2010 Minutes

Board of Directors Meeting Agenda

12:30 PM March 4 2009 Robinson Whitman room, New York Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge

 

The reports of the Executive Officer, Treasurer, Program Committee, and Membership Committee will be distributed to the Board not less than one week before the meeting.  The Membership report shall contain the list of newly-selected Fellows.

 

Invited

Bernard Beins (BB)

Fred Bonato (FB)

Ruth Colwill (RuC)

Michael Brown (MB)

Robert Cook (RC)

Dana Dunn (DD)

Thomas Ghirardelli (TG)

Arnold Glass (AG)

Norine Jalbert (NJ)

Lewis Lipsitt (LL)

Nora Newcombe (NN)

Alice Powers (AP)  

Wade Pickren (WP)

Kurt Salzinger (KS)

Sherry Serdikoff (SS)

Susan Krauss Whitbourne (SW)

Thomas Zentall (TZ)

 

Andrew Delamater (AD)

Rachel Barr (RB)

Vincent Prohaska (VP)

Susan Nolan (SN)

 

1.  12:00 PM Delicious Buffet Lunch

 

2.   12:30 PM Call to Order  

 

3.  Election Committee Report.

New members introduced

 

4.  Discussion of Membership Report

RuC: Here is the list of fellow nominations nominated by founding fellows.  I also put recent EPA Presidents on the list.  Some of the people nominated have not been members of EPA recently.  We could either only make members fellows or invite non-members to join as Fellows.

FB: Most who respond negatively no longer live on the East Coast.  However, not all respond.

MB:  Probably former members would respond.

RuC:  Should we pay the dues of fellows for one year?

SW:   You can’t be a fellow of an organization you are not a member of.

 

Motion by KS, seconded by SW: The Membership Committee shall be chaired by the President-Elect, and contain additional first, second, and third year members of the Board of Directors.

Unanimous

 

5.  Discussion of EPA Graduate Student Association Report

NJ:  Should the Program chair of EPAGS have seat on Board of Directors?  What kind of programming are they thinking of?

SN:  They did a lot of work creating by-laws.  They are looking to create a space for meeting prominent psychologists and having a prize for the best presentation by a graduate student.

AD:  If there are awards then there must be judges. 

SN:   Also, other graduate student organizations allow undergraduates to join, so EPAGS is planning to permit it also.

NJ:  Will EPAGS be collecting money on their own?

SN:  No.  But they plan to fund themselves through a small fee for undergraduates.

They may let all undergraduate and BA non-graduate students be members of EPAGS.  Everyone would pay $5?

AP:  Will students sign up if they have to pay extra?

TZ:  $5 is nominal amount.

NJ:  We may have to subsidize this to get it started.  Graduate students don’t know what they are getting for their money because there is no program yet.

TG:  Part of the motivation was to nurture the feelings of graduate students who are interested in EPA.

NJ:  Maybe we could have an EPAGS check off for membership.  If we know how much revenue they are contributing then we know what to give back. 

RB:  Maybe if we empowered graduate students they would contribute to registration.

SN, KS: Graduate Students will automatically become EPAGS members and non-graduate student BA& undergraduates can join.  We are going to add questions to the application to identify members and potential members.  EPAGS can provide hosts for invited speakers, and organize the meet and greet with speakers.

NJ: How many automatic members will participate?

TG:  A core group may participate.

RuC:  Why don’t we have graduate student host for each speaker?

SS:  It is important for EPAGS to have contact with Program Committee. 

I think it would be good to have an EPAGS member on the Committee who would coordinate with other areas. 

 

 

6.  Discussion of Program Committee’s Report

SS: This year’s Program Committee made some innovations in the submission system and the program.  We made the President’s events plenary.  We included an Other category in the submission system.  Other submissions were placed in Contemporary category.  This year, submitters had an opportunity to review their submissions and make changes before submitting.  We added Health psychology as a submission category because of large number of submissions in this area. 

It would be helpful to have descriptors of different areas to guide submissions. 

Reviews are delayed by shuffling submissions back and forth between areas. 

TZ:  We should list common mistakes in guidelines.

BB:  First authors do not always inform co-authors of acceptances.  Would it possible to let first authors know that they should inform all co-authors of outcome?

KS:  That is a good idea.

SS:  We need to encourage Program Committee members to organize teams that would allow us to cover new areas like Health.  Perhaps the Program Chair should deal with overflow.

KS:  Yes, Program Committee members should be able to recruit additional reviewers.  So it is not immediately necessary to add new members to the Program Committee.

SN:  We should advertise our receptivity to Health Psychology.

SS:  There were some problems.  About 100 submissions, the submitters information was not in the data base.  We eventually figured it out.  It was the result of a software bug.

For next year we should consider the I4A system for submissions.

There were quite a few people who were very upset that their submissions were not accepted.   There was an expectation that if they paid their dues then they could have submissions accepted.  More than 60 objected to their rejections. 

TZ:  Some are upset because funds depend on it.  We should try to be inclusive.

NJ:   Once the standard was don’t reject anything that isn’t really awful. 

SS:  Currently, we allow people who submit papers to indicate that they would be willing to present it as a poster.

RC:  Reverse it.  Let people op out of having paper as a poster.

SS:  We have a problem with scheduling for Sabbath observers.  Should we allow people to ask for special consideration? 

SW:  The program should go up on the website as pdf so that it is more difficult to alter.

 

Motion by SS, seconded by RuC:  Sherry Serdikoff will remain on Program Committee as ABA member for one more year.  Will nominate new member for the following year. Unanimous

 

 

7.  Discussion of Treasurer’s Report

 

NJ:  As shown, updated figures suggest that we will not lose money this year, which is good news.  I list my salary as honoraria because that is the Board’s original designation, but that will be changed to salary in future budgets because that is what it is.

New Jersey is now getting tough and we are going to have to pay student workers with deductions.  We will use our payroll service.

SW:  I am worried about the deficit and what speakers get to come.  It is unusual to pay that many speakers.  Why are people paid to give symposiums here? 

NJ:  Only thematic symposium gets paid. 

SW:  It is a big area of expenditure and it is also philosophical. 

NJ:  Rather than approving the budget now, we should wait upon our decisions about what is in it.  We can’t just write off LCDs and poster boards, we must depreciate them.  However, we did spend those dollars. 

KS:  We will still lose money for Cambridge next year?

NJ:  I put a worse case budget for loss.  We could cut it now or watch expenditures as we go forward.  We might want to get a real accountant to go over figures.  LCDs and poster boards show up as depreciation. 

KS:  We should ask people if they want the printed program mailed to them. 

SW:  I don’t think we should ask people for something that we are not going to give them.

TZ:  We could have members request that printed copies be mailed to them.

RC:  Weakness on line is no index.  If we added it, on line would be fine.

RB:  Build your own schedule is a good feature to add.

KS:  So we will improve the web version.

VP: We could poster sessions at end.

MB:  Maybe we should require an extra $10 to get a printed program.

TZ:  MPA does not invite speakers. 

NJ:  We should wait until end of meeting to vote on adjusted budget   It will reflect dues increase and compensation issues.

         

8.  Executive Officer’s (Arnold Glass) Final Comments, followed by discussion of comments and report

AG: I am satisfied at the growth of EPA.

SW:  Do we really want to spend money on speakers?

FB:  We should survey members. 

KS:  We spend less than $10,000 for speaker reimbursement.

AD:  I am in favor of current policy.

SW:  I disagree, I don’t think that you should have to pay for people. 

RuC:  Maybe they are getting money from their university.  If universities are cutting back, may be they won’t come. 

AP:  I agree with Andrew.  We couldn’t get people from England without paying.

RuC:  I make a motion to keep payments the same for the next two years. 

AG:  I will provide information.

RuC:  We should collect information.  Ask the speakers what they would have come for?

 

 

10.  New Business

 

Motion by AG  Seconded by RuC:  Motion to charge $50, payable by check in advance, for each requested correction to a submission to the Program.

No vote taken

 

Motion by LL, Seconded by KS:  Historian should be given two free nights at the EPA meeting.
Passed by voice vote.  
 
Discussion of need for Webmaster
FB:  We need a webmaster.  I have someone in mind.  
KS:  Let Fred give us a proposal.
LL:  Maybe we should have a panel evaluate what needs to be done.  
RC:  The more we can deliver from the web, the more valuable we are.  

SW:  I agree that.

 

12.  Adjournment (4 PM)

image widget
CURRENT MEMBERS START HERE