SRP 2008: Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Board

SRP Board Meeting
Sunday September 28th, 2008

Welcome new board members: Kate Harkness, Howard Berenbaum & Suzanne King.

Business from last meeting: Tom went to student social hour to ask students’ feedback regarding incorporating a session on internships/post-docs. The students were enthusiastic and preferred an informal format maybe mixed into social hour. We need to look through the list of members and see who is from internships. Kate suggested sending email asking for volunteers who would are internship directors or faculty looking for post-docs and see if they want to attend. Then program chair would set this up. Michael suggested that we consider a box lunch format. Tom liked the lunch box format this year, but wanted us to consider more of a meet and greet format. Michael noted that we should put in the local host book that each student gets a free drink at the student social hour, as that did not happen this year.

Local host report: Kate will send Michael emails of speakers for reimbursement, and will remind Smadar Levin award winners to send copy of abstract to the Levins. Kate will send Smadar Levin letter to Michael so he can send program. Michael Young reported that 279 people registered, 7 dailies, + 23 ‘shadows’ = 309. 105 registered for the banquet. Both of these are record levels of attendance. In the future, on-line registration should stop the Friday before the meeting to give the program chair enough time to get everything together. Michael Young noted that getting people to register early helped to avoid excessive on-site registrations.

New program chair: Jutta Joormann. Deb Walder, Chris Bowie, Jon Rottenberg, Ben Hankin, Kate on committee. MPG will contact Angus in regards to suggestions for invited speakers. Ask Irv Gottesman to talk to Kendler, Bob Krueger to speak with Caspi/Moffitt.

Treasurer report: In regards to one-day registrations, we need to be more explicit on website that one-day registration is for local non-members to attend meeting for just one day. People who probably wouldn’t come otherwise are those who would attend the meeting for a single day, so it is good to advertise society. Michael Pogue-Geile suggested that we consider making one day even cheaper, esp. for students (local, non-members). Jill was worried that reduce fee for local students would make it a better deal for local students than for student members. Michael Pogue-Geile suggested that maybe non-issue as not many people do it. Tom Oltmanns felt that there were more students coming to meetings, but did not feel we needed to increase student attendance because we were already getting good student attendance. The conclusion of the committee was that we were happy with it as it is with local host using discretion.

Website issue: Sheri will send email out to find someone who could be on committee. Failing that, we will think of names to approach. Michael Young suggested that we try to engage someone more junior. Zubin award issue: Jill raised the issue that many members and students do not know who Zubin was and never met him. Therefore, we need to institutionalize a mention of him at the banquet to describe why we give award, as well as a brief biography about Zubin. We will look into a biography that presidents could use and put on website. Stu Steinhauer & Ray Knight have stories that we could put on website. Jill Hooley will contact Stu about information.

Future Meetings: Minneapolis Sept 10-14; Seattle 2010; Ithaca/Boston 2011 Suzanne looked into travel and costs were identical for Boston/Ithaca & travel time identical from LA. Ann said that costs would be higher if flying from a smaller place. Michael Young noted that there would be flight problems with Ithaca because of fewer planes. We took a vote and there was 1 vote for Ithaca and 3 people were divided. The Board decided to go with straw vote at business meeting: Boston (Jill Hooley/Christine Hooker). 2012 Ann Arbor (Patty Deldin); 2013 A possibility is Chicago (Stu Shankman), but this will be revisited next year.

New Business: Suzanne mentioned that Scott forgot to mention new members at business meeting. New members should register as members & pay dues. If they don’t get voted in the treasurer will just reallocate funds to non-member registration because the two prices are equal. This should be in handbook. Jack should email members to let them know they were accepted. This initiated discussion of whether to move up voting for new members. Ann suggested that if we voted on this early then we could let them know prior to the meeting and their membership status would be clear before submitting abstracts. The consensus was that the deadline for applying for new membership was May 1 and that we would vote on-line prior to abstracts being due. Jill will consult with Jack before implementing changes. Jill will check whether we need to change by-laws.

There was discussion of developing an award for outstanding junior faculty members. The discussion centered on how to evaluate applicants: Best paper of year? Ann felt that this would be biased and that there would be too many to read. MPG suggested nominations, plus a CV and letter. Suzanne felt that this would reinforce the “old boys” network. It was decided that the award could only go to a member. Suzanne suggested that awards go to faculty rather than postdocs to give junior faculty help with tenure. Howard suggested that we send email to members who would volunteer to be on committee to test feasibility. Sheri said that she would be willing to be on committee. Scott suggested that we do no submissions, but just discussion in committee, checking of psycinfo and then just pick somebody. The board felt that this would be too much of an old boys network, but that it would avoid inappropriate nominations. Ann suggested an objective way of finding out who is eligible and ensure that all are looked at. This would be to check the SRP website for members and date of PhD to find out who is eligible. We would then hire someone to lit search of all eligible candidates. The committee would review publication lists. Jill will form a committee to look into issue. Sheri, Wendy & Suzanne volunteered to be on committee who will report to Board in spring.