Minutes of the Business Meeting
Held on June 21, 2001, Donnelly Biological Sciences Learning Center, University of Chicago

Robert C. Hodson

The Annual Business Meeting was called to order by Ruthanne Pitkin at 5:20 PM. She welcomed everyone and noted that this meeting gives members a chance to see people who work behind the scenes all during the year.

1. Approval of Agenda of the 2001 Annual Business Meeting
A motion to approve the agenda of the 2001 Annual Business Meeting was moved, seconded, and approved by voice vote.

2. Approval of Minutes of the 2000 Annual Business Meeting
A motion to approve the minutes of the 2000 Annual Business Meeting at

Clemson University was moved, seconded, and approved by voice vote. It was noted that the minutes have been available on the society website since last fall.

3. Announcements
Roz Potter stated she enjoyed having the meeting at Chicago, and after some good natured ribbing denied trying to encourage others to be hosts. She gave some statistics: 170 participated, 50 are new members, 12 are non-members, the balance are renewing and returning participants. Two are from Turkey, a first, and were warmly welcomed. There were 24 major workshops in 2.5 days and 17 mini workshops. She described arrangements for the annual banquet at the Chicago Field Museum.

4. Reports from Officers and Committee Chairs

4.1 President’s Report (Ruthanne Pitkin)
President Pitkin reflected on activities and events of the past year.

• She thanked Board members and Committee chairs for cheerful and prompt contributions, and noted that much ABLE business is done online which has really helped everyone keep in touch.
• Maggie Haag and other Members-at-Large drafted four motions assigning duties to Members-at-Large which has helped keep things going and was much appreciated.
• The Scholarship Committee has become the Grants-in-Aid Committee whose responsibilities include Lab Initiative Grants and Tuition Waiver Program.
• All mini-workshops were on Friday afternoon at Clemson and were evaluated just like major workshops because they are being published.
• We had the first balloting online thanks to the efforts of Corey Goldman, Doreen Schroeder, and Todd Nickle.
• President Pitkin has been trying make sure we have people lined up for posts for the next two years and that something is going on for the 25^th anniversary at UNLV in 2003.
• Job Descriptions were updated and will be a continuous effort.
• President Pitkin invited others to participate in an opportunity to bring the ABLE message to ERBL, the Educational Roundtable Brown Bag Lunch, meeting monthly in Washington, D.C. and make links with other represented organizations. She noted that ABLE is highly respected by them.
• Finally, President Pitkin invited members to think of how they can help the organization.

4.3 Second Vice-President’s Report (Roz Potter, 2001 Conference Host)
Roz Potter stated that she had already given her report in the Announcements.

4.4 Treasurer’s Report (Alex Motten)
Treasurer Motten reported on ABLE’s checking account balance, reserve CD’s, and total assets, as well as last year’s cash inflow and expenditures. There was increased activity in the CD’s from redemptions and purchases to add cash to the checking account and spread out CD maturity dates to correspond to periods when there are more expenses and to get more favorable interest rates. He stated that the Association is still in good financial health although there has been a 16% decrease in total assets compared to last year due to a 38% smaller total of earnings and income and a 28% larger total of expenditures. The larger expenditures are due almost entirely to unexpected costs in excess of income associated with the Conference 2000 at Clemson and anticipated, additional expenses associated with holding Conference 2001 in an urban setting at the University of Chicago. He advised that it is important for the conference to break even, i.e. for the funds received from registration fees, institutional support, and corporate sponsors to fully cover conference costs.

President Pitkin thanked Bob Kosinski and Alex Motten for their hard work.

4.5 Membership Committee Report (Alex Motten for Denise Martin, Chairperson)
ABLE has a healthy membership of 423 members including 85 new members. Canadians constitute 11% of the membership, and Sweden, West Indies, Puerto Rico, and Turkey are also represented. There were 145 members not renewing.

Membership expenses were presented.

The following membership highlights were reported:

• Renewal notices were sent via e-mail in late July. A second notice will be sent this fall.
• New members tend to join throughout the year, mostly via the website. Most Proceedings’ orders also come via the website.
• The membership directory was mailed to all members in March and is included in the new member packet.
• There was increased communication with the membership via e-mail.

It was reported that a recommendation to make the Membership Directory available on the society website rather than mailing paper copies to members was passed by the Board. Hard copies may still be obtained by request, and members without e-mail addresses will receive hard copies routinely.

The Board reconfirmed that the e-mail list will not be made available for any purpose other than official society business.

4.6 Nominations Committee Report (Kathy Wiley-Schwab for Donna Bozzone, Chairperson)
The first electronic voting procedure was a good experience with a lot more votes cast. Based on 187 total votes, Alex Motten was elected to a second term as treasurer, and Ruth Beattie was elected to a position of Member-at-Large. Special thanks were given to Todd Nickles who developed an on-line voting system that could be linked to the ABLE website, to Doreen Schroeder who put candidate information into Labstracts, and to Corey Goldman who provided ideas and maintains the website.

4.7 Major Workshops Committee Report (Sue Karcher for Jim Bader, Chairperson)
There were 24 proposals compared to 28 last year; 22 were accepted, 3 were added from the host institution, and there was 1 cancellation. The proposal acceptance criteria were (1) breadth of coverage, (2) duplication, and (3) logistics. It was noted that solicitation of proposals remains a major area of concern and there is too much reliance on the host institution for a significant number of workshops. This year proposals are due November 15. Incentives were noted: one meeting registration fee is waived per workshop, and there is a $300 honorarium per workshop.

4.8 Mini Workshops Committee Report (Sue Karcher for Catherine Ketter, Chairperson)
This year 23 proposals were submitted and 17 were given: 7 were for 60 minutes and 10 for 30 minutes. There is an increasing number of presenters requesting computers and associated software. Next year mini-workshops will continue the new format of clustering on Friday afternoon. The proposal submission deadline is February 10, 2002 and they will be considered when received. New this year is that one-half of the registration fee will be waived for one presenter per workshop.

4.9 Proceedings Committee Report (Sue Karcher, Editor)
Sue Karcher’s report described Volume 22 in which all workshops --- 18 major and 19 mini --- are reported. The volume has 512 pages and costs $13.60 including shipping. She said that volumes 17 and 18 are out of print and will go on the website as PDF (portable document format) files. She thanked all of the authors and turned the editorship over to Mike O’Donnell who will be editor for volume 23 of 2002. The membership was encouraged to help and contact Mike. Sue is thanked for a job well done.

4.10 Communications Committee (Labstracts) Report (Doreen Schroeder, Editor)
Doreen Schroeder reported that this is the first year both issues were published electronically. The Fall 2000 issue was published in early November and the Winter 2001 issue was published in early March. Also it is the first year that results of the Lab Initiative grant was published in Labstracts: "Freshwater Sponges as Indicators of Water Pollution: An Investigative Lab" by Malcolm Hill and April Hill. Finally, it was the first time that on-line voting via Labstracts was used in an election.

Doreen described three goals for this year.

• Modify the format of the opening page of Labstracts to provide more information about each article.
• Begin to take advantage of the web-based format by using images and hyperlinks where appropriate in the articles.
• Ensure that there were several articles in each issue that were not directly related to the business of running the organization.

Her goals for publishing year 2001-2002 are to increase the number of images associated with articles and to keep at least several articles in each issue that are directly related to biology laboratory education. A new task requested by the Board is to make a trifold brochure about ABLE that can be handed out at meetings to advertise the society. She thanked Cory Goldman (website editor) and Ed Andrews (past Labstracts editor) for their help, and made a plea for contributions.

A motion was made (Kathy Nolan) that "Labstracts be made freely available on the ABLE website", and the word "freely" was defined (Bob Kosinski) as not requiring a user name or password. Anna Wilson argued that since the electronic form doesn’t cost the society postage it should be free of charge, and many members stated that they don’t know their password and needing it is a deterrent from reading Labstracts. The motion was seconded and passed by hand vote.

4.11 Regional Workshops Committee Report (Ruth Beattie)
No report.

4.12 Grants-in-Aid Committee Report (Ruthanne Pitkin for retired Nancy Goodyear)
The committee has two responsibilities: (1) Waivers of Registration, and (2) Lab Initiative Grants.

Waiver of Registration is designed for people starting their teaching career. There were 6 applications and 1 was awarded. Ruthanne reminded the members that up to 10 awards can be made each year.

This year there were only 6 Lab Initiative grant applications and none were awarded because of not following guidelines carefully. Members were reminded that each grant may be up to $2000, with the amount being flexible depending on number and budget size of requests. A request was made for each member to print the grant guidelines and give copies to colleagues as a way of encouraging applications.

4.13 Web Site Committee (Corey Goldman, Chairperson)
Corey Goldman noted that the web site dates back to 1995. He invited feedback on it and then presented its organization. It was noted that the Bulletin Board is little used for dialog. There are more than 40 full text articles (PDF format). It was mentioned by members that some of the articles included answers to questions and students have learned this and copied from them. One suggested remedy was to put questions and answers into an appendix which is mailed rather than posted on the Web.

5. Old Business

5.1 25^th Anniversary (Anna Wilson, Archivist and co-chairperson with Jon Glase and Ruthanne Pitkin)
Anna Wilson presented some ideas for the celebration at UNLV in 2003.

• An ABLE pin
• An ABLE history and memories book with pictures of workshops and meeting attendees for each year
• Inviting statements about memories
• Video showing past events, to be available also for showing at other meetings

She said the committee is still open to other ideas.

5.2 Solicitations for Workshops and Presenter’s Guidelines (Ruthanne Pitkin)
Corey Goldman first put these documents together for the society website, and Judy Morgan did a lot of work for the first Host Guidelines.

Bill Glider reported that a meeting was held the previous Tuesday (June 19) to revise the documents, and a draft proposal was prepared which will be posted on the Web. There are two parts.

(1) Guidelines for Proposals. This will have an application form, a place to state the target level of student (introductory, intermediate), and category. It will be stated that "tested" means testing several times at the author’s institution, not for the first time at an ABLE meeting.

(2) Guidelines for Presenters. This will be for presenters whose proposed workshop has been accepted.

Bill echoed the plea made earlier for help in getting more major workshops submitted.

Ruthanne suggested that the website have a check sheet for presenters.

5.3 Hosting Guidelines
Incoming President Maggie Haag will revise the Host Guidelines.

5.4 Group Picture
Ruthanne Pitkin reported that the Board considered a motion and will have group pictures taken indefinitely.

6. New Business

6.1 Future Meeting Hosts

Future meeting sites were announced. They are:

• 2002 – LSU, June 11-15 (Bill Wischusen, Ann Jolisaint)
• 2003 UNLV, Roberta Williams
• 2004 Bowling Green, Charlene Waggoner

6.2 Digital Imaging Lab Website
Mrinal Das described Bio-DiTRL, a Digital Teaching Resources Library for Biology and invited ABLE members to be users and contributors.

6.3 Mini Workshops
It was noted that acceptances are on a rolling basis because some presenters need to be notified early to get funding.

6.4 On-line Membership Directory
There was more discussion of the Membership Directory. It will be password protected. A hard copy can be requested. It will have more information, e.g. when ones membership was last paid. Denise Martin wants to do it. There was considerable discussion of how to make it easy for members to retrieve a forgotten password, and these ideas will be considered.

6.5 New Brochure
This was already presented earlier.

6.6 Positions Open Next Year
Positions open next year are: Secretary, Member-at-Large (4-year position), and President-Elect.

6.7 Vendors
Kathy Nolan offered to work on getting vendors for future meetings. They were recognized as having an important role in providing refreshments, briefcases, and other things that enhance the meeting. The idea was deemed valid, and it was suggested that a list of potential vendors be constructed.

A motion to adjourn was made, seconded, and carried by voice vote. The meeting was adjourned at 6:51 PM.

Respectfully submitted,
Robert C. Hodson, Secretary