Attendees: Tom Oltmanns, Jill Hooley, Michael Pogue-Geile, Ted Beauchaine, Shaun Eack, Jack Blanchard, Eric Granholm, Jason Shiffman, Bob Krueger, Bill Horan, Suzanne King, Kate Harkness, Howard Berenbaum, Wendy Heller, Patty Deldin, Marty Harrow, Deanna Barch, Sheri Johnson
Secretary’s report: Deanna reported that the new website was working well. The new President-Elect is LeeAnna Clark, the new Secretary-elect is Sheri Johnson, and the two new board members are Bob Krueger and Diego Pizzagalli
Treasurer’s Report: We had considerable discussion about the fact that we are considerably over budget this year for the conference, pending onsite registrations. This seems to reflect several factors, including a failure to account for taxes and surcharges (~$10,000), and somewhat lower registrations. Suzanne King will meet with the local hosts for both Boston (2011) and Ann Arbor (2012) to ensure a clear budgeting plan and to develop clear meeting guidelines. There was also a suggestion to focus on getting speakers who are relatively local to the meeting sites to reduce travel costs. In addition, there was a discussion of whether we want to raise registration fees, at least for full members (there was general consensus to try to keep costs down for students). Bob Krueger suggested considering the possibility of doing things like starting a journal to increase SRP income.
Suzanne asked permission to hire someone to put together an Access database to help her have a better way of downloading PayPal reports and reconcile them with membership lists, dues payments, etc.. The board agreed.
Suzanne discussed the difficulty of tracking membership. We decided to do the following:
• Generate a list of people who have paid dues in the last five years. Delete anyone who has not paid dues in the last five years (Suzanne or a student will do this)
• Use that list to clean the online membership list
• Going forward, will generate an Access database of dues payments Every January Suzanne will generate a report of who needs to be deleted from the membership list, and which associate members should be invited to become full members.
• We will add a field to the membership database that tracks the year they become members.
Suzanne requested that we find a way to not have to print out paper receipts for registration payments.
Suzanne suggested that, rather than turning the responsibility of treasurer over to the in-coming treasurer at the time of the annual meeting, that the in-coming treasurer take over responsibility on the following January 1. In this way, the out-going treasurer will be able to complete the reports for the calendar year. Suzanne also suggested that, at the meeting in the year following the transition to a new treasurer, the out-going treasurer be the person to report for the preceding calendar year.
Suzanne also presented the following issues:
• Activities 2009-2010
o Preparing SRP Treasurer’s guide for perpetuity
o Purchased Quicken to manage Chase accounts and monitor Fidelity investments
o Set up automatic payments for internet and web site
• Goals for 2010-2011
o Facilitate the merging of PayPal and member spread sheets
o Hire someone to prepare an Access database?
o Prepare a template for reporting meeting budgets to standardize from year to year
o Better follow-up on membership and dues
• Proposals
o E-mail receipts, or do away with receipts altogether. The board agreed to email receipts
o Propose that applicants for membership DO NOT pay member rate until the following year – treasurer cannot know membership status, and application could be refused. The board agreed that this should be put forth as a by-laws change.
o Proposal: Official switch of treasurer should happen January 1 in a kind of “Treasurer-Elect” format – out-going treasurer should present report for previous year’s meeting and annual calendar year report at the annual meeting. The board agreed that this should be put forth as a by-laws change.
o American Express payments: We pay $8/month for the privilege (~$100/yr). There was only 1 AmEx payment in 2010, a “write in” on registration form. The board agreed to eliminate American Express Payments
Membership Report: Jack Blanchard reported a large increase in membership applications this year (27 full members, 9 associate members). We voted to approve the membership applications. Jack will be resigning as membership chair as he will be program chair for the 2011 meeting. We need to appointment a new membership chair, and Tom will raise this at the members meeting.
Early Career Award Committee Report: Sheri Johnson reported for Wendy Heller, and Michael Pogue-Geile and herself as the committee members. They received seven applications. All of the applicants were quite good, though there was some variability in terms of how far along they were. The winner was S. Alexandra Burt. They worked hard to make sure that the feedback to the people who did not win still received positive feedback. We decided to allow people to continue to apply any time up to 9 years, but now include language that informs applicants that they are unlikely to be competitive if they apply prior to four years post doctoral-degree. Tom Kwapil was appointed the new committee chair and Wendy Heller agreed to remain to provide continuity. Tom Kwapil will appoint a third member.
Local Host Committee Report: Ted noted that he had modeled the budget after San Diego and they had believed it was on target, but had not planned for the tax and gratuity fees.
Program Committee: Bob Krueger thanked the program committee. Jack Blanchard will be the program chair for the 2011 meeting. Lee Anna Clark will pick the program chair for the 2012 meeting.
Financial Investments Report: Marty reported that we are up about 20% since last year. Overall, since we first began, we are up 10-15%, despite the worst decline in the last 80 years in the market in 2007.
Publications Committee: Jason Shiffman has been spearheading getting students to interview senior SRP members and to write up the interviews and they will have passed out at the meeting. Deborah Walder is the co-leader of the publications committee. We will also send it out electronically.
Sustained Mentorship Award: We approved this new annual award, with a deadline of January 2011. Kate Harkness will chair the committee and will appoint two additional members in consultation with the Executive Board.
Pharmaceutical grants and CE credit issues: Tom Oltmanns attempted to get money from Astra-Zeneca, but they implied that it would be necessary to offer physician CEs, so Tom did not pursue it. Instead, he was able to get the Department of Psychology at Washington University to donate $2,500. Other suggestions were publishers, SPSS, SAS, etc. Patty Deldin noted that the University of Michigan has a $2,500 conference grant. Eric Granholm is going to check whether there are university resources that would allow us to do this more inexpensively. We will make a request at the members’ meeting. APA does offer CEs, but it is more expensive to have APA in charge. Suzanne suggested that we charge for the CEs, which is very common at conferences. For next year, we will charge $25 for CE credits. Patty Deldin found out that it will be $500 + $20 for each individual at the University of Michigan. Information about CE credits needs to be added to the local host handbook.
Meeting Dates: We typically meet Thursday night to Sunday morning. There was a suggestion to consider moving it to Wednesday night to Saturday morning, so that people could return home in time for family time on Sunday. There was not a ground swell of support for this idea. In addition, Kate noted that it would be good to avoid Canadian Thanksgiving in the future (this should be added to the host handbook). It was suggested that we do a survey monkey of the membership to find out if there is a preference to change the meeting dates.
Smadar Levin: There were 31 applications this year, and the quality was good. Bill Horan is the chair, and Edelyn Verona and Jennifer Tacket are the other members.
Future meetings: dates and locations:
2011 Boston (Christine Hooker) – Sept 22th –Sept 25th, 2011
2012 Ann Arbor (Patti Deldin) – Oct 11th – Oct 14th, 2012
2013 San Francisco (Ann Kring and Sheri Johnson) – Ann and Sheri confirmed that they will do it
2014 Chicago (Stu Shankman)
2015 San Diego (Bill Kremen)