Board Meeting Minutes 2015

Society for the Scientific Study of Reading


Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel
Executive Boardroom A
July 15, 2014
2:00 – 4:30 pm

Type of Meeting: Board Meeting

President: Catherine McBride

Present: Dorit Aram, Becky Chen, Penelope Collins, Don Compton, Carol Connor, Alexandra Gottardo, Young-Suk Kim, Karin Landerl, Catherine McBride, Fred Morrison, Nicole Patton-Terry, Amy Scarborough, Rebecca Treiman, Ludo Verhoeven, Lesly Wade-Woolley, Rick Wagner

  1. Call to order at 2:05
  2. Approval of minutes from 2014 Board Meeting.
  3. Welcome new board members, present and future: Young-Suk Kim, Amy Scarborough, Gary Feng
  4. Thanks to departing board members:  Becky Chen and Fred Morrison

New business:

  • Issues related to conference attendance:
    • Lesly raised the need to revisit a cancellation policy for yearly conference.  For the 2015 meeting, there was a 20% rejection rate for submissions. Of the 201 posters accepted in January, 150 presenters registered, and of those 30 presenters cancelled at the last minute. Despite follow-up emails, there was a drop in registrations and last minute cancellations.  This is particularly problematic because many submissions were rejected. The current cancellation policy is no refunds after July1. However, this does not avoid high attrition.
    • The board examined different ways of addressing registration, such as rolling registration.  In the acceptance letter, we should have a statement about when registration must take place in order to secure a spot. There is a need to revisit the rule regarding single presentations, which makes the conference more diverse and accessible. With collaborations, it may be more cost-effective for grant funded projects to send a single presenter for the related projects.
    • There was discussion about whether discussants should discussant be waived from the one presentation rule.
    • The board discussed a possible change to timelines for conference acceptance and registration. The conference committee may add a waitlist of potential presenters and have registration in multiple rounds. After the initial deadline for registration, acceptances may be offered to those on the waitlist based on available space. Alternately, posters can be over-accepted and if space requires, presenters may be invited to give their presentations as talks instead.
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  • Lesly presented the Pre-conference committee and planning
    • Young has done the preconference for last couple years, with this year’s topics being quantile regression and eye tracking. There was a drop in attendance in the statistical preconferences over the years, with students citing that they may be too advanced for their training or their lack of access to large data sets.
    • Lesly will convene a small committee to explore topics for students and poll early scholars for interests. There may be a need to have dual-leaders for each session to protect against cancellation due to flight delays or illness
    • The “Breakfast with a Researcher” is very popular among young scholars.
       
  • Amy provided the SSSR website updates, and it has really improved. Future directions include:
    • Updating the website further (estimated cost $3000) to upgrade visibility, improve template design, improve ease of navigation for registration, improve integration with social media. 
    • Searchable program that shows abstract when click on title.
    • There is a need to replace the listserv so that the updated listserv function would be integrated with the data base and easy to use.  The listserv should be available to all members of the Society.
    • It is recommended to create an app for conference program.
    • There is a need for maintenance updates. Amy will investigate options to see if annual fees include software updates.
       
  • Cammie proposed changes in the composition of the Awards Committee and Publications Committee.
    • For the Awards Committee, two appointed members should be added to the current committee of three elected members and two recent winners, increasing the membership to seven members. For the Publications Committee, membership should increase from four to seven members. These changes would involve bylaw changes, and should be voted on in fall, 2015, in conjunction with the general SSSR elections.

2014 Conference Report

  • Lesly presented the 2014 Conference Report. In 2014, 660 members paid dues and there were 460 conference registrants for a total of $164,030 in registration fees

2015 Conference update

  • Lesly presented the 2015 Conference update.  There were $168, 825 paid in registration fees.  The dinner for Friday has been sold out, with 250 expected at the conference luau.

2016 Conference update

  • Ludo presented 2016 Conference update, which will be held July 13-16 in Porto with Louis Alvarez as the local coordinator.
  • The subcommittee for the preconference are meeting with Lesly on Saturday and will also report to Ludo. They will determine preconference programming and detail what they will need in terms of facilities.

Future conference locations

  • There was discussion about where to hold future conferences.
    • Candidate locations for 2017 included Puerto Vallarta, Beijing, and Charleston. Although there was recognition that most SSSR members are from North America, there are potential merits in building and international membership by moving the conference.
    • A ballot measure will be added to the fall 2016 election about the rotation cycle for SSSR conferences, considering a year in North America, Europe and elsewhere.         

2018 Conference update

  • The Society for Text and Discourse proposed a joint conference in 2018 in Portland.

2016 Summer school update

  • Ludo provided the 2016 Summer school update. The Language Acquisition Summer School will be given in August by Perfetti, Nation, Cain, and Siegel. There were 70 applications drawn internationally for 40 positions

Report from Publications Committee

  • Nicole presented the attached report from Publications Committee.  

Report from the Editor of Scientific Studies of Reading

  • Karin presented the attached report from the Editor of Scientific Studies of Reading. Key issues include:
    • The short reports are having a higher rejection rate, but contributors may be encourage to explicitly identify that the paper is a short report in their cover letters.
    • The next special issue is on computational modeling of reading.
    • The journal is currently under page count and needs more high quality submissions. 
    • Hélène Deacon will be stepping down as associate editor, so we need to recruit a new one.
    • The contract with Taylor & Francis expires in 2017. 
    • There was approval of the new online layout for the journal. We typically receive $40-50,000 in royalties, but this year we only received $8,000. Carol inquired if more is coming, and Karin will check it out

Report from International Coordinator

  • Dorit presented the attached report from International Coordinator.
    • There has been an increase in membership in Asia, and a decrease in the UK

Report from Awards Committee

  • Rick presented the report from Awards Committee, including the possibility of a new award to a junior investigator for publication in SSR.
    • The Rebecca L. Sandak award would remain an early career award.
    • The second would be for a best paper by an early career scholar (within seven years post-PhD) in SSR.
    • The best paper by a new scholar award would be given on alternate years, and judged by the Awards committee. The first call will be for 2017, which would include a request for a rationale about why the article is meritorious. Although there may be a competitive pool, no award may be given. Editors can nominate.

Report from Nominations/ Membership Committee

  • Don presented the report from Nominations/ Membership Committee.
    • Ten members applied for voting member status, and they were all approved.
    • The board considered who to recruit to run for the upcoming election for the positions of VP-elect and board members at large.

Handbook /By-laws 

  • Fred reported for the Handbook /By-laws and expressed his gratitude to the board as he steps down from service.

Treasurer’s Report

  • Carol presented the attached Treasurer’s Report. 
  • She recommended that with $400K in savings, the board may wish to create an endowment, possibly with a firm such as TIAACREF or Fidelity. To establish an endowment, we will add a ballot measure in the fall 2015 election.  SSSR still has 990 status.
  • Carol recommended adding a position of past-treasurer (as a two-year term) to support the next treasurer.

Other business

  • Penelope reported on progress in archiving SSSR documents.
    • Don had some original documents from the early years, including early conference programs, board meeting minutes, and membership rosters.
    • They were scanned and Amy will upload them to our digital archives. 
    • We were unable to retrieve the documents from Darlene’s family.

Adjourned:  4:27 by Cammie