RPC Meeting Minutes
January 6, 2015
Present: Kirstin Dougan (standing in as chair, minutes), Tim Cole, Henry Hebert, Beth Namachchivaya,
Dan Tracy
1. News and announcements
None
2. Updates
a. RPC Applications (all): Atoma reports that we have spent $8730 of our budget to date, but
we were unclear whether this includes the recent $5k request from Hensley, as we believe
this was approved via email in November. Has this been finalized and Merinda notified?
b. Brown bag presentations (Kirstin): Kirstin contacted grant recipients from the past two years
who had not presented at a research showcase and now has participants for the February,
March, and April brownbags. There will likely not be a January brownbag (which would be
next week) because there have been no volunteers. She’ll put another open call in a few
weeks to try to fill the May slots.
c. Research showcase (Dan): The event was well attended and went smoothly. The new
locations were successful and everything that can be deposited in IDEALS is there. Not all of
the budgeted $ was spent because of last minute catering changes. Dan proposed using the
remaining funds to purchase new poster backing because the current ones are in poor
condition. There was general agreement on this, but it’s unclear whether we need to vote
on it.
3. Discussion/Summary
a. RPC AP survey: presentation to an upcoming faculty meeting (All):
i. It was agreed that Atoma should ask Jennifer if she’d be willing to present on
the survey at an upcoming faculty meeting and ask Jim Hahn for a spot on an
agenda. If Jennifer does not wish to, one or more of the members who were on
RPC last year could present
ii. Atoma should post the final survey results on the RPC website and make sure
that all language on our site and forms is up to date regarding AP eligibility for
awards.
b. Should RPC pay authors to do their own work? (All)
c. To what extent should RPC fund book manuscript preparation? (All)
For both of these items it was felt that RPC needs policy language that should be distributed
before a meeting for comment and then voted upon once we’ve agreed upon wording.
Here is a very rough draft based on what we discussed:
Library graduate assistants and graduate hourly employees can be paid on RPC funds to
conduct research—including gathering information for lit reviews, collecting, analyzing, and
summarizing data etc. However, they cannot be paid on RPC funds for time authoring a
work if they are to be credited as a co-author.
We didn’t talk about library staff members, but we may need to include language about
them as well.
Regarding awarding of RPC funds for book manuscript preparation, in general, RPC will not
award funds for work, such as indexing, that could be done by the publisher and charged
against royalties.
4. Other
a. Posting of minutes—it appears that the minutes are not up to date in the RPC G:/ drive.
We also should be posting redacted versions on the RPC website, which appears to be
behind as well.
b. The RPC website in general needs a review to make sure all information is up to date—
Atoma could double check with Jennifer to see whether all edits from last year’s review
were made.