The ABLE annual General Business Meeting was held at the University
of Nevada Las Vegas in White Hall Auditorium.
The meeting was called to order by President Maggie Haag
at 5:12 PM. Roberta Williams gave the audience some
announcements and pointers for the forthcoming banquet and Saturday
fieldtrips, spiced with her special sense of humor, and then we got
down to business. Maggie noted that minutes and committee reports are
in the workshop binders where details may be found.
1.0 Approval of Agenda of the 2003 Annual Business Meeting
There was one addition to the agenda: item 3.15 became a report on regional
workshops by Ruth Beattie. Therefore the former 3.15
became 3.16, a report from the 25th anniversary committee.
A motion to approve the amended Agenda was moved and seconded.
2.0 Approval of Minutes of the 2002 Annual Business Meeting
(two parts)
There were two sessions. The first session was the standard annual meeting.
The second session was for brainstorming issues important to ABLE. A
motion for approval was moved and seconded.
3.0 Reports from Officers and Committee Chairs
3.1 President’s Report (Maggie Haag)
Maggie noted the renewed energy felt by ABLE members after the brainstorming
session of last year’s General Meeting Part II. The session produced
many strategies for society renewal and several were subsequently worked
on over the year. However there are still concerns, particularly with
declining membership and the difficulty of finding volunteers to give
major workshops. The following items were noted.
• ABLE is establishing associations or partnerships with various
organizations.
o We are particularly proud of the partnership established with BEN
through the efforts of Carol Budd.
o There is a good possibility of establishing a partnership with NABT.
Contact initiated by Ruthanne Pitkin will be pursued.
o The partnership with BEN is leading to a possible association with
the American Society for Microbiology.
o A relationship with McGraw-Hill may be developing.
o Similarly a relationship with Cell Biology Education may be forthcoming.
• Doreen Schroeder’s excellent ABLE brochure,
sent to members as a PDF file, will be updated with a membership form
and reference to partnerships.
• The Membership Directory established by Rudi Berkelhamer
has been very helpful in aiding communications.
• Diva Kathy Schwab is leaving the post of Member-at-Large.
• The online voting form created by Todd Nickle,
now in its second year, has been very successful at increasing the number
of members voting for board and committee positions and conducting non-binding
plebiscites. The position of Elections Officer, now help by Todd, has
been added to the Board of Directors.
• Host institutions for several future workshops have been firmed
up. This will aid membership drives and finding presenters for major
workshops.
• There is some turnover in board and committee positions. This
includes Carol Budd replacing Maggie Haag as president,
and Mariëlle Hoefnagels replacing Doreen
Schroeder as Labstracts editor.
Maggie thanked everyone for being such good role models in the society
and profession, and commented that the true value of the society is
attending the annual meeting for the friendships, learning, collegiality,
and vitality that ensues. To promote new members attending meetings,
the registration waivers were noted and a welcoming breakfast on Wednesday
is being instituted.
3.2 1st Vice-President’s Report (Bill Wischusen)
Bill could not be present. Maggie noted that Bill and co-host Ann
Jolissaint provided a fabulous venue for the meeting and thanked
them for their hard work.
3.3 2nd Vice-President’s Report (Roberta Williams)
No report.
3.4 Treasurer’s Report (Alec Motten)
Alec reported a healthy financial status with total assets of $39,747.63,
down (only) 9.5% from last year. The major reasons for the decline are
a shrinking membership and an unusual expense for a booth at the national
NABT meeting as part of an effort to help recruit new members. This
decline was offset somewhat by a surprise and gratefully received reimbursement
from the University of Chicago. There were no cost overruns for the
LSU meeting, and in fact there was a small income. Honoraria are always
a major expense for the society. Certificates of Deposit are conservatively
invested and there was a small value increase of $400 in defiance of
the national trend! Major investment houses should take lessons from
ABLE! No CD’s were redeemed into the checking account this year.
Two areas received special mention. LSU did a marvelous job getting
expenses to us. Mike O’Donnell’s super
efforts are reducing the cost of publishing the Proceedings, by $975
for volume 23 and by $855 (expected) for volume 24.
3.5 Membership Committee’s Report (Maggie for Rudi Berkelhamer)
Rudi was appreciated for getting electronic membership records up and
going this year and for two subsequent updates. She is also keeping
up with correcting stale addresses.
The remainder of the report mulled over the declining membership. The
decline from last year is nearly 20% (386 to 312) and roughly 35% from
a high in the early 1990’s of about 500. The drop is mostly due
to fewer new members; the number of non-renewals is essentially constant
(and therefore a larger percentage of the total membership each year).
Reasons mentioned for the decline include:
• Not being able to couple membership dues payment with registration
fee collection at the last yearly meeting.
• Some retirements.
• Competition from other major societies who are moving into science
education.
A plea was made for members to be proactive and aggressive at recruitment.
We need to point out to potential members:
• Existence of meeting registration fee waivers.
• One-half registration fee for graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows.
• Enactment at the Board of Directors meeting at this conference
of a two-tier membership dues for graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows in which the first year is reduced to $15.
The Board rejected an idea to increase dues and prefers to recruit more
new members. A survey of former members who have not renewed, to be
conducted perhaps this fall, may provide some useful clues.
3.6 Nomination Committee’s Report (Bill Glider)
Alec Motten ran uncontested for Treasurer. Three nominations
were received for Member-at-Large and Ann Lumsden was
elected. The election process, from the combined efforts of Todd
Nickle (online form), Rudi Berkelhamer (membership
list), and Doreen Schroeder (biographies in Labstracts),
attracted 56% of the membership to vote.
This is considered to be an excellent response.
A non-binding plebiscite asked 6 questions. About 170 responses were
received.
Majority positions of those responding were as follows:
• YES – to the current model of major and mini workshops
meeting member needs
• NO – to agreeing to have e-mail addresses released directly
to other professional societies with no restrictions
• YES – to agreeing to have e-mail addresses released directly
to other professional societies if there is a formal partnership with
the society
• YES – to preferring to have the ABLE Board screen requests
for postings to membership such as meetings of other societies
• YES – to having more mini workshops offered at the annual
conference.
About equal yes and no votes were received on the question of having
more major workshops offered at the annual conference.
Upcoming openings are for:
President-elect: 2004-2005
Secretary: 2004-2006
Member-at-Large: 2004-2008
Encouragement was given to volunteering or accepting a nomination for
a position especially to those who have not previously served.
3.7 Major Workshop Committee’s Report (Ann Cordon, co-chairperson)
This is the 25th anniversary meeting of ABLE and some changes were made
in the workshops. There was disappointment in the low number of major
workshops submitted for consideration. Of the 17 major workshops offered,
9 were specially invited repeats from past years and only 8 were new.
The committee made some minor changes to the categories. Two-hour labs
were invited to support those institutions that have a 2-hr block for
laboratory work. New approaches were invited such as applying the PBL
format of lecture to a laboratory setting, and labs that focus on the
process of developing investigative labs. Some beta testing, rather
than the traditional presentation of all well-tested activities, was
accepted. The committee would like feedback on these changes.
There were apparently 2 workshop electronic submissions that were not
received. To avoid this disheartening event, future electronic submissions
should be followed by paper versions.
Why some proposed workshops may not be accepted was discussed. Usually
this is because the workshop does not fit the desired balance of topic
areas, or because technical requirements cannot be met at the host institution.
With the future in mind some ideas and initiatives of the committee
were presented.
• Set up regional contact networks to identify potential major
workshop presenters.
• Conduct a survey to learn about trends in biology laboratory
education at member’s institutions. This was done at this meeting.
• Strengthen workshop evaluation by having each attendee review
1 of the 4 workshops they attend. [Scheduling will confine major workshops
to Wednesday and Thursday, mini workshops to Friday.] The review form
will be more extensive than in the past. This will be implemented next
year.
3.8 Mini Workshop Committee’s Report (Tom Fogel for Catherine
Ketter)
3.9 Poster Session Report (Tom Fogel)
Mini workshops and posters have captured the entire attention of Friday.
This will open up more opportunities for “wet labs” because
host personnel are not distracted by major workshops that day. More
variety of offerings will be solicited. Members were encouraged to indicate
topics of interest on the survey distributed at the meeting and on a
subsequent survey being planned for distribution in the fall. Members
were also encouraged to take advantage of the poster format.
3.10 Proceedings Editor’s Report (Mike O’Donnell)
We were reminded that the format now includes expanded mini workshop
and poster presentations. Authors are encouraged to expand the abstracts
for these reports to provide more information.
Volume 24, based on the 2002 meeting at Louisiana State University,
has articles for 15 major workshops. Two major workshop authors did
not produce written reports and their abstracts were placed in an appendix.
Appendices also have 18 expanded mini workshop reports and 7 abstract-only
reports for mini workshops. Because space-saving measures have been
implemented, readers who want original formatting such as student answer
sheets or data tables are encouraged to contact the original author/s.
3.11 Labstracts Editor’s Report (Doreen Schroeder)
Two issues were published, October 2002 and March 2003. Corey
Goldman was thanked for publishing it online and authors were
thanked for their contributions. The ABLE society brochure is being
updated again this summer (see President’s report, item 3.1).
Doreen is stepping down, with many thanks going her way, and Mariëlle
Hoefnagels is the new editor.
3.12 Grants-in-Aid Committee’s Report (Kathy Schwab)
There were no applications for fee waivers. These are intended to help
new academic staff, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff
persons from community colleges attend the annual meeting. Two laboratory
teaching initiative grant applications are under review and notifications
will be sent out at the end of June.
3.13 ABLE Website Report (Corey Goldman)
There was a lot of updating and new material added to the website. With
the inclusion of Volumes 17 and 18 online, there are now 74 workshops
available electronically. These postings followed the policy that a
Proceedings volume will be made available electronically when the printed
copy stockpile is down to 20.
Members were invited to send digital images with captions and suggestions
for links to other websites to Corey for posting.
3.14 BEN Partnership (Carol Budd)
BEN, the Bioscience Education Network, is a collaborative project initiated
by 11 professional societies to have AAAS set up a portal website for
educational materials in the biological sciences. Carol attended a 3-day
conference in Washington DC and has engineered inclusion of ABLE as
a member organization of BEN. She is setting up an Ad Hoc committee
to work on issues pertaining to the developing partnership with BEN
and invites interested members to join it. By the end of the summer
it is expected that the BEN website will have links to about 1000 pieces
of member material and ABLE should have a respectable 7.4% of that.
A special information session is scheduled for this ABLE conference,
and ESA’s Jason Taylor was recognized and thanked
for attending to provide technical details.
3.15 Regional Workshops (Ruth Beattie)
Hosting of a regional workshop was invited. These are normally held
over a weekend and consist of four major workshops chosen from those
given at the previous national meeting plus some other activities.
3.16 25th Anniversary (Maggie Haag for Ann Wilson)
Committee membership was thanked for assembling an excellent presentation
to be given at the banquet.
4.0 Other Business
4.1 Follow-up from 2002 – Directions for the Future
Malcolm Campbell presented another opportunity for
a partnership. Malcolm is editor of a free online journal called Cell
Biology Education which covers all areas of biosciences. It publishes
articles about meetings such as this annual conference. All articles
must have an assessment component.
4.2 Hosts – 2005 and beyond
2005 – Virginia Tech – host Mary Schaeffer
2006 – Purdue University – hosts Sue Karcher
and Anna Wilson
2007 – University of Kentucky – host Ruth Beattie
5.0 ABLE 2004 – Bowling Green University (host Charlene
Waggoner)
The next annual meeting is in Ohio, June 8-12. A spirited preview was
given of the region, facilities at the university, and pre- and post-conference
field trips.
The meeting adjourned at 6:47 PM.
Respectfully submitted
Robert C. Hodson
Secretary
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