Minutes: UCGIS Board of Directors Meeting
Friday, February 6, 2004
Capital Hill Suites, Washington D.C.
Present: Lynn Usery, Dawn Wright, Bian Lin, John Wilson, David Talluh, John Shular, Lyna Wiggins, Laxmi R., Jochen Albrecht, Mary Lou Larson, Carolyn Merry, Benjamin Zhan, Sean Ahrean, Art Getis, Nina Lam, Suzy Jampoler, May Yuan
Called to Order by Usery at 1:32pm
a. New board members: Nina Lam (Vice President), David Tulloch (Board member), May Yuan (Board member).
b. Guests: Lamxi, Art Getis, Jochen Albrecht
4.5 policy and legislation issues (Shuler)
4.6 Internships (Ahrean)
5.1 Young Scholar Committee (from council meeting on Feb 6, 2004)
5.2 Sponsor Public Participation GIS conference (from council meeting on Feb 6, 2004)
5.3 Vacancies; secretary, research project committee chair
a. Administrative support changes
Jampoler resigned from Executive Director (ED). Resignation accepted. The Board discussed the options below for the replacement:
· Contract to a part-time person (the current appointment). Two types of backgrounds: GIScience with business experiences or pure business backgrounds.
· Contract to companies specialized in business services
· Contract to other professional organizations (such as ACSM), and perhaps become a member of that organization
· Contract to UCGIS president’s home institution.
· Contract to a particular member institution
Jampoler indicated that the ED’s primary responsibility should be management and outreach. Her contract limits a maximum of 800 hours of her time on UCGIS business, and most of her time is spent on administrative matters rather than management. In general, it is cheaper to hire someone on administration than management. The board needs to make two decisions: when is the final date of her appointment and which model to take on the ED appointment.
· Getis asked the previous hiring procedure. Jampoler replied Greg Elmes and Rob Rugg interviewed 8 people at an AAG meeting, which resulted the hiring of Jampoler.
· Wiggins shared URISA’s two hiring experiences: five candidates were interviewed the first time, and 20 candidates were interviewed the second time among 200+ applications. She expected that UCGIS would also receive a large number of applications under the model of contracting to a half-time individual ED. Professional associations or consulting firms will give us better pricing, but we may lose personal attention to UCGIS. However, URISA now manages budgets and meetings for IMAGIN (Improving Michigan’s Access to Geographic Information Network) who lacks funds for a half-time administrator.
· Usery mentioned that ACSM may be a consideration. ACSM now has four members (AAGS, CAGIS,GLIS, and NSPS). UCGIS will get a seat in the Congress if we become a member of ACSM. ACSM just started handling administration matters for CaGIS, but it is too early to tell how well the arrangement between ACSM and CaGIS works.
· Wilson asked how important it is to have the ED located in D.C area. Jampoler replied if outreach and development is central to the ED’s duty then the ED should reside in D.C. However, most of her current work is administrative in nature. If administration continues to be the primary task for the position, location is not so important.
· Getis asked how long the hiring process may take. Wiggins suggested two months.
· Wilson estimated $100,000 to $120,000 available for the ED. Jampoler confirmed the figure is about $100,000 but will include all her salary, accounting, auditing, and internet. Wilson suggested we allow bids from universities for the ED and have a travel budget to allow the ED to visit D.C. when necessary. The bottom-line is to consider what the organization needs and how to get most done within our financial constraints. Jampoler indicated that currently accounting, meetings, and project management are most time-consuming tasks, which leads no time for the ED to do more forward-looking plan, for example, to negotiate effectively with Federal agencies on grants.
· Lam suggested the ED should also do some outreach activities, such as soliciting endowments or fund raising. Shuler summarized four major tasks discussed on the ED responsibilities:
1. event management
2. grant/project management
3. outreach to legislation and policy issues.
4. fund raising
Action item: Usery tasked Merry to chair a committee to explore options and provide recommendations and a job announcement to the board by March 16. The committee includes Merry (chair), Wilson, Shuler, and Greg Elmes. The plan is to have the new hire on board on June 9, 2004. Jampoler will help on transition June 9-11. The final date of Jampoler’s appointment will be June 11, 2004.
b. Membership
Usery argued for individual memberships to reach out individuals who are interested in joining CGIS but lack direct channels to get involved. For example, there are many people doing research related to GIS but only 2-3 people active in UCGIS activities. A potential benefit we can offer to individual members is journal subscriptions. In a CaGIS survey, journal subscription is the number one reason for joining their association. Transitions in GIS (TGIS) is a good possibility. Wilson, the editor of TGIS, indicated that TGIS is financially health but needs more citations. Hence, they are interested in increasing readership of the journal. Hence, the idea of TGIS subscriptions to individual members in UCGIS is appealing. Wilson will need to discuss this with the publisher.
Tulloch raised the concern regarding the impacts of individual memberships on institutional memberships. Will individual memberships diminish the legislative power of institutional memberships? Will individual memberships discourage future institutional members or renewal institutional members?
Usery suggested that membership fees should be higher for individuals whose institutions are not members. Questions arose if only people from non-member institutions can apply for individual memberships. Usery argued that the individual membership option should aim to reach people both within and outside our member institutions. Larson indicated that she can put the individual membership question in her upcoming survey.
Action item: Usery charged Larson to include the individual membership question in her member survey and form a committee to work out by-law change in 6 weeks. Wilson will check with the publisher of TGIS. Target date for decision is May 1, 2004.
a. Grants
i. SPACE workshops: Art Getis and John Weeks will, on behalf of UCGIS, organize two SPACE workshops because Getis was the UCGIS president at the time of SPACE proposal submission and is the PI on the UCGIS project. The grant will run for three years, so the board needs to make decisions regarding how to select teams to run workshops in 2005 and 2006. Central to the proposal is incorporation of spatial thinking and spatial concepts into social science curricula. The UCGIS budget is $57,510 for 2005 and $59,810 for 2006. The fund is mainly budgeted for rooms, board, and instructions.
1. UCGIS IDC: currently UCGIS has no IDC. One of the top priorities for the new ED is to negotiate an IDC rate with one of the three federal agencies (one of which is DHS) if UCGIS would like to continue grant activities.
2. Action item: Usery charged Zhan, chair of sponsored research committee to formulate a RFP. Usery and Merry will provide Zhan the proposal, annual budgets, and reviews of the proposal. The selection of teams for 2005 workshops should be complete by end the summer 2004 so that team members can attend next SPACE planning meeting on October 9, Nov 10, or Nov 11, 2004.
ii. Homeland security workshop: Usery asked what we should do with the pre-proposal resulted from the homeland security workshop in Georgia. The pre-proposal proposes a nation-wide geospatial information network backed up by all UCGIS member institutions as a backup network for federal agencies.
Wilson suggested we go for Center of Excellence for Homeland Security. One institution should take the lead. After discussions, the consensus is to have three key institutions work together to develop a full proposal and use UCGIS as test bed and support. Usery will coordinate the effort.
iii. Grants in general
1. Setting up an IDC is a high priority.
2. Grants provide funding opportunities to member institutions.
3. The research project committee should evaluate federal contracts individually to determine if UCGIS should take on individual contracts.
b. Education
Wiggins indicated that the strawman document has forwarded to ESRI, but Ann Johnson at ESRI requested for a more complete version. The education committee meeting held in the morning of February 6, 2004 has designated Babs Buttenfield to bring the document to NSA/ARDA and UC-Boulder to seek funding support for the next phase.
c. Policy and legislation
Shuler asked what we mean by being more proactive in policy and legislation. Usery responded that we should track legislation to get a better understanding of how GIS ins embedded in different bills.
d. Internship: Ahrean stated that federal agencies often have end-of-year money that need to be spent. UCGIS can sign MOUs with federal agencies to facilitate students from member institutions to work as interns in federal agencies. This will be a win-win approach. Federal agencies are able to bank their money for interns to help out in the following fiscal year, member institutions obtain internship opportunities for their students, and UCGIS can charge IDC (after we have IDC set up).
Ahrean moved to set up an internship program in UCGIS. Wilson seconded. Motion passed. During discussions, Lamxi suggested we should collect and assemble student resumes continuously rather than wait until federal agencies contact us for interns. Bian indicated that she contacted NGA and NSA/ARDA and learned that both agencies need security clearance and they traditionally don’t use web posting for recruitment. Ahrean suggested that UCGIS needs MOUs in place and the new ED should consider it a high priority to set up internship MOUs.
Action item: Usery charged Ahrean to set up an internship program in UCGIS.
e. Vacancies
i. Secretary: Dawn Wright (asked and will consider)
ii. Chair of Policy and Legislation Committee: John Shuler (accepted)
iii. Chair of Education Chair: Francis Harvey (nominated by Usery) or Karen Kemp (asked and will consider), or co-chairs
iv. Chair of Research Project Committee; Scott MacKay (nominated by Yuan)
f. Next Winter meeting: Shuler suggested that a closing statement is needed to end our congressional breakfast with something that UCGIS asks for congressional staffers to think about or act on.
g. Young Scholar Committee: The idea was brought up in the council meeting in the morning of February 6, 2004. The board discussed functions to which the committee will serve. Suggestions include (1) to serve as as a support group for young scholars; (2) to coordinate with graduate students and junior faculty; and (3) to charge internships.
Wilson moved to create an ad-hoc young scholar committee. Ahrean seconded. Motion passed.
h. Sponsor Public Participation in GIS conference
Merry moved to sponsor the conference but with no financial commitments. Yuan seconded. Motion passed.
a. Fall meeting: Wilson will check with Doug Richardson on contract to see if our program (sessions and meetings) can be built on top of GIScience 2004 meeting. A priority list was determined in the research committee meeting in the morning of February 6, 2004. The priority list includes student sessions, a plenary talk, and UCGIS paper sessions. UCGIS workshops are at the lower priority. Albrecht suggested that we may use rooms in the department of geography for council and board meetings. The department of geography is only 5-minute walk from GIScience meeting site. Wilson indicated that NCGIS at UCSB is going to administrate money left over from GIScience 2004. Jampoler mentioned that we usually lost money in summer meetings so we should be better off to go with GIScience 2004. The dates of GIScience 2004 are October 27-29, 2004.
b. Operating budget
Intergraph requested that they participate in our reviews of Intergraph research awards.