Minutes of the Executive Council Meeting

Hilton Garden Inn, FriscoTX

Frisco Bridges D

2010 Meeting, April 15, 2010

 Jodi Roepsch, President called the meeting to order at approximately 7:32 pm.

Members present included: Jodi Roepsch - President, Josephine Taylor – New President, David Garrett - Program Chair,  Becky Holdford - Webmaster, Robert Droleskey – Secretary-Elect, Nabarun Ghosh Past - President, Alice Stacey - New Treasurer, Ernest Couch – Program Chair-Elect, Ann Ellis – New Journal Co-Editor, Robert Champaign – Youth Ambassador,  Michael Pendleton – Secretary

 Secretaries Report:

Michael Pendleton handed out minutes from the executive council meeting held during the Spring 2009 meeting, Solana Marriott Hotel, Westlake, TX, April 23, 2009.  Jodi Roepsch asked if anyone has any changes or corrections that they wished to make to the minutes.  Becky Holdford stated that she didn’t know what “Firefly” was when used with regards to her report at that meeting.  Michael stated it that it was probably just a transcription mistake on his part. Robert Champaign corrected the minutes with regard to the position of Youth Ambassador, as the minutes stated that Paulo Ferreira would have the position while in fact he, Robert was filling that role. Dr. Couch corrected the minutes with regard to the correct name of TCU’s on campus student research competition which is entitled “Student Research Symposium”.  He also pointed out that the timeline noted in the minutes for that symposium was incorrect as the university administration sets the date for that event and that we were at the mercy of TCU for any coordination with a TSM meeting. Jodi also stated that we would be need to schedule our meeting around state achievement tests if we wanted to have high school students attend our Thursday workshop next year.  A motion to accept the report was made by Becky Holdford and seconded by Jo Taylor and approved by all.

 Michael then reported that the society had 4 new student members.  Jo Taylor made a motion to accept the new members, seconded by Becky Holdford and unanimously approved.

 Treasurers Report:

Alice Stacey reported that the society had $23,884.74 in its checking account and our CD had a value of $5442.41.  She reported that the CD which had recently rolled over received interest of $14.00 this past year and that its current interest rate is 0.5%.  She also said that one deposited check bounced; a $300.85 check from UTSA dated 1/04/2010.  She was not clear as to what the check covered or which department at the university issued the check.  The society was charged $6.00 for processing that check through our bank.  She will call the university and try to determine why it was issued in the first place and why it bounced.  Alice stated that she had received $650.00 for a journal advertisement.  There will be an approximate $800.00 payout for student support at this meeting. Expenses over the past year included $22 for secretary mailings and $2800 for last year’s journal.  A motion to accept the treasurer’s report was made by Nabarun Gosh, seconded by David Garrett and unanimously approved.

 Program Chairs Report:

David Garrett reported that approximately $5,300.00 will be spent on this meeting. Included in that was food, meeting room charges and poster boards.  This figure did not include the bags that were given away to the workshop participants.  David stated that there were 10 students entered in the student competition. There were 39 students and 6 teachers present at the workshop, 8 students backed out at the last minute, 5 universities were present, as were 13 vendors.  Bob asked if David knew the breakdown of undergraduate vs. graduate in the student competition.  David suggested asking their major professor for their classification.

 Journal Editors Report:

Camelia Maier was not able to attend but David Garrett reported that the new issue of the digitally printed journal had arrived in Denton and that it would be at the registration desk in the morning.  There was some concern expressed that the print quality of the journal may suffer with the switch to digital printing.  The switch to digital printing will lower the printing cost of the journal considerably.  Ann Ellis and Nabarun Ghosh stated that the micrograph reproductions in the proofs were not of good quality.  It was also reported that the printer had lost 2 advertisements. 

 Student Representative Report:

Jennie Wojtaszek, student representative, was not able to attend the meeting.

 Corporate Members Report:

Corporate representative Linda Dailey was not at the meeting of the executive council though she helped put on a very successful “CSI style” workshop for the students this afternoon. There was discussion about appointing a new corporate member to the executive council and David Leland’s name was mentioned.  Robert Champaign noted that German Neil had provided many of the items that were in the TSM bags given to the workshop participants.

 Webmasters Report:

Becky Holdford gave the webmasters report. The society is paid up through 2011 for its web service. Becky stated that she will probably pay for 5 years next time to preserve our domain as well as save money. She has new software so the website will be getting a makeover in the coming months.  Ernest and Nabarun both stated that they thought that Becky is doing an outstanding job and that the site looks great and is easy to use.

 Election Results: The new president-elect is Camelia Maier, the new treasurer-elect Sandra Westmoreland and the program chair-elect is Ernest Couch.

 Jodi stated that we are off cycle in terms of electing someone to the program chair position and the consequences of that is that it is hard to plan future meetings and make announcements of those plans at the preceding years meeting.  This is especially difficult since we currently hold only one meeting a year.  The choices were to either eliminate the one year position of program chair-elect which would require a change in bylaws or a joint position among several members for he next meeting (2011) with Ernest taking over the planning of the 2012 meeting. Jodi asked Ernest if he would be willing to serve 2 years as program chair and he responded that he would need help. David Garrett pointed out that not having an “Elect” position made it difficult on the newly elected program chair because they would have no chance to learn before starting the job.  After discussion, it was decided that the planning of the next meeting would be a collaborative effort on the part of Jo Taylor, David Garrett and Ernest Couch.

 Old Business:

Audit:  Bob Droleskey reported on the treasurer’s audit of last April.  He stated that the books at that time were not correctly tabulated which made determining the exact status and distribution of income and expenses impossible. He stated that all the money was there it was just not entered into the correct categories.  Jodi asked that David and Bob perform an audit via email on the books as soon as Alice can finish getting them up to date.

 Ernest asked about updating our checking account signature cards.  It was suggest that Sandra Westmoreland, Jo Taylor, Camelia Maier and Alice Stacey plan on a trip to a BOA branch along with the necessary paperwork and update the card so that they are authorized to sign on the account.

 David Garrett said that he had received a letter from the Marriott Hotel in Westlake, the location of the 2009 meeting, saying that they had sent a refund check to the society in the amount of $724.47 last year but that it had never been cashed.  The letter of January, 2010 stated that if they, Marriott, did not hear back from the society they would send the money to the state of Texas where it would reside in the unclaimed funds account.  David turned the letter over to Alice Stacey who said that she would pursue the matter with the hotel.

Library Report:  Michael Pendleton reported that he had sent out letters of inquiry to the 50 libraries that currently are mailed copies of the journal asking if they would prefer to continue to receive paper copies or switch to receiving digital versions instead.  He only got responses from 10 libraries, 5 wanted hard copies while the other 5 preferred digital versions.  In the majority of instances, those libraries contacted had no knowledge that they were even receiving the journal no less making it available to patrons.

 New Business:

 2011 Meeting:  There was much discussion about the location for the next meeting.  Jo Taylor said she had been talking with members about where they would like the next meeting to be held.  She reported that some people wanted to stay in the north Dallas area while others wanted to move to another city and location away from north Texas.  Cities mentioned included Waco, Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Galveston.  Executive council members agreed that we historically have low participation when we move to other areas of the state which have not recently been showing strong support for our meetings.  Jo has talked with and/or searched for hotels in the Irving to Grapevine area with the idea of keeping the meeting cost below $5000.00 and a room rate close to what the state rate is for the area.  Several hotels that she looked at were either too expensive in terms of room rate, too small (Grapevine Hilton Garden Inn) or too shabby to host the meeting.  Ernest mentioned that Ft, Worth has several good hotels in the downtown area while TCU had everything in one spot.  It was agreed that we needed to increase materials science participation at the meetings and Ernest stressed that we should find an invited speaker that could appeal to those in that field.  Although it was suggested that a speaker from the MSA speaker list might be an appropriate place to start it was pointed out that many in the materials science community might be very familiar with those presentations and using them as a draw might be counterproductive. Ann Ellis mentioned that Kevin Cronyn of Hitachi was always willing to help and that he might be a good contact to help in speaker selection.  It was stated by Jodi that Yianni Tousimis would contribute towards the expenses of a MSA sponsored speaker for the next meeting.  Several people pointed out that UTD’s Moon Kim would be an excellent speaker.  Everyone agreed that it would be beneficial to announce the program for the next meeting at the earliest possible date.  Jo Taylor said that she would serve as coordinator for the next meeting and would try and pursue a UTD connection for the 2011 meeting within the next few weeks and report back.  Jodi stressed the importance of producing a timeline of things to accomplish in preparation for the next meeting and sticking to it.

 Student Workshop:  Jodi asked what the members thought of the workshop with high school students and that if we wanted to repeat it in some form or fashion then we probably needed to keep the next meeting the same general area because we had the local contacts necessary to facilitate school support.  She stated that the teachers in attendance today would love to bring their students back for another workshop next year. With such positive responses, she said that it made sense to have next year’s workshop close to these schools and doing so would insure a successful turnout next year.  Everyone agreed that repeating the success of today’s workshop would be difficult in a different part of Texas.  Having a workshop held in conjunction with the engineering department at UTD along with a possible tour of their clean room was discussed.  The problem would be in co-locating the vendors and the workshop in a facility on campus along with a nearby hotel.  It was pointed out by Ann Ellis that we did not want a repeat of the ’08 Austin meeting in which the vendors were back at the hotel while the workshop was being conducted on the UT campus.  Ernest Couch expressed the opinion that it might be nice to try and get older, perhaps junior college age, students to attend. Eastfield (Carl Knight) and CollinCounty (Lloyd Spence) community colleges were mentioned as possibilities.  David Garrett expressed the opinion that we still needed to address the problem of getting people from both the biological and materials science community to attend meetings and workshops and if we always went strictly with students we risked losing some vendors if we didn’t eventually have events that attract actual users which could potentially increase TSM membership.  He further made the point that such workshops as held today are a draw on funds as no money came in but we incurred the expenses of hosting them for the afternoon.  Jodi suggested that we ask the vendors for support and that we needed to look into our non-profit status as Raytheon would not give us a grant of $1500.00 since we were not listed on two not-for-profit data bases one of which was Cyber Grants. Bob stated that the IRS filling requirements for non-profit organizations had recently changed which might be the problem.  Alice said that she would look into the matter.  In the end it was decided that we first needed to nail down a meeting location and then pursue school affiliations for the workshop.

 Membership:  Members discussed the need to expand the society’s efforts at increasing membership but that it was hard to do since, as pointed out by Jodi, most people these days only went to meetings which gave their research maximum exposure.  Ann Ellis stated that she only got support for one meeting a year and she spent that on M&M not TSM.  Robert Champaign suggested that the suggested newsletter might be helpful in spreading the word about the society and in the recruitment of speakers for meetings

 Future Elections:  Jodi asked how difficult it would be to conduct elections via the website.  She noted that this election had a very low return rate for ballots.  Becky stated that it could be done on the website but she would have to check the software required for that to be accomplished. Bob stated that it may take a year or two to implement as changing bylaws takes time especially withholding only one meeting a year.  He stated that he would inform members as to how to proceed to make the necessary changes.

 Journal Editor & Newsletter: Jodi pointed out that Camelia will not be able to simultaneously serve as both journal editor and society president and that Camelia had served as journal editor for a very long time and is need of a well deserved break.  Ann Ellis and Michael Pendleton volunteered to be co-editors of the journal.  The idea of going to an on-line version of the journal was discussed and it was decided that corporate member input would be needed before any decision along those lines was made.  Ann Ellis proposed including a series on the history of the society in upcoming issues of the journal.  David Garrett mentioned that it was important to have a template for abstract submission both on the website and in mail outs to insure proper formatting for both the journal and to make producing the program easier.  Jodi brought up the topic of the proposed electronic newsletter.  She stated that it was important to establish an electronic newsletter because with only one meeting a year we needed a way to keep in contact with members so they would not forget about the society.  Nabarun Ghosh volunteered to take the lead on the electronic newsletter. He said that he will seek technical help from people at West Texas A&M in setting up and sending out the newsletter. 

 Becky Holdford made a motion to adjourn, seconded by Alice Stacy and unanimously passed at9:16 pm.

 ___________________________

Minutes respectively submitted by:

Bob Droleskey, Secretary