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2003 ENAR Spring Meeting — Tampa, FL Tuesday, April 1, 2003
Attendees:
President Tim Gregoire opened the meeting at 5:30 p.m. by welcoming all in attendance. Minutes from the last meeting were distributed, along with handouts for the Executive Director's report and the Treasurer's report.
Executive Director Kathy Hoskins presented a report on this meeting (Appendix B), which has had over 900 registrations, just over 200 short course registrations, and approximately 150 tutorial registrations. While the attendance figure is perhaps higher than anticipated, the registrations for short courses and tutorials are down. This could reflect the depressed economy and reduced budgets for training. Kathy noted, however, that the Tuesday evening social event (Starship cruise) has been much more popular than expected, with 240 tickets sold — perhaps an ENAR record.
2003 Program Chair Oli Schabenberger reported that this meeting is our largest ever, with 83 sessions and approximately 45 student presenters on the program.
It was announced that the 2005 Spring meeting will be in Pittsburgh, and the decision had been made at this meeting to hold the 2006 Spring meeting in Orlando.
Treasurer Ralph Kodell presented the ENAR certificates of deposit investment plan, in which four yearly CDs for $50,000 (two at Legg Mason and two at United Bank) each have staggered renewal dates (March 2004, June 2003, September 2003, and December 2003). This "ladder" approach allows ENAR quick access (within three months) to $50,000, should it be needed. The current CD rates are 1.8%, 2.75%, 1.55%, and 1.6%, respectively. The September CD will be converted from a 9 month to 12 month CD to bring all four into alignment this year. ENAR also has a lockbox account at First Union and an interest-bearing checking account (1.21%) at Alliance.
The August 2002 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) Business Meeting minutes were approved by a voice vote.
Linda Young, Chair of the Student Award Committee, announced that there were 20 awards plus the Van Ryzin Award, out of 73 papers submitted. The awardees receive $500 travel funding, free registration, and free registration to one short course. She stated that if it were possible to get more money, she would like to see the award amount increased and the name changed to make it clearer that it is a paper competition.
The appointment of Stacy Lindborg to the position of RAB Chair-Elect was announced. She is serving in this position in 2003 and then will serve as the Chair of RAB in 2004 and 2005.
IBS has implemented a dues increase for 2004 and a corresponding increase (for both IBS and ENAR) was approved by RECOM. Regular member dues will increase from $70 to $80 ($5 increase to IBS and $5 to ENAR); student member dues will increase from $20 to $25 ($3 increase to IBS and $2 to ENAR); and associate member dues will increase from $20 to $35 ($3 to IBS and $12 to ENAR). The higher increase for associate members is in anticipation of the changes that will occur as Biometrics is available electronically.
The August Joint Statistical Meeting (JSM) contract is being renegotiated among the five partner societies (ASA, ENAR, WNAR, IMS, and SSC). Tim will provide initial feedback to ASA President Bob Mason by May 1. The goal is to have the contract renegotiated by December 31, 2003. Basically, ASA wants to simplify the organizational structure and complications of organizing the meeting by becoming the managing partner (control over the management decisions), with tradeoffs to the other partners of increasing the number of allotted sessions and guaranteeing a positive fiscal return on the meeting. ENAR's share of sessions would increase from 6 to 12. We now receive a percentage of the revenues based on the proportion of attendees who are ENAR members. If the median of ENAR's share over the seven of the recent past years were used as the fixed revenue figure, ENAR would receive $9,300 each year. RECOM would rather they use a formula that can rise and fall, depending on attendance and/or relative cost of the location, to better reflect our real JSM expenses. ENAR would also like to see a cap placed on increases in registration fees. As a related topic, the International Bayesian Society would like to be a partner in the JSM. Tom Louis noted that the intent here was to become a full partner (as is ENAR), rather than some sort of limited partner. Tim indicated that he would have more to report in August.
The IBS is looking at holding some additional meetings, with a narrower theme than is usually seen at the IBCs. The Biometric Bulletin is now an electronic publication, with revived talk of one paper copy per year with an annual report for the organization, and more "newsy" articles on people, policy, current issues, etc. The general format of the electronic publication will be generally the same. Biometrics is now online (www.blackwellpublishing.com) but it is also being published in a paper version (for now). If a member's library has access, the member can access it as well. IBS is working on individual member access without the library. There is talk of reformatting Biometrics — same size, possibly different font, possibly one column.
Joan Chmiel asked how much money is saved by changing to an electronic publication. Marie Davidian reported that we don't really know yet, but it should be quite a lot. Because IBS is currently in fiscal difficulties, this move was deemed necessary.
ENAR is an affiliate society of the AAAS, and there are opportunities for more participation there. The AAAS has asked affiliate societies for support of their position paper accepting the principle of intelligent design (creationism) RECOM voted to abstain from taking such a position — neither in support nor disagreeing with the position. We have no policy on this issue; nor do we know how our members feel on this topic, and we don't have the time it would take to determine such. Peter Imrey expressed discomfort with our not taking a position on the creationism debate, in that we are a society with ties to biology. We should think more about whether to brush this off as irrelevant to ENAR. Because ENAR is an affiliate society jointly with WNAR, any response from us would also have to be coordinated with them. It would also be wise to coordinate any potential response with the ASA and IMS as well. Mary Foulkes reported that the request was only to agree to bring it up for discussion; not that we should necessarily agree with the statement. Members were expected to bring it up in a neutral way, and not be coercive to obtain support for the statement. Vickie Hertzberg added that politics is part of life, and she would hope that we might be able to collect more information related to this topic by the JSM. Because this is a hot button topic, we would not want our membership to feel like there was no opportunity to air the topic adequately. The position statement can be found on the AAAS website. Karen Bandeen-Roche is the person to whom comments from ENAR members should be sent.
The next mailing to our members should be sent in May or early June.
The ENAR membership is currently around 1900 members. This reflects a decline of several hundred members over the past few years, but attendance at meetings has been generally increasing. Younger statisticians/biostatisticians are not as inclined to become members of professional societies. Many of us view it as our professional responsibility to support the journals and our professional societies. It would be helpful if the younger potential members understood that being a member has advantages professionally
The meeting was adjourned at 6:20, in time for attendees to get to the cruise on time.
Respectfully submitted,
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