MACRAO Executive Committee Minutes
September 11, 2009
Brenda Selman’s Residence
Meeting opened: 10:00am.
Attendees: Rick Fordyce, Melanie Gottlieb, Dawn Hatterman, Kim Harvey, Kathy, Dave Schoolfield,
Lenell Hahn, Brenda Selman, Minda Thrower, Marcia Fields, Sue Koopmans, Jennifer Thorpe
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Secretary/Historian’s Report. Minutes were emailed to committee members. No changes required. Minutes approved.
Treasurer’s Report. Brenda submitted the Financial Report as of 9/11/2009. Balance is good at this point. Money is coming in and not many bills are being submitted at this point. Commerce
Bank is working out well. Minda is able to deposit in her area which works well for Brenda. Rick mentioned the audit committee we talked about at the last meeting. Should we discuss this now? Brenda suggested we appoint a committee. Non-board members should be included.
Marcia suggested we set it up similar to the way the nominating committees are set up. Pulling from the last meeting’s minutes, the suggestion was to make the committee a past president and two members at large elected by the past president. Cindy, Don, and Gene are all good options for the past president. Brenda will start calling past presidents and see if anyone is interested. Brenda is using AACRAO’s guidelines for their audit process. January would be the best time for an audit. The moneys are pretty stable. The question was raised whether we need a membership vote to do this. The decision was made to set it up ad-hoc for this year and see how it goes. Next year we’ll set it up to be part of the by-laws. This year will be kind of a dry run where we can see what needs to be tweaked before we present it for inclusion in the bylaws.
Rick mentioned that the income will still be coming in because the Financial Report doesn’t account for conference fees paid still to be paid. Brenda predicted that we shouldn’t even need to tap the CDs for the conference fee. We still have $120 check and the EDX Premers bills. Bill should be approximately $875.00. We approved up to $3,000.00 for the e-Transcript Summit and we actually spent $1,700.00+.
3. VP Communications Report. Dawn made the changes to the handbook that everyone submitted to her. It is almost ready to put on the web. The newsletter is stagnant at this point.
Dawn needs a better way to get people to help with that. She might ask the membership at the annual meeting to see if it’s read, if it should be a different format(maybe a short, bulleted email with a full newsletter on the website). Action Item: Brenda will send a sample of the AAU system to Dawn. It’s like an email summary with an archive by topic on the website. Action
Item: Dawn will put together a survey to give at the conference. Rick mentioned that the newsletter isn’t the only option to communicate with the membership. We may need to “get with the times”. Dawn suggested a calendar with assignments issued to members who would write a paragraph to update the membership with. We could attach a statement like “For more

4. information, see the writer’s email”. This makes it a best practices type communication. These might even develop into workshop topics. Melanie suggested we go back to our institutions and identify people to write an article for the newsletter. Even a summary with a question that the membership can read and respond to would be ideal. Rick suggested we set up a space on the website that could direct communication between those posting and responder - like a discussion board. Lenell could create a list-serve archive and the membership could compile the data in an excel spreadsheet or word document and submit it to Lenell for posting. We should send out a notice to the membership that we are doing this, with directions, so that we can get started on this.
Side note: need to give Larry Linneman the directive to add an unsubscribe statement and a statement about the above to the bottom of the emails.
Marcia suggested a quick survey handed out at check-in that Dawn could compile the results of and present at the business meeting.
VP Membership Report. Dave handed Brenda some checks for deposit for membership dues.
From Dave’s last year report, he mailed out70+ membership offers last year and had a 70% reply rate. This year, so far, we only have more than 50% replies. He will do a second mailing to the ones who haven’t responded to date. He collected information like the years they joined and their email addresses so he has that type of information if needed. Dave read the list of those that still needed to pay and asked the board to contact any of the institutions they know and ask if they will be maintaining their membership or not. Lenell suggested that the membership form be loaded to the web. The board concurred that that would be a good idea for those looking to join and not knowing who to contact. Marcia asked if the form should be changed to reflect the definitions and types of memberships to avoid confusion between whether an associate membership and a full membership is required. We need to discuss it for next year’s conference. Dave asked if there was a value in collecting everyone’s email addresses. The board concurred that there was. Minda asked if there was an issue with sending the membership listing to the sponsors. It might bring in more conference attendees because people will see what the conference is offering. Minda wants both the membership list from
Dave and the conference attendee list from Marcia. That way we’re sure to get everyone.
Dave is updating it on his Excel spreadsheet. Melanie needs to update the database with Dave’s spreadsheet. Dave intends to ask the membership as they arrive to the conference to verify their information they sent in. Some didn’t read the form very clearly and Dave had to guess at some information. Melanie said that the database needs formatting as well as reconciling. It needs some data tables set up. Melanie will contact Jeffrey @ MU about the data tables. We need someone to design an appropriate database and then Dan could build the front end of it.
That would make it much more useful to the board. Brenda wanted to know if Victor could help
Jeffrey with setting up the database since Melanie doesn’t really have the time to devote to it currently. It needs to be done to make mailings and Dave’s job easier. Since Victor is the past membership chair, he should have some knowledge of issues he had while doing that job. He and Jeffrey would be a good team because they are physically close enough to ask each other questions and work on it. Lenell suggested that by the time the conference comes around, she could get with Dave and clean up the current database so that it is that much easier for Victor and Jeffrey to work with. The current application will be linked on the Membership page.

6. Webmaster Report. Lenell worked with Dawn to put the workshop attendees and related items on the website. The links were activated for the PowerPoint presentations yesterday. Rick suggested that an announcement be sent to the list-serve that items have been added to the website. Action Item: Lenell and Dawn will coordinate that. Photos still need to be posted and Lenell working on it. They could also be added to the monthly newsletter: “New on the website….” or something like that. This would increase communication and provide a sense of connection. Overall opinion is that the appeal and ease of use of the website is improving.
Side note: Melanie found a good Historian project! Create an Archive of Board of Executives
Past and post it to the website. It would be a good reference for anyone needing it. Action
Item: Jennifer. Try to get this done before end of term.
Dawn mentioned a group photo at each conference to add to the website as well as of the
Executive Board.
5. VP Program Report. 49 attendees so far are signed up for conference. Is that low? Action Item:
Marcia will send an agenda to entice interest.
New Membership Session. Sue won’t be there but has someone from her institution filling in for her. Sue asked if the room was set. Marcia said it was. Handouts for sessions ran out last year.
Sue will lay them out on a table this year instead of handing them out to each person that walks in the door. Sue’s committee is small so if anyone can bring giveaways from their college, she would appreciate it. Let her know if you have donations. Pens, paper cubes, etc. 25 would be optimal for each giveaway. Sue asked when the best time was to send out the invitation to the new members. Is two weeks prior to the conference soon enough? Action Item: Marcia will send the list of new attendees to Sue two weeks ahead of the conference. We may need some additional facilitators. Jennifer volunteered, so did Brenda.
Admissions Sessions They are completely ready to go. We still need to get one more Registrar
Session. Kim will be working on getting the sixth set up. Marcia asked if we had any guidelines to give her as to what she should be looking for. There is also still one empty session for a
Technology Session. Professional Development Sessions still has two empty sessions. Sue suggested a Microsoft One Note session. Her Associate Registrar is a whiz at it and she might be willing to do a session. If this goes well, it could be a drive-in workshop. SharePoint was also suggested for the session. Now we have one Professional Development session open.
Marcia brought up the chance that we’ll be under attended this year. Do we really want to order 150 gifts this year and possibly get stuck with them? How concerned do we need to be?
If there isn’t a year on it, we’ll find a use for them if we don’t use them at this conference.
Consensus was to order the same amount as last year. Marcia requested we meet at 9:00am to meet for set up for the conference on Sunday.
Other Items:
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Vendors. Minda. 11 vendors have paid. Ad Astra will either contribute or attend. There are 3
Platinum vendors. Two others who wanted to be platinums had to be turned down. There are also two silver and six bronze vendors. Could we give someone a break time to sponsor?
Consensus was that it was too short a time. Next year we need to think about a Monday

platinum session as well. We would know by this time next year if they don’t fill and we need to offer sessions in its place. We could also discuss the hybrid vendor sessions where a school brings a vendor they’re working with and they present together. Minda has until 10/2/09 to get all of the ads to Marcia. There is potential for 13 vendors. We need more vendor gifts too. The
Board members will each bring a gift from their institution if possible.
5. E-Summit. Dawn handed out the survey results, participant lists, Meeting at a Glance, and a report to the board on the summit and its success. The MDHE representative was very supportive of the meeting and the attendees and said the state is in favor of this concept. When he asked what we would need from the state, the participants said IT money was important. He didn’t seem to think it was too much to ask for. He suggested a report to the next COTA meeting on the summit. Maybe he could give a session if we still need one. He could facilitate a discussion with the membership.
Discussion on whether we need another Vic President position to handle projects like drive-in workshops and summits and then turn the Program and Projects VP into a VP of Conferences.
This needs to be considered in light of things like drive-in workshops and the topics like One
Note, etc. that require more time to organize. We could have a presidential appointment for this year, change the by-laws next year, and then vote in a new Vice President position. One topic brought up for next year’s drive-in workshop is Identity Management. Sue suggested this.
It’s a hot topic and a year from now, enough of us will be versed to put on a successful workshop. Action Item: Sue to include in the survey to the membership at check-in, a question about a topic they want to see in a workshop. Are we in agreement to recommend a by-law change to split the current VP into two, and announce the board appointment of the VP for one year? We could nominate with the rest of the members. Is MACRAO adopting the etranscript initiative? No, we’re making information available on topics of interest to the membership. So, the new VP won’t be the VP of e-transcript but will organize workshops for topics. Marcia made the motion to proceed with a new VP of Conferences and split the duties of the current VP of Programs and Projects. Sue seconded the motion. Motion approved by the board unanimously. Action Item: Melanie will incorporate this change in by-laws with others she is making. It will require the board to look at the changes and approve in the next 10 days so that we can get it out to the membership with time for them to look at it before the meeting.
Incorporating the committees to work for both VPs will give the committees more to do year round versus just around conference time. We need to spend some money. We have it. We don’t want to have to fill out the additional forms for being over $40K. We have been given the money by the membership and we should spend it on the membership. A suggestion was made to do a support staff one day workshop. That would benefit all.
By-law Changes. Melanie suggested that which years the officers rotate should be added to the by-laws because most positions are two year terms and we need to make sure that everyone isn’t expecting to only serve a year term. Suggestion was made to change two year terms to
“two year terms commencing in odd number years”. A suggestion was made to change terminology on the Technology Committee to “Data System Committee”. Melanie questioned the voting process. In the by-laws it states “one vote per membership institution”. We’ve done

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a voice vote each year. Shall we change it to a poll of votes if a voice vote is questioned? Should a question be called, each institution in attendance gets one vote. After discussion, we just move the 2/3 statement down to the same section as the one vote per institution.
Site Selection Committee. This committee hasn’t met yet.
Nominating Committee. The committee is working on a slate they’ll have ready next week. It would be nice to send it out to the membership as soon as possible. It would be great if we could include photos and biographies too. That will be a request made to those accepting.
Action Item: Lenell will post it on the website this week and Melanie sent an email to the listserve yesterday.
MO School & College Relations Committee. No report at this time.
Meeting adjourned 2:55pm.