.

                 vi.      Wilson thanked help from members in the research committee, especially on student paper competition and workshop leaders.

c.       Education Committee Report by Lyna Wiggins.

                    i.      Keith Clarke is the recipient of the educator of the year award.

                  ii.      All nominations for educator of the year award will be kept in the pool for three years.

                iii.      The education committee identified three workgroups: UCGIS core curriculum, policy, and virtual seminar. More volunteers are needed on these workgroups.

d.      Membership Committee Report by Mary-Lou Larson.

                    i.      Many members need to update, revise, and fix their UCGIS web portfolios. A list of members whose memberships have been expired, are soon to be expired, and need to be updated was distributed.

                  ii.      The committee needs more volunteers to identify and remove potential new members. Currently, there are eight members (with 2.5 active members) in the committee.

                iii.      New agenda: work with current members to develop FAQs about memberships; organize round-table discussions on membership benefits and other delegate issues in future UCGIS meetings; work with individual delegate to identify and strengthen UCGIS activities on campus; and conduct membership surveys to elicit membership benefits and other delegate issues. The committee will consult with David Mark on the previous member survey to build the next member survey.

e.      Communication Committee Report by Ling Bian.

                    i.      The committee consists of Ling Bian, Dawn Wright, Will Craig, and Dick Campbell (Webmaster).

                  ii.      Major activities of the last year include web updates, on-line brochure updates, and development of a new on-line database.

                iii.      Web updates. New design aims to enhance two basic functions of the UCGIS webpages (internally to serve members and externally to present what UCGIS is about). New features include easy navigation, on-line registration, on-line payment, event posting, levels of access (general, members, and delegates), and search functions. Ling Bian demonstrated these functions to the council. Members only page requires login (username: ucgis; password: member).

                 iv.      On-line brochure updates. The new 3-fold UCGIS brochure keeps the content and motif of the original brochure and is available on line. Members are encouraged to distribute the new brochures at meetings and conferences. Contact Suzy Jampoler for hardcopies.   

                   v.      Development of an on-line master database.  The database includes member institutions, delegates, committee members, expertise information, and US senators and representatives. The database is implemented in ASP (Active Server Pages) and will allow one-time update for the database and related information at UCGIS website. Each delegate will be able to change his/her contact and expertise information. Lead delegates can update university delegation. Individuals can sign up for committee memberships. Later, individuals can also post announcements on events or jobs. The system will automatically archive announcements based on the dates entered. Email notices for new items posted at the website will be distributed bi-weekly or monthly. Mailing list will include delegates and whoever has signed up the mailing list.

f.        Research Project Committee Report by Nina Lam. Nominations to the research project committee have been forwarded to the board. Once approved by the board, the committee will start reviewing proposals submitted for the homeland security workshop grant program.

g.      Other Business.

                    i.      Art Getis: A letter from the American Statistical Association invited UCGIS to organize another visualization session upon the success of the visualization session two years ago. Contact Getis for further information.

                  ii.      Will Craig suggested council meetings be scheduled in consideration of travel schedules of members. In this meeting, for example, participants from the east coast need to catch flights by early afternoon, or otherwise they will need to stay for another night. Consider move the council meeting to an earlier time (perhaps in the middle of the assembly). However, Greg Elmes argued that we need the council meeting in the end to rectify outcome of discussions over the assembly.

9)       Adjourn. Nina Lam moved to adjourn. Francis seconded. Motion passed. The meeting adjourned at 14:52.