[Below are the minutes of our Divisional Councilor meets during the 2007 CUR Business meeting, which was held at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. The weather was great, and a good time was had by all! Some of the Geo-Councilors (and past CUR Presidents) hung on after the meeting to do a whirlwind field trip through the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York - keep your eyes peeled here for the link to the virtual field trip report!]
Minutes of Geosciences Division Meetings
Council on Undergraduate Research Business Meeting 2007
22 June 2007
Present: Jeff Ryan (Geosciences Chair), Brannon Andersen, Dave Bailey, Patrick Burkhart, Lori Bettison-Varga, John Creasy, Steve Dunn, Lydia Fox, Karen Fryer, Laura Guertin, Edward Hansen, Terry Lahm, Pat Manley, Bill Miller, Chris Oze, Jeannette Pope, Bob Shuster, Kathy Surpless, Deanna van Dijk
The first meeting commenced at 2:40 P.M.
As Division Chair Jeff Ryan began the meeting, Karen Fryer inquired as to who would serve as Division Secretary. Jeff Ryan noted that, thanks to being immersed in Constitution and Bylaws issues for two days as the Executive Board Liaison to this committee, the Division was, in fact, supposed to elect a Division Secretary, but that the Constitution does not define the term of service for the Division Secretary nor any protocols for their election. He then opened the floor to “nominations” for Division Secretary, to serve for the term of this Business Meeting (indicating that a similar “election” will occur at our Fall meeting at the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver). Lydia Fox nominated Bill Miller, and he was elected Division Secretary by acclamation.
1) Fall business meeting at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA)
• CUR-Geosciences will sponsor its usual commercial booth at this meeting, a perk of its position as an Associated Society of the GSA.
• Jeff Ryan noted that the Existing poster for the back of the booth is getting somewhat threadbare, so Lydia Fox solicited pictures of students in the field/lab that she would print on a new poster.
• Workshops to be offered:
A GSA Short Course targeting early career faculty will be cosponsored by CUR-Geosciences and the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), with facilitators Lydia Fox, Jeff Ryan, and Jill Singer (CUR) (NAGT) - Jeff Ryan will contact Karen Havholm, President of NAGT, to identify NAGT facilitators. The audience for this workshop will be faculty in their first year or two of their career, as well as postdoctoral students and graduate students seeking academic careers. To promote this and other workshops, Jeff will explore low/no cost advertising options, such as an ad in Geotimes, where the Division is a Member Society.
A Theme Session on Early Undergraduate Research Experiences will also be offered at GSA, with Laura Guertin, Linda Reinen and Jill Singer as Session Chairs.
2) American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting workshops and sessions to be offered:
The CUR-Geosciences workshop for early career faculty will be offered again at AGU, facilitated by Lydia Fox and Pat Manley. Tentative title: “How to Get Started in Undergraduate Research.” Workshops are proposed informally to the AGU Education Manager in late Summer/early Fall.
Two CUR-Geosciences sponsored sessions have been proposed for the AGU Fall Meeting:
1) International Field Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (proposed by Jeff Marshall and Jeff Ryan
2) Bringing MARGINS Science to the Classroom (proposed by Cathy Manduca, Don Reed, and Jeff Ryan; CUR-Geosciences and the NSF-MARGINS program are co-sponsors) The focus is efforts that turn scientific research results into effective classroom learning materials and practices.
3) The Division discussed the proposed organizational models for CUR presented by E-Board. Several ideas were expressed, including the need for continuity of experience for successive incarnations of CUR committees and the need for action items to be clearly and concisely written before being brought before the Council for consideration. The Geoscience Councilors as a whole concurred with many of the with E-Board recommendations. Some discussion ensued concerning the number of Councilors per division, pointing out that the CUR Constitution provides for 12 to 24 Councilors and that 24 Councilors were necessary for CUR-Geoscience Division to continue its programming activities at the current level.
Councilors also asserted that obtaining a professional staff for the National Office (NO) is more important than reorganization of the CUR National Office and that the National Office should continue working in a supportive role and not move to an overtly managerial one.
4) Nominations Committee liaison Laura Guertin presented the Nominations Committee recommendations for changing the electoral process for CUR national officers, as detailed in “Revised Action Items” handout. Most debate centered on whether multiple candidates needed to be offered for elected positions for CUR officers. Ed Hansen indicated his willingness to serve on the “vetting” group of the Nominations Committee that receives and screens names submitted as candidates for CUR officer elections.
Some Councilors wondered why the Nominations Committee itself could not perform this vetting task; and others were uncomfortable with the idea that all Divisions will not be represented on the proposed candidate-vetting group. Others suggested that the vote be taken before the CUR business meeting so that newly elected officers could attend the upcoming E-Board meeting.
5) Lydia requested Councilors review Themes and Subthemes in the CUR 2007 Meeting Book and propose workshop topics based on those themes. Proposers would be limited to a maximum of two workshops per person and proposal forms should be sent out by September 1.
6) CUR facilitators for upcoming regional GSA meetings:
NE section – Patrick Burkhart; Undergraduate Research posters now are dispersed among professional poster sessions with no decrease in participated noted, in comparison with those years that had a session devoted to Undergraduate Research.
SE section Brannon Andersen and Jeff Ryan will continue to serve as official facilitator for CUR at the next GSA Southeastern Section meeting, in Charlotte, NC. Jeff Ryan noted that the following meeting, in 2009, will be in Tampa, FL, hosted by the University of South Florida Department of Geology, and that he is the Chair of the meeting committee.
N-Central – Bob Shuster and Ed Hansen volunteered to co-coordinate the Undergraduate Research poster sessions at this meeting.
S-Central – No Councilors currently attend this meeting – Jeff Ryan will seek Member volunteers to manage the poster session. Diane Smith at Trinity University was mentioned as a possibility.
Cordilleran – Kathy Surpless offered to help with the poster session, as Bill Dinklage and Jeff Marshall, who had handled it in the past, were not in attendance. Jeff Ryan noted that the Sectional meetings can be revisited at our Fall Business Meeting in Denver.
Meeting adjourned at 3:57 P.M.
23 June 2007
Present:
Jeff Ryan (Geosciences Chair), Brannon Andersen, Lori Bettison-Varga, Patrick Burkhart, John Creasy, Steve Dunn, Lydia Fox, Karen Fryer, Laura Guertin, Edward Hansen, Terry Lahm, Pat Manley, Bill Miller, Chris Oze, Jeannette Pope, Bob Shuster, Kathy Surpless, Deanna van Dijk
Meeting commenced at 8:04 AM
CUR committee reports:
Consulting Stephen Van Horn, the Geosciences representative, was absent from this meeting; nothing to report.
Finance (Karen Fryer) CUR is in positive fiscal shape, operating with a surplus of funds. Institutional membership has increased, and the funds allocated to Divisions have been doubled, to $2,000. The Finance committee recommended that funds for Divisions now will be allowed to carry over from year to year, and the National Office is looking at how to implement this financially.
CUR fellows (Patrick Burkhart) Usually the applicant pool numbers 10-20 with approximately half of the candidates being strong contenders. The candidate pool this year is eight but most with strong credentials. Due to a large number of deserving candidates over time, Councilors discussed the notion of increasing the number of CUR-Fellows awardees, perhaps with different tiers of awards. Patrick and Brannon Andersen (a past Chair of the CUR Fellows Task Force) discussed the logistics of doing this and other issues related to CUR Fellows, with some input from other Councilors
Publications and CUR-Q (Deanna van Dijk) Committees met together for this meeting and discussed the issue on Models for Undergraduate Research in 2008; and the Committee is soliciting themes for upcoming issues. A suggestion was made by Ed Hansen for a future issue on writing research journal articles with undergraduates. Deanna also reiterated the call for nominations for CUR-Quarterly Editor which was made at the first Council Plenary.
Constitution and Bylaws (Ed Hansen) Councilors were given copies of the proposed changes to the CUR Constitution and Bylaws to reflect the new roles for the CUR Executive Board and General Council. An election with electronic voting will be held after 30 days to vote on the suggested changes. An affirmative vote requires 2/3 affirmative votes of all Councilors, not simply 2/3 of those Councilors voting in the election.
Government and External Relations (Steve Dunn; Jeff Ryan) Because he is rotating off the Council, Steve Dunn solicited a new Geoscience member for this committee and strongly promoted its objectives and effectiveness. The Committee has generated a list of suggested talking points for CUR representatives to use when discussing CUR with government officials. Three subcommittees exist to deal with the following: (1) policy and “rapid response” statements, (2) information gathering, (3) “in-reach,” focused on soliciting participation from Councilors and the general CUR membership. This Committee requested help from CUR-Geoscience Councilors in finding contacts in government helpful for the CUR mission.
Meetings (Lydia Fox, Brannon Andersen) Bids for CUR 2008-2009 would be presented to the General Council today, June 23.
Membership (Jeannette Pope/Pat Manley) - Results of the membership survey were presented. Neither assistant professors nor people of color are being retained by CUR, and strategies were being devised to address the issue, as well as improving general retention of CUR members. One idea included a reduced membership fee for retired CUR members.
Many suggestions were offered for increasing CUR-Geoscience Division membership.
• Perhaps send a periodic newsletter to CUR-G members to keep them informed of Geoscience activities and to keep open lines of communication.
• Invite CUR members to come to Geosciences Business Meeting at GSA; suggest adding something other than business at the GSA meeting (perhaps a social activity).
• Obtain commercial booth at GSA section meetings; section meetings might be the best venue (versus national GSA) to put effort ($) because more members will likely come from those meetings. Jeff said he would like to make an effort to recruit CUR members from GSA section meetings next year.
• One suggestion was to send a mailing to Geoscience departments that (1) invites faculty to join CUR, (2) lays out benefits of CUR, and (3) invites faculty to a booth/reception at GSA section meetings.
• Another suggestion was to first invite current Geoscience Members (who are not Councilors) to facilitate communication and retention in the Geoscience Division. Maybe not all section meetings would be covered this year, but to do this for a few would allow us to determine the efficacy of the effort. An activity to attract potential CUR members might include a topic for a casual discussion followed by a reception.
• One idea to aid with retention of CUR-G members and Councilors was to have a division-focused session (e.g. an afternoon) at CUR National meetings.
• Another idea included a mentoring effort of the Geoscience division for less experienced professors. This is an activity that the Division has done historically, so doing more of it may simply be a matter of getting the word out about it.
Nominations (Laura Guertin) Nominations is always looking for additional names. Currently, the Geoscience Division will need at least two or three new Councilors in the next electoral cycle. Last year some nominees were presented to the Committee who were not CUR members, and several of these did not want to join CUR but were willing to serve as a CUR Councilor.
Outreach (Kathy Surpless) The current charge is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Institutes. The Institutes have shown positive results and feedback but no formal follow-up has been conducted.
Other Items:
After her perusal of Division websites, Jeannette Pope said the quality/info on our website was “middle of the road” as regards what other Divisions are doing but could easily be improved. She recommended that we add links to our e-mail addresses, biographic sketches, and Web home pages. Another helpful piece of information would be CUR-Geoscience schedule of events, GSA/AGI affiliation information, and schedules of CUR-Geosciences activities at GSA and AGU professional meetings. Another possibility, suggested by Laura Guertin, would be to link to a CUR-Geoscience blog that would be easier to change and get information out in a timely manner. Listing of research interests for each Councilor with their e-mail addresses and an invitation to contact would be more welcoming to prospective CUR members if they have questions or an interest in their subjects.
As per the Bylaws, Division Chair Jeff Ryan opened the floor for nominations for Division Chair-Elect. Laura Guertin and Ed Hansen were nominated, and Ed Hansen declined the nomination. Laura Guertin was chosen unanimously as Geosciences Division Chair-Elect, and will succeed to Division Chair at the end of the 2008 Business Meeting.
Meeting adjourned at 9:17 A.M.
Minutes respectfully submitted by
Bill Miller
28 June 2007
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