Minutes of the CCSC Spring 2001 Board Meeting

February 21, 2001

Charlotte, NC

 

Submitted by

Ingrid Russell

 

 

Present: Matt Dickerson (President), Will Mitchell, Chuck Howerton, Bob Riser (SE), Viera Proulx (NE), Peter Issacson (RM), Rob Bryant (NW), Jim Aman (MW), Cathy Bareiss, John Meinke, Ingrid Russell, Jim Aman (MW), Catherine Ricardo (Eastern), Liz Adams (Eastern) and Bill Myers.

 

0. Meeting called to order

The meeting was called to order at 6:03 p.m.  The minutes of the Fall board meeting were approved as distributed over email.

 

1. Introductory Remarks by the President

President Dickerson reiterated reasons behind recent decisions affecting budgeting conferences.  We have several goals:

 

-         increased membership

-         publication of our journal

-         everyone who attends a conference should be a member

 

We rethought how we deal with these.  Our expenses are publication and making of the journal and newsletter and other communications and sending receipts.  Prior to now, there was a one to one correspondence between income and expenses for each member.  Now, we grouped them.  We have less tight coupling between the two now.  $40 pp is not for cover board expenses, but to cover the actual member expenses.

 

There was one obvious implementation.  All conferences have a single fee.  This is not the only possible implementation.  Conferences can implement this differently but does not get conferences out of the obligation to cover expenses.  Expenses of the national board are about $2000 per region.

 

Feedback from members is that we have not treated people in the kindest and greatest way.  Examples relate to folks working on web pages, publicity, quality of papers, etc. We need to start with board members and treat each other and others with respect.  There is no reason to jump at someone else.  Would like to see a concerted effort made in that regard to not criticize.  A negative environment destroys all quality work that we are producing.

 

2. Report of President-Elect

All changes to the bylaws have been compiled and sent to Cathy and John for distribution. 

 

The UPE subcommittee of CCSC has completed its work.  We were pleased to see all 7 regions of CCSC participate and send proposals. Central Plains was awarded $150 and the other 6 regions were awarded $175 each.  All conferences should acknowledge UPE on their website with a link to UPE's website and in their printed material.  The UPE committee consisted of:

 

Ingrid Russell (chair)

Jim Aman

Peter Isaacson

Jeff Popyack (UPE International President)

 

More CCSC conferences have applied for an in-cooperation with SIGCSE status.  Conferences should make sure to include ACM's logo in their publications (cfp, program, website...)

 

email decisions: The NW and CP budgets as amended and re-circulated have been approved.

 

3.  Report of the Past President

Viera Proulx will not running for the NE regional representative position.  The list of nominees at this time is:

 

President: Curt White

Member Secretary: Cathy Bareiss, Nancy Lee Cameron

Northeast Representative: Richard Wyatt

Rocky Mountain Representative: Peter Isaacson

 

4. Regional Reports

 

Northwest (Rob Bryant)

There is an attempt to form a regional board and work on bylaws.  The region is also working on increasing attendance.

 

[email report]

Members of the CCSC NW region held a meeting January 20, 2001 at Pacific Lutheran University.  We have decided to form a regional board and are in the process of organizing its structure.   The CCSC-NW 2001 conference will be held at PLU in Tacoma on October 5th and 6th.  It is being chaired by George Hauser of PLU.  Papers are due March 16th.  The 2002 conference will be held at Seattle University and chaired by Philip Prins.  For the 2001conference we have added a student papers/poster component which is being directed by Kent Jones of Whitworth College.  The keynote speaker for the 2001 conference will be Dan McCracken from NYCC.

 

Southeast (Bob Riser)

Fall meeting had 19 papers and 3 student papers.  Programming contest went well with maximum number of participation.  The following conference will be held in Nashville.  Will be running a web contest for the first time.  Will be doing web page for the conference for the following year.  The 2002 conference will be hosted by Furman University.

 

[email report]

Once again the region had a very successful conference.  It was held at Roanoke College, Salem VA, on November 3-4, with 74 attendees.   The program included 19 regular papers, 3 student papers, 4 workshops (2 imported from SIGCSE), 1 tutorial, and 1 non-refereed progress report.  Kevin Treu chaired the steering committee; site co-chairs were Jane Ingram and Anil Shende.

 

The Seventh Annual Southeastern Small College Programming Contest was held on Nov 4, in conjunction with the conference.  The maximum number of teams Ð twenty -- participated.  Teams had the option of using C, C++, Java, Ada, or Visual Basic.  The winning team was from Taylor University, followed by teams from Mercer University and Roanoke College.

 

Fall 2001 Southeastern Conference

 

The conference is scheduled for Nov 2-3 at David Lipscomb University in Nashville.   

Site co-chairs are Becky Tallon and Jon Fouss; Kevin Treu is chairing the steering committee.  Conference brochures will be mailed in late February.  An initial web site is  in place.  Student activities planned include the following.

 

Student Paper Contest - Student papers will be reviewed separately, and candidates for the best student paper award will be selected during the review process.  These students will present their papers at a special session of the conference.  A panel of judges will decide on the best paper based on content and presentation.  The award will be presented at the conference luncheon.

Programming Contest Ð The contest rules, logistics, scoring, judging, on-line registration, and associated student activities that have been so successful in the past will be continued.  The team registration fee is $50.  Awards will be presented  at the conference luncheon.

Web Contest Ð This will the regionâs first student Web contest.  Students may enter in teams of two with a registration fee of $50.  Teams will present their site to a panel of judges and the top teams will be invited to present their sites at a special session of the conference.  Awards, funded through the consortiumâs UPE grant, will be presented  at the conference luncheon.  

Fall 2002 Southeastern Conference

 

The host site will be Furman University in Greenville SC.  Site co-chairs are Kevin Treu and Paula Gabbert.  The proposed budget (copy attached) has been submitted for CCSC Board approval.

 

 

Other Regional Activities

 

The CCSC:SE conference steering committee will meet following annual CCSC meeting at SIGCSE.

 

Susan Dean and George Crocker, Samford University, announced their desire to retire as program co-chairs after the 2001 conference.  They have provided outstanding service as program chairs since the southeastern conference was established.  Laura White, Mercer University, will work with them during the program planning for the 2001 conference and then assume the responsibilities of program chair for the 2002 conference.

 

George Crocker passed away in January.  He has provided long and outstanding service to the southeastern region and will be sorely missed. 

 

Concern was expressed at the fall steering committee over the increase in the amount conferences must budget ($2000 plus $40 per attendee) to cover consortium operating costs.  It was suggested that the consortium Board consider cutting operating costs if possible.  Concern was also expressed over the Consortium Boardâs decision to contract a commercial site to host the consortium web page.

 

Action items from the November meeting of the CCSE:SE Conference Steering Committee include the following.

 

Increasing conference participation Ð Efforts begun last year, as well as new initiatives,  are underway to increase conference participation.  Each steering committee member will personally contact five colleagues to encourage submission of papers and/or attendance.  Members will also keep an eye out for SIGCSE workshops to be imported via the NSF grant.  The program coordinators are sending follow-up letters to presidents of presentersâ institutions, and procuring session presiders.  Site chairs will seek at least six local vendors with a registration fee of $50.  Two concurrent workshops ($15 fee) will be conducted.  High school teachers and locals will be invited to attend just the workshops.

 

Mailing list  Ð  The regional mailing list will be the responsibility of Julia Brenson, the new southeastern membership chair.  She will be working with Cathy Bareiss to streamline the mailing list.   

 

Regional Web site Ð Kevin Treu will continue development of the regional Web site to include links to current and future conference sites, conference hosting application form, conference hosting manual (abridged, when completed), additional CCSC information, programming contest Web site, rudimentary Web site for 2002 conference. 

 

Conference hosting manual Ð Work is continuing on completion.   Once completed, the last three site chairs will comprise an annual committee to review and revise the manual.

 

Call for participation Ð Changes are being made to announce the SIGCSE ãin association withä status and notes calling attention to accepted papers being published in a refereed journal, publication rate, etc. 

 

Proposal for UPE grant Ð Since the region has a well-established award system for both its student paper contest and programming contest,  it was decided to write a UPE proposal to fund awards for the student Web contest.  The proposal was accepted and the funding will be used for the 2001 conference.

 

Central Plains (T.S. Pennington)

The conference will be held April 6-7.  Significant prizes for the programming award.

 

[email report]

The seventh annual Central Plains Conference will be on April 6th and 7th, 2001 in Branson, Missouri.  The conference chair is Dr. Ernie Ferguson from Southwest Baptist University and the site chair is Dr. Andy Staugaard from College of the Ozarks.

 

The steering committee met on Saturday, January 6th at the College of the Ozarks.  At that time, the committee went through the selection process, took a tour of the facilities and made final decisions regarding food.  The committee believes that because of the quality of the papers and other proposals that this will be our best conference.

 

Twenty of the papers submitted were selected.  There were papers from five of the six states in the Central Plains regions and four of the papers were from other regions.

 

Eight panels/tutorials/workshops were selected.  These came from only two of the six states in the region and two from outside.

 

The open session keynote speaker is Mr. Bobby Martin, the retired Vice President and CIO of Wal-Mart.

 

Dr. Russell Shackelford, the CC2001 Task Force Co-Chair, will be there to report on the ACM/IEEE CS Computing Curricula 2001.

 

There will be a Web Contest for students attending the conference.  The web sites are judged in two categories of Academic Content and/or Organizational/Commercial Content.  First place in each of the categories is awarded $300, second place is $200 and third place is $100.  Awards will be given at the Saturday afternoon BBQ lunch.

 

Attendees will be staying at the Radisson Hotel in Branson.  In lieu of a banquet speaker, the participants will see a dinner show at Dolly Partonâs Dixie Stampede.

 

Northeast (Viera Proulx)

The 2001 conference will be hosted by Middlebury College.  Bentley and Goodwin will be the Plenary Speakers.  There will be 30 student posters and 7 student awards.  For the first time, we will have a programming contest sponsored by a $1200 award from Microsoft.  There will also be an NSF mock panel.  IBM plans to recruit at the conference.  The 2002 conference will be hosted by Worcester State College and the conference chair is Karl Wurst.  The program for 2001 and the cfp for 2002 will be distributed at SIGCSE.   Richard Wyatt has been nominated for NE regional representative.

The budget for 2002 is done and we will vote on it later.

 

[email report]

The CCSCNE Board and the CCSCNE 2001 Conference Committee met at Middlebry College in Vermont of January 6, 2001.

 

The 2001 conference will be in Middlebury, Vermont on April 20-21. Out of 45 submitted papers 26 were accepted. There were 17 panel and tutorial

submissions - 9 were accepted. In addition, there are two pre-conference half-day workshops that were selected from 8 proposals. The student posters

are running strong again with 30 posters accepted.

 

The keynote speaker is Jon Bentley, the dinner speaker has been rescheduled  to give a Saturday morning address - the speaker is Mike Goodrich.

 

The 7 best student posters judged on the submission will receive free conference registration for one presenter. In addition, based on the actual

posters, we will award prizes for the best posters - funded by the UPE funds.

 

There will be a programming contest with room for 15 teams - it will run for 3 hours on Friday morning.

 

NSF is going to run a mock review panel to show the participants how NSF grants are reviewed.

 

In addition, as usual, we will award prizes for best papers.

 

IBM is planning to recruit at the conference - hopefully they will sponsor

the best paper award.

 

The 2002 conference will be held at Worcester State College in Worcester, MA. The proposed budget is attached. The conference chair is Karl Wurst.

CFP is ready and is being distributed here at the SIGCSE. The conference will again work on the "in cooperation with SIGCSE" agreement.

 

Richard Wyatt of West Chester University of Pennsylvania has been nominated to run for the Northeastern Representative position - which - if elected -

will make him automatically a chair of our board.

 

 

South Central (Carl Steidley)

Carl was not present.

 

[email report]

The 2001 CCSC SCC  Planning Meeting was held in Amarillo, Texas November 17-18, 2000 at the Amarillo Radisson, the Conference hotel.  R. Stephen Dannelly, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, Papers and Program Chair, reported  36 papers received and reviewed.  These papers had been sent out to 60 separate reviewers.  James McGuffee, St. Edwards University, Panels and Tutorials Chair, reported that 2 Panel proposals had been received and 8 Tutorial proposals had been received.  Robert Sloger, Amarillo College, Conference Chair, has reported that the person who had originally agreed to deliver the keynote speech has unexpectedly gone to meet his maker.  Alternate plans are now being put into place.

 

The 2001 South Central Conference will be hosted by Amarillo College and will be held at the Amarillo Radisson April 20-21, 2001.

 

A report regarding the status of the South Central Conferenceâs proceedings will be forthcoming  from John Meinke, Journal Editor.

 

A report regarding the number of registrants for the South Central Conference will be forthcoming from Kathy Bareiss, Membership Secretary.

 

Midwest (Jim Aman)

The MW region is working on the regional bylaws.  The budget has been submitted.

 

[email report]

The Fall, 2000 was filed at the board meeting in Beaverton.  The final attendance figure is 72, a record for the conference.  The 2001 conference will be held on September 28-29 at Olivet Nazarene University.  Herb Dershem is conference chair.

 

The regional committee will receive a proposed set of bylaws this spring.  Comment will be invited through the late spring and summer.  Adoption is scheduled for the board meeting on September 28, 2001, during the regional conference.

 

A budget for the 2001 conference has been submitted to Bill Myers and forwarded by him to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

 

 

5. NECC Report (Kevin Treu)

Kevin was not able to attend.  His email report follows.  Ingrid suggested we follow up on NECC's grant and ask Kevin for suggestions.

 

[email report]

 

1. The CCSC Society Session at NECC 2000 in Atlanta was entitled "Teaching Programming with WebToTeach" and featured panelists David Arnow, Gail

Miles, Susan Dean, George Crocker, Anne DeFrance, Gerald Weiss, and Gordon Bassen.  Approximately 40 people were in attendance and showed considerable

interest in the presentation.  It was a good opportunity to advertise CCSC again.

 

2. NECC 2001 is scheduled for Chicago, June 24-27, and a CCSC Society Session has been accepted and will be presented at the conference.

 

3. NECC 2002 will be in San Antonio in June 2002.  I am seeking suggestions and/or applications for our society session at that conference.  It would

be best for the South Central region to put something together, though that of course is not a necessity.  A proposal will need to be submitted to me

by mid-September.  Please contact me for more details.

 

4. Steve Jobs has been confirmed as the keynote speaker at NECC 2001 in Chicago.  I would like to personally encourage our Midwestern Region

members to consider attending NECC this year.

 

5. Attached is a PDF copy of the description and application form for the NECA Special and Collaborative Projects Grants Program.  This is an

exciting opportunity for CCSC as a whole and our member institutions in particular to benefit from our relationship with NECA.  As you can see,

grants for reasonably sizeable amounts are available.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

 

6. Finally, I want to mention that one of the things I learned at my first NECA meeting in Chicago last month is that the organization (which sponsors

NECC each year) is set to undergo rather significant changes.  It is re-evaluating its working relationship with ISTE (International Society for

Technology in Education, which also helps sponsor NECC) and we have a wonderful opportunity to help define what results from this re-evaluation.

I have been charged with asking the CCSC Board to consider ways in which CCSC sponsorship of NECC can be more mutually beneficial.  In short, what

do we (CCSC) want out of our sponsorship?  What benefits can we accrue? Now is an excellent time to influence the direction of these two large

organizations (NECA and ISTE).  I would be interested in hearing any thoughts that you may have, individually or as an entire Board.

 

6.  Conference Coordinator Report (Will Mitchel)

Proposal from a CO company to create a CD with last 5 or 10 years of our journal on it.  As we come up on our 20 years anniversary, should we do something special for our membership.  The CD costs $90 a CD with a purchase of 1000 copies.  Perhaps use a prizes.

 

7.  Membership Report (Cathy Bareiss)

The system now has some added functionality.  Looking for feedback and for testing regional registration.  We should make sure that all regional board members are officially CCSC members. 

 

8. Treasurer's Report (Bill Myers)

The finance committee consists of: Peter, Matt and Bill.

Audit committee is working concurrently.  One vendor is interested in being a national vendor but has not paid yet.  We will publish an additional proceedings (for Eastern) and it's in the budget.  The proposed budget was distributed. A conference budget template was presented.  It was decided that:

 

-     last two lines under "general principles" should be removed

-         increase pp from $40 to $41 and decrease $2000 to $1500 and

-         charge $6 per conference proceedings

 

MOTION: proposed budget with changes including the change to the template be approved

Passed unanimously

 

The MW and SE budgets were unanimously accepted subject to updating.

The NE budget was unanimously accepted subject to the agreed upon revisions.

 

Bill reminded all regional representatives that all conferences must submit a budget for board approval 18 months prior to the conference.  No checks will be paid until the budget is approved by the board.

 

Bill asked if we should go for tax exemption from various states.  The process involves filling out a form and costs money.  Colleges typically pay and there is no need to pay taxes.  We pay about $100 in taxes on food and lodging.  It was decided that the amount of taxes we pay is not much to bother.

 

9. Publications Report (John Meinke)

We are close to being beyond page limits for some conferences. 

It was agreed that all full papers should be refereed.

 

MOTION: The consortium adapts as a guideline that regions shall impose a maximum of 15 pages double-spaced limit on papers submitted for publication

Accepted 12-1 with 1 abstention

 

Five papers did not make it to CP proceedings.  They will be published together in a Fall proceedings.  Two of the papers would have put the proceedings over the limit and it had already gone to the press. 

Regional representatives should let their conference committees know that all camera-ready papers must be received 10 weeks prior to the first conference of a joint issue.   This should also be included in the list of tasks that John, Bill, and Cathy are compiling.

 

 

[email report]

 

Status of Proceedings

            Volume 16 Number 3 of the Journal (proceedings of South Central and Central Plains) is assembled and has been forwarded to the printer.  The final document was 388 pages Ð just under the 400 page limit we need for bulk mailing.  In addition, five papers and two panel sessions were not included since they were not received. 

            There are several issues that we need to seriously address if we are going to be able to make combined issues work.  The first is the status of student papers.  We had a number of student papers submitted for both conferences.  We need to seriously look at the length of student papers.  I was concerned when I saw the number of student papers, and traditionally student papers have tended to become very long.  Should we put a page limit on student papers?  Should we include only abstracts?  Northeastern has student papers but traditionally has only published abstracts, so that there are no space problems Ð three abstracts typically will fit across two pages.   Do we limit the number of student papers? 

            The second item is the length of regular papers.  Traditionally it has not been a problem and we have never considered limiting paper lengths.  In some ways it is a double edged sword.  Giving a maximum might very well result in authors attempting to fill that many pages! 

            The third issue with this particular set of proceedings was the time deadlines set by Central Plains.  I have repeatedly asked in the past for a twelve week ahead deadline for papers due, and that I receive them at least ten weeks ahead of time.  The deadline set for paper submission was 1st February for a 6th April conference, nine weeks the papers chair to receive the final manuscripts.  This allows for nothing at all to go wrong, and it did!!!  Within literally days before the papers were due the conference chair discovered that authors had not been notified of paper acceptance!  It was then a mad scramble to encourage authors to get their papers in asap!  This did result in five papers and two panels not being included in the final manuscript!  We have endeavoured to include every paper in the past, and this is really a black mark!  The final manuscript was sent to the publisher on 19th February (or at least I anticipate that it will go out of here tonight Ð am currently printing it), a scant five and a half weeks before the conference with one week being dedicated to shipping!  I cannot guarantee that this particular set of proceedings will be in place for the Central Plains conference!

 

            I am currently working on the Northeastern proceedings Ð estimate that I am about 20% done. 

 

Newsletter

            The January newsletter apparently went out late!   While it was printed and ready to go, our assistant editor ended up swamped and was unable to get it out on time!  This is a hazard working with volunteers!  Obviously, our full time jobs must come first.

 

Web Pages

            I raised some concerns about conference web pages and received an interesting set of responses.  Those closest to the development of the web pages were very defensive, which those not close to that development were strongly in agreement with my concerns.  The following are some of the concerns:

The following are some guidelines for preparation of effective web pages:

Itâs interesting that Jacob Nielsen has indicated that ãmostä websites are unusable, and has a web site webpagesthatsuck.com Ð I have not gone to that site to see which ones are included.  However, I do agree, and itâs been confirmed by some of the responses that Iâve received.

            Iâm willing to work with a committee to come up with some guidelines for construction of some sort of guidelines for our conference webmasters.  However, Iâm certainly not an authority on web construction, and would appreciate the input from a committee.

 

Development of Program Chair Duties guidelines

            Susan Dean and I are working on that one Ð Susan is in the process of transitioning from her position as program co-chair for Southeastern and the need for those guidelines exists with Southeastern, thus a good motivation for the two of us to work on it together.  Weâve gone through one draft Ð and have the guidelines from Northeastern to work with as well! 

 

 

Items for consideration:

 

  1. Status of student papers

 

  1. Maximum length of regular papers

 

  1. Realistic time schedules for the conferences

 

  1. Web Page guidelines

 

 

10.  National Vendor (Matt Dickerson)

We need to create a form for it. Also, need to provide conferences with a list of national vendors.

 

11.  Eastern Conference

Welcome to Liz as regional representative for the Eastern region.  There was some discussion regarding initials used for Eastern following CCSC.  It was agreed that it was up to Eastern to decide what they would like to use.

 

12. Membership Meeting

Bill will report on last year's expenses and next year's budget and Cathy will report on membership numbers.  Regional representatives should be introduced and should plug in their conferences.  No report will be presented by John.  Chuck will present the list of nominees and call for nominations.

 

MOTION: That nominating committee be guided by the principle of having the three presidents be from three different regions as a guiding principle in seeking nominations.

Accepted unanimously

 

MOTION: That nominating officer shall seek to nominate someone who has served on the national CCSC board before

Accepted 12-0 1 abstention

 

13. CCSC Website

The cost to switch to a commercial server is $144 per year.  Myles McNally has agreed to be CCSC's webmaster.

 

MOTION: To move CCSC website to the commercial server recommended by Jim Aman and pay the $144 annual fee.

Accepted unanimously

 

It was agreed that we should decide on minimal content of the website as well as regional websites.  It was also agreed that as a service to our regions we should provide a template.

 

14.  Meeting Adjourned

Meeting adjourned at 11:05 p.m.

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Ingrid Russell