II. Reports / Discussion

Regional Reports

a. Northeast report given by Richard Wyatt. Report follows: (email report)

The Seventh Annual NE conference is to be held at Worcester State College,

Worcester, Massachusetts, April 19-20, 2002. The conference chair is Karl

Wurst: { kwurst@worcester.edu/}.

Current figures, which are taken from the recently finalized schedule and

so are contingent on actual presentations, are:

three tutorials

five panels

twenty papers

The paper acceptance rate for the papers is 45%.

As there was at the 2001 NE conference, there will again be student posters

and a programming contest.

2003 Conference

As reported at the November meeting, the venue for the 2003 NE

conference has been selected: Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode

Island. The tentative dates are April 25-26, 2003.

2004 Conference

The venue for the 2004 conference is not yet finalized but it

appears that it will be at Union College, Schenectady, NY. Report from

``our man in Schenectady'':

I'm still waiting for the Dean to agree that we can commit to using

a few classrooms in the spring of 2004 for one Friday afternoon.

I'm also still waiting to hear whether we can have the dinner on

campus or have to go to the Holiday Inn a couple of blocks away.

Travel Reimbursement

At the last meeting (Nov., 2001, Nashville) it was reported that

NE adopted the following policy on travel reimbursements:

The following can be paid by CCSCNE for Board and Committee members' expenses

to travel to the September or January meetings, subject to amount budgeted

specifically for travel:

Hotel: up to $80 per person if the person must travel at least

3 hours in each direction.

Meals: up to $30 per person.

Travel: up to $50 per person, including tolls, and mileage (at

current IRS rate OR gasoline)

However, Board and Conference Committee members are encouraged to seek

support from their own institutions first.

The sub-committee for travel is continuing to review this policy with an

eye to reducing or even eliminating possible inequities. The details are a

little lengthy to give here but can be found in the minutes for the Jan,

2002 meeting of NE at:

{ http://www.ccscne.org/for/board/minutes/02/winter.html/}

Format for Journal Papers

We currently reviewing our long standing policy of having WordPerfect as

the officially favoured format for papers. The motivation is that

WordPerfect is clearly obsolescent. In fact, no one this year submitted in

that form; almost all were in Word. Two suggestions are being considered:

We no longer accept papers in WordPerfect.

We no longer advertise that WordPerfect is the preferred format.

Web Submission of Papers

We currently have paper authors submit their papers for reviewing via the

web. Final camera-ready versions of accepted papers, however, are submitted

in hard-copy and on disk. We are considering using our web-based system to

facilitate final paper submissions. The hope is that this will improve

the process for both the conference administrators as well as the

authors.

Respectfully submitted (Feb.19, 2002):

Richard Wyatt

b. Northwest report given by Rob Bryant. Report follows: (email report)

CCSC-Northwest Regional Report

February 20, 2002

Northwest Conference 2001

The Northwest Conference for 2001 was held October 5 and 6 at Pacifi Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. See the fall report for specific details.

Northwest Conference 2002

The Northwest Conference for 2002 will be held October 4 and 5 at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington. Phil Prins of SPU will chair the conference.

The regional board met on January 26^th at SPU. Everything appeared on track with preparations for the fall conference.

Paper submissions are due March 15^th, Panels/workshop proposals due March 29^th.

We are attempting to generate interest in the student poster contest for the second year.

Other Issues

At the regional board meeting in January we amended the bylaws to handle election procedures.

Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington is the site for the 2003 conference. Ed Gellenbeck is the conference chair.

George Fox University is the site for 2004.

The board is working on building procedures/guidelines for each chair position to be posted on the regions web site.

The next regional board meeting will be May 18^th at CWU.

Respectfully submitted by

Rob Bryant

Northwest Representative

c. Rocky Mountain report given by Anne Cable. Report follows: (email report)

CCSC: Rocky Mountain Regional Report

February 25, 2002

Rocky Mountain Conference 2001

The conference was held October 19 and 20 at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD. Details are in the CCSC:RM Fall, 2001 Report.

Rocky Mountain Conference 2002: October 18-19

General information about the conference and steering committee can be found at the conference web site: http://www.business.uvsc.edu/rmccsc/ . The Conference Chair is Tim Reeves (reeves@sjc.cc.nm.us) and the Co-Site Chairs are Judy Gurka (gurka@mscd.edu) and Noel LeJeune (lejeunen@mscd.edu)

CCSC Board-defined positions: (These do not correpond to the titles in our region.)

Editor Terry Scott tscott@fisher.unco.edu

Registrar Tom Brown Tom.Brown@enmu.edu

Treasurer Tim Reeves reeves@sjc.cc.nm.us

Webmaster Ernest Carey careyer@uvsc.edu

Important dates:

Submission deadline April 1, 2002

Notification of acceptance May 1, 2002

Final draft due June 15, 2002

Future Conferences

2003 University of Northern Colorado; Greeley, CO; Site Chair: Peter Isaacson

2004 Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM. Site Chair: Richard Johnson

Respectfully submitted by

Anne Cable

Rocky Mountain Representative

It was commented by Ingrid Russell that it was good to see RM region having hosts lined up a couple years in advance. This has not been the case in the past.

d. Southeast report given by Bob Riser. Report follows: (email report)

CCSC-SOUTHEASTERN REGIONAL REPORT - FEBRUARY 2002

Fall 2001 Southeastern Conference

The conference was hosted by David Lipscomb University in Nashville on Nov 2-3. There were a total of 91 registrations, up over 20% from the previous year. The program included 22 papers (up from 19 in 2000), 4 workshops, and 1 tutorial. Kevin Treu (Furman) chaired the conference steering committee, Becky Tallon and Jon Fouss (Lipscomb) were site co-chairs.

Student participation was also up. 23 teams (87 students) representing 14 schools participated in the 8^th annual programming contest, 6 teams participated in our first web authoring contest, and 2 student papers were presented. Winners in each of the competitions were announced, and awards presented, at lunch on Saturday.

The fall meeting of the CCSC Board of Directors was held in conjunction with the conference.

Fall 2002 Southeastern Conference

The conference is scheduled for Nov 8-9 at Furman University in Greenville SC. Site co-chairs are Kevin Treu and Paula Gabbert. The conference web site is up and the call for participation (paper deadline March 29) is out. In addition to the site co-chairs and the regional representative, the steering committee consists of Julia Benson (membership and 2003 site chair, Georgia Perimeter College), Laurie White and Andy Digh (program co-chairs, Mercer University), Dick Hall (publicity, Lenoir-Rhyne College), Dee Medley (treasurer, Augusta State University), Bill Myers (registrar, Belmont Abbey College), Becky Tallon (secretary and 2001 site co-chair, David Lipscomb University), and Jon Fouss (2001 site co-chair, David Lipscomb University).

Student activities will include a programming contest, web authoring contest, and student paper competition. Details of each are available on the web site. The keynote address will be given by Greg Easterlin, Chief Information Officer for Milliken and TBA. The banquet address will be given by Dr. Robert Geist, co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts graduate program at Clemson University.

Fall 2003 Southeastern Conference

Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta will host the 2003 conference on Nov 7-8. The regional committee approved the proposal presented by Julia Benson at its fall meeting (Nov 3, 2001) in Nashville.

Other Regional Activities

The conference steering committee will hold its spring meeting immediately following the annual CCSC meeting at SIGCSE. Action items from the November meeting of the conference steering committee include the following.

Increasing conference participation

(a) Everyone will personally contact colleagues to encourage submission of papers and attendance, and will distribute copies of the call for participation at any other conferences attended.

(b) 2002 site co-chairs will construct an e-mail list covering institutions within a 3-4 hours drive of Furman, will develop and maintain the 2002 conference web site, and provide the capability of allowing people to add their own e-mail addresses to the list being maintained by the regional membership chair.

(d) Conference presenters and first-time participants will be identified (e.g. ribbons on nametags).

(e) The regional treasurer will assume responsibility, previously held by the site chair, for importing SIGCSE workshops.

Conference hosting manual - The current site co-chairs and the 2001 site co-chair will continue work on the conference hosting manual. Once completed, the last three site chairs will comprise an annual committee to review and revise the manual. The hosting manual, together with the Conference Host Proposal Form which has been used the lat two years, will be valuable resources for potential host institutions.

Call for participation – After the current round of mailings, and except for copies to be distributed at other conferences, the region will begin moving to an all-electronic method of distributing calls.

Programming contest – Kevin Treu will be stepping down as director of the programming contest, having had that responsibility since the contest began 8 years ago. Efforts to recruit an individual or individuals to take over those responsibilities are underway.

Regional by-laws – Bob Riser and Kevin Treu will develop a draft.

Respectfully submitted,

Bob Riser

Southeastern Regional Representative

It was commented by Ingrid Russell that SE is working on a document that provides guidelines for future hosts. The NE region already has one. Both regions have their documents on their websites if other regions find them helpful.

e. South Central report given by Carl Steidley. Report follows: (email report)

CCSC-South Central Regional Report

February, 2002

The 2002 CCSC SCC Planning Meeting was held in Seguin, Texas November 16-17, 2001 at the Seguin Comfort Inn, the Conference hotel. R. Stephen Dannelly, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, Papers and Program Chair, reported 31 papers received and reviewed. These papers had been sent out to 52 separate reviewers. 64.5% of these papers were accepted for presentation at the conference.

Dannelly reported on the conference electronic submission and review system. This year CCSC:SC used a web-based system for the reviewing portion of the paper submission process. The system allowed authors to submit their papers and abstracts in PDF format. Reviewers, who signed up via the same web-based system, were assigned papers to review based on keywords of their interest. Reviewers accessed their one, two or three papers to be reviewed and submitted their reviews via the system. Reviewers were only able to view the papers they were assigned to review. Software assembled the review data for the Steering Committee to use in selecting papers to create the conference program.

Next year the system will be revised in light of a few minor bugs. The system will also be expanded to allow authors to submit their final versions for publication. If the improvements make it possible,

the SC papers chair will release the software for other conferences to use.

Bill Musgraves, Conference Chair, reported that the dinner speaker will be Kelly Goulart. Mr. Goulart is an officer at First Commercial Bank in Seguin. He was active in the banking industry's preparation for year 2k. Mr. Goulart promises a light hearted talk about the problem.

The keynote speaker will be David Reed from Advanced Micro Devices. His area of expertise is device testing.

The Conference will able to schedule the workshop

Modeling as an Interactive Learning Environment:

An introduction to computing in science

and the science of computing

to be conducted by Robert Panoff of National Computational Science Institute on Friday morning from 8:30 until 11:30 (April 12th) . Enrollment in the workshop will be limited to 25.

South Central will incorporate a Best Paper Award for professional papers utilizing a reviewing system similar to that used by NE for its 2003 conference.

The paper review form will include a question to the reviewers regarding whether or not he/she recommends the paper for best paper award. The Papers/Program Chair , based on the reviewers replied select about 5 or 6 papers to be considered for best paper awards.

3 or 4 Steering Committee members will be asked to attend the talks and give feedback. The Papers/Program Chair will not be among these 3-4 who comment on the presentations. The Papers/Program chair with input from the Steering Committee members who attended the talks decide which gets first, second, third place.

Authors will be informed (after they give their talk) that their papers are being considered for best paper award to make sure they attend the awards ceremony which is during the luncheon at the end of the next day.

South Central Paper Guidelines, prepared by Stewart Carpenter, Steering Committee member and approved by the Steering Committee and that have been approved by John Meinke, CCSC Editor, will be used for future conferences. These guidelines will hold paper length to six (6) pages. This paper length will be used in future Calls for Papers.

Amardeep Kahlon, Austin Community College, Panels and Tutorials Chair, reported that 1 Panel proposal had been received and 4 Tutorial proposals had been received. Bill Musgraves, Texas Lutheran University, Conference Chair, reported that he has been in contact with Bob Panof from the NCSI (National Computational Science Institute) who gave a workshop at SE in Nashville regarding running a similar workshop at the Spring SC conference.

In addition to the UPE student paper awards, if awarded, Amardeep Kahlon reported that she is negotiating with Dell Computers and or Surgient Networks for an additional $225.00 for a student paper award.

The topic of a programming contest to be held in conjunction with the South Central Conference was discussed. R. W. McCarley of Millsaps College agreed to look into holding a programming contest

The 2002 South Central Conference will be hosted by Texas Lutheran University and will be held on the campus April 12-13, 2002.

The 2003 South Central Conference will be held in Jackson, Mississippi and will be hosted by Millsaps College.

A proposal for hosting the 2004 conference was submitted by Austin Community College of Austin, TX. The South Central Steering Committee approved Austin Community College’s proposal.

Regional Web Master, James McGuffee, St. Edward’s University will be providing

guidance to the creation of the conference web each year as per national guidelines, etc.

The the by-laws and standing rules drafted by the South Central Steering Committee in April of 1999 were reviewed and revised during the meeting. After electronic review by the Steering Committee, it is assumed that I will have them for presentation to the board meeting in February 2002.

There was lively discussion regarding the mailing list difficulties cited by the NW and SE representatives. Previous South Central Conference Chairs who are on the Steering Committee cited similar difficulties. Examples cited included; the list is not usable as given to the conference chairs (quote marks throughout, fields are inconsistent). Regional maintenance of the mailing list is suggested. Mailing lists should be created by a standard office product, such as, Word or WordPerfect.

Regarding ACM SIGCSE affiliation. Current Conference Chair Bill Musgraves sent email to have SC affiliated. He received no response.

South Central Steering Committee concurs with the suggestion that “responsibility of” remarks in the Conference Timelines Proposal be removed.

Regarding Local Registration. One Steering Committee member is concerned with privacy issues and laws and would like reassurance from the National Board the Consortium will not be violating Privacy Act. Concerns were expressed regarding the need to have Internet connection at the registration site.

The South Central Steering Committee applauds the efforts of the National Board to confirm and notify of election results.

Questions were raised as to whether the Microsoft Grant to the Consortium will continue for Programming Contests to be held at future conferences.

Barbara Boucher Owens has agreed to serve on the Nominating Committee for the 2002 elections for Midwest Rep, Eastern Rep, and National Treasurer.

A report regarding the status of the South Central Conference’s 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.

Respectfully submitted by

Carl W. Steidley

South Central Representative

f. Eastern report given by Liz Adams. Report follows:

Eastern Report

This was our first conference as Consortium members.

Eastern had a successful conference in the Fall 2001 at Shepherd College in West Virginia. The conference was ably chaired by Ben Benokraitis. The Conference Committee included:

Papers Co-Chairs: Maryam Hastings, Kevin Hufford
Panels and Workshops Co-Chairs: Frances Bailie, Jay VandeKopple
Programming Contest Chair: David Weaver
Vendors Chair and Webmaster: Larry Adams

Registration Chair: Diane Shewbridge
Banquet Program Chair: Parvin Rahnavard

Proceedings Editors: George Benjamin, John Meinke

At the conference in West Virginia, George Benjamin and Jack Beidler (Steering Committee members) assumed responsibility for writing by-laws for our region. They are working on that and the Steering Committee hopes to review their work at the Spring Steering Committee meeting. Our region does not currently have officers. We have functioned, throughout the years of our existence as an independent Conference, as a Steering Committee of the whole. We need to consider how we want to function in the future.

The Spring Steering Committee meeting will be held at Bloomsburg University on April 27^th. At that meeting we will visit the conference site and set the final program. We have had several schools offer to host the Fall 2004 conference and are planning to evaluate the proposals at the Spring Steering Committee meeting.

We are please to learn of the increase in the number of national vendors.

Zahira Khan is conference chair for the Fall 2002 Eastern Conference which will be held at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. We plan to have both a student programming contest and student poster session at the conference. The conference will be held on October 18^th and 19^th, 2002. Amruth Kumar is serving as Papers Chair. Paper and other submissions are due March 18^th. The conference website can be reached directly through http://orgs.bloomu.edu/ccsce02/ and can be found by searching on Google for

CCSCE 2002 and can also be found by going to http://CCSC.org Zahira’s budget has been submitted to Bill Myers and been approved.

Dorothy Deremer is conference chair for the Fall 2003 Eastern Conference which will be held at Montclair University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, on October 17 and 18, 2003 Montclair is very close to New York City for those of you who want to place it geographically. Dorothy is beginning work on her budget

We look forward to hosting the CCSC Board at the Fall 2002 Conference at Bloomsburg.

g. Midwest report was given by Myles McNally. Report follows:

CCSC-Midwest Regional Report

February 27, 2002

Midwest Conference 2001

The Midwest Conference for 2001 was held September 28 and 29 at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Details of that conference are in the CCSC-Midwest Fall, 2001 Report.

Midwest Conference 2002

The Midwest Conference for 2002 will be held September 27 and 28 at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana. Florence Appel of Saint Xavier University will chair the conference. The budget for this conference was modified and approved at the Fall, 2001 Board Meeting. The conference website was re-implemented and moved to the national server (http://www.ccsc.org/midwest).

Important Dates:

Paper Submission Deadline March 16, 2002

Panels, Tutorials, and Workshop Proposals Deadline April 15, 2002

Notification of Acceptance May 10, 2002

Final Drafts & Presenter Registration Due June 13, 2002

Student Submissions (Not to be published) September 7, 2002

Other Issues

The regional representative will meet with key members of the region during the SIGCSE conference to develop a strategy for dealing with the following issues:

1. Develop a functioning Steering Committee.

2. Identify the key board-defined regional positions: Editor, Registrar, Treasurer, Webmaster.

3. Create By-laws for the region.

4. Planning locations of out-year conferences.

Respectfully submitted by

Myles F. McNally

Midwest Representative

g. Central Plains report given by Dean Sanders. Report not submitted.

Committee Reports

a. Nominating Committee report was given by Matt Dickerson. Report follows:

Nominations Committee Report

I have received one more nomination since I sent out my report last week.

So here is a revised report.

We received the following nominations, all of which have accepted the

nomination:

FOR PRESIDENT ELECT

Scott Sigman (Southwest Baptist)

Nancy Cameron (Texas A&M Corpus Christi)

Paul Myers (Trinity University in San Antonio)

FOR TREASURER

Bill Myers (incumbant treasurer)

Frank Ford (Providence College)

MW regional rep

Myles McNally

James Caristi

CP regional rep

Dean Sanders

Bob Neufeld from Macpherson

Eastern

Liz Adams

b. Finance Committee report was given by Matt Dickerson. Report follows:

Finance Committee Report

For board meeting on 2/27/02

Submitted by Matthew Dickerson

Committee: Matthew Dickerson (chaired), Rob Bryant, Susan Dean, William (Bill) Myers, [Scott Sigman].

History and Overview

The committee met informally during lunch immediately following the fall board meeting held in Nashville in conjunction with CCSC:SE, and then we continued to correspond electronically during the months of 11/01, 12/01, 1/02, and 2/02. The commitee included the treasurer as well as a past and present member of our auditing committee, and an immediate past president. We looked at a three year history of financial data (provided by treasurer Bill Myers), as well as at the proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. Ultimately, we wanted the data itself to suggest our agenda, but we did have several issues to discuss including: short-term and long-term financial planning; the clarity of the financial reports; and the budgetting process.

Two important issues were as follows:

a) With both the record-keeping and budgetting process, we were concerned with the auditing process, and with the ability to transition the position of treasurer to another person at whatever point in the future that becomes necessary.

b) We were also considering the long-term financial health and planning of CCSC, particular with respect to the growth of CCSC national since its inception.

Recommendations and Observations:

After several months of discussion, the committee has several recommendations and comments.

Recommendation 0: We can recommend for acceptance the prposed budget presented by the treasuruer.

The next three recommendations have several aims and purposes, but one underlying theme to all of them is reducing our "hit by truck number" (which ranked as highest priority).

Recommendation 1: We should consider an assistant treasurer, who helps prepare the budget.

It has been noted that this position might be hard to fill, since nobody wants to take the extra work and be given a title of “assistant”. There are ways we could address that. Possibilities could include having a 4-year term, where 2-years is served as assistant treasurer, and 2-years is served as treasurer. Of course this scheme would mandate a maximum 4-year term—though of course the treasurer could immediately run again after completing a term, but would become the assistant treasurer upon election.

Recommendation 2. The board should consider moving electronic financial data to a CCSC commercial server rather than having it stored locally at the institution of the treasurer. (This would be similar to the move of membership data, although at a later time frame. Likewise, it does not suggest that the data be made public. Paper data, of course, would continue to reside with the treasurer.)

The primary asumption regarding both the Membership Secretary and Treasurer positions should be that there will be transitions -- that various people will be elected to those positions at times in the future, and that the transitions will be much easier if the data is stored in the CCSC's "space"

Observation. For both the financial records, and the budgeting process, members of the board (other than the treasurer) were able to understand the figures. There was general agreement not only that the figures made sense, and that the budgeting process was sound, but also that the record keeping was fine. However there were some aspects of both the proposed budget and the past data that required explanation from the treasurer—that is, it was only after some additional explanation that we understood certain things. This is not surprising, and is probably true with almost any such position, but it must be noted that this would add to the difficult of a transition of the position.

Recommendation 3. Though the financial records are very complete, it would be helpful if they included more descriptive text on what some of the items represent. For example, board expenses are listed as travel and meeting expense, but probably include “hotel” as part of travel. What is the split between costs of individuals (airfare and hotel) and costs of rooms or food (meeting costs)?

Likewise, any set of guidelines/documentation of what the treasurer does throughout the year would be extremely helpful.

Recommendation 4. For the sake of auditing, it was recommended that all regions provide a report on the order of the sample at: http://www.ccsc.org/regions/regionAdmin/mw2001_report.pdf This information is what the audit committee needs to have to be able to relate the Membership data to the Financial data. It would be hlepful to the audit committee if the national board required this information, since the audit committee doesn’t have the same “authority” to request it. The audit committee expects to provide by April 17, 2002, a more precise definition of the information needed from the regions and other sources (vendor payments sent directly to the president, for example), along with new (in addition to the ones we already have established for auditing the financial records) procedures to be followed when performing the audit in order to verify that this information corresponds to the records kept by the Membership Secretary and the Treasurer.

Observation. A continued concern is expenses of the board. If it is a long term issue to keep travel costs down, then choosing where we meet is probably the biggest factor. Given the current financial health of CCSC, however, we feel that the benefits of going to each region over time outweigh the costs associated with travel to more expensive locations.

Recommendation 5. CCSC is now a sizeable NPO. Though our budget is not (yet) in the millions, it is still a national organization with hundreds of members. It is also being run by volunteers who are (in the vast majority) computer scientist with little or no experience in running an NPO. Our examination of financial data raised lots of questions that we are not necessarily qualified to answer. How big should the savings be for such an organization? How do we even begin to formulate a plan by looking at the numbers?

By contrast, these are tasks that accountants and business consultants do regularly. Therefore some members of the finance committee feel that CCSC would benefit by hiring a consultant on a periodic basis (say every five years) to examine the financial and membership data and to make recommendations. Ideally, it would be a consultant who has experience with other organizations of a similar size and purpose. We are currently in a strong financial situation to look into this immediately.

Recommendation 6. The amount of “secretarial” work—mailings, database entry, paperwork, etc.--has grown tremendously. Taking care of this work often become the main focus of various officers, rather than dealing with the bigger picture that is associated with their positions. The board should consider the possibility of a paid part-time administrative support position.

Other thoughts. We are experiencing a growing surplus. What should we do with the money? Some possibilities include:

•We can keep conference costs down on a year-to-year basis by lowering the head tax.

•Put more money into membership expansion. This should probably take place only after the internal structural issues (bylaws, policies, Db, etc.)are addressed.

•Hire a part-time administrative assistant.

•Hire a consultant to evaluate CCSC.

• Fund grants efforts pertaining to undergraduate computing.

c. UPE Grant Committee report: given earlier by Curt White in President-Elect report.

d. Web Committee report was given by Myles McNally. Report follows:

Web Committee Report

February 27, 2002

The National Site

The main activity was the implementation of the new CCSC Website, which went live on January 13, 2002. Thanks to all those who found bugs, misspellings, or who recommended improvements to the site.

Since implementation:

1. Regional information has been added as received.

2. Board Minutes have been completed since 1994.

3. Current Newsletter has been added.

4. Many minor changes and corrections have been made.

Outstanding issues relative to national sites:

1. Content needs to be developed for news items.

2. By-laws need to be updated.

3. Continuing information need for regions page.

4. Should back issues of the Newsletter be added.

5. Requests have been made for a map showing regional areas.

Please forward ideas to me so that we can continuously improve functionality and usefulness of the site.

Regional Sites

Each region can be accessed by the url http://www.ccsc.org/regionname. Two regions have fully implemented their sites on the national server: Central Plains and Midwest. Northeastern has placed a copy of their home page on the server, so it appears as if the site is there. I have placed a redirect page for other regions on the national server.

Outstanding issues relative to regional sites:

1. Moving all sites to the national server.

This depends on a number of factors, particularly the type of support the national server can provide for on-line submissions and registration. This still needs to be analyzed. But a number of regions could move their sites to the national server now, and all could do so except for their online submission pages.

2. Templates for regional sites.

This is an issue that the web committee must address over the next time period.

Respectfully submitted by

Myles F. McNally

Webmaster and Chair, Web Committee

III. Business

a. DB requirements

CCSC Database Project

Objective:

It is the goal of this project to provide a web-based solution for the database and reporting needs of the CCSC both at the regional and national level. The solution should be scalable, and portable to meet any and all future needs of the CCSC.

Requirements Identification:

As in all systems development, the organization should drive the functionality and not the reverse. It is requested that all regions (including the national board) discuss and identify their specific needs in a well-defined manner. These requests should be prioritized into three levels:

1. Phase I – Mission Critical Functionality/Reports: Those modules of the system that must be in place in order to successfully operate as an organization.

2. Phase II – Appreciated Enhancements: Those modules of the system that are not mandatory but would greatly help if implemented.

3. Phase III – Future Extensions: “It would be really cool if...”

Initial Functionality:

Some initial functionality and reporting are listed below as simply a starting point for discussion. This list was discussed at a regional board meeting and in no way is meant to be exhaustive or complete.

· Email Functionality

o Ability to draft an email on-line, upload an attachment (call for papers, registration form, meeting minutes, etc), select a category of recipients (i.e. regional board, regional membership, national board, national membership, proceeding recipients, etc.), and automatically send to specified recipients.

o Ability to request a specific report be sent to a specific person as an email attachment.

· Data Entry Functionality

o National Membership Director having the ability to maintain all data within the database.

o Regional Board Membership Coordinator having the functionality of editing/correcting membership information directly.

· Reporting Functionality

o Web printable reports in Adobe Acrobat pdf format.

o File downloadable reports in specified formats (Excel, text file, etc.)

· Sample Reports

o Regional conference registered attendees

o Conference name badges (specified Avery label size)

o Regional/National mailing list (Avery 5160, pre-defined text format for automatic mailers, other label formats, etc.)

o National membership reports (by membership type/ by region, etc.)

o Regional members not registered for current years conference

Conclusion

Everything is fair game at this point. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm.... and we’ll take it from there.

Ingrid welcomed Brent Wilson and thanked him for accepting the position of database administrator. The board looks forward to working with him on this project.

Anne would like more feedback from the regions and board members concerning database requirements. Send requirements to bwilson@georgefox.edu

Rob stated that we should not have local databases - there should only be a national database.

Myles stated that we should keep the database on a dedicated server at one site and pay to have the physical database maintained. Rob stated that the site that keeps the database should be reimbursed. Myles stated that it might also be advantageous to keep the web server at the same site. Brent stated that this site would be happy to maintain both database and web servers. Brent says the board should buy a server for database and web.

Motion from Liz: The consortium has agreed to purchase a server. Seconded by Rob. Motion was withdrawn.

Motion from Bill M: We ask the database committee to present to the board by the end of March a design for the software and a budgetary cost. If the proposal is acceptable the board will then vote. Seconded by Matt. In favor: 8, opposed: 1, abstentions: 1.

John M. moved that the board recommend at the general meeting that the next CCSC business meeting immediately follow the SIGCSE business meeting. Seconded by Liz. In favor: 8, opposed: 0, abstentions: 4.

d. Separate issue

Liz moved that when an issue is to be discussed electronically that it be done via a listserv with digest capabilities. Seconded by Anne. Motion withdrawn.

e. National registrar position

BACKGROUND: The Consortium has been in existence now for nigh onto two decades. We are experiencing (severe?) growing pains — when I first became part of CCSC back in the ‘80's we had only one region, CCSC: SE. For sure the CCSC is much larger now, and it has really happened in a relatively short time. Along with this rapid growth, many ways of doing things have just "happened" as opposed to being "designed". Some processes which seem to have worked so poorly in hindsight were maybe "OK" when first begun, but didn't "scale up" well, particularly, I think, in the membership/registration area.

If our rapid growth (and I'm not just thinking about numbers of members here but more critically about numbers of regions, each with its own procedures for putting on conferences) has made what was the Membership Secretary position too large to be handled by one volunteer then it's obviously time to realign some of what has evolved into the Membership responsibilities into well-defined additional positions, such

as DB administrator (accomplished) and registrar (proposed), so that we can involve people interested in serving the CCSC but not overburden them.

PROPOSAL: That the Consortium appoint a national registrar that reports to the Board in managing the registration process for Consortium sponsored conferences.

PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTION OF THE POSITION: The national registrar reports to the Board. Specific duties of this position include responsibility for receiving all attendee registrations and payments, from whatever source, on behalf of the Consortium. The Registrar has responsibility for entering the registration information into the database, sending all payments and a summary report to the Treasurer (or depositing them locally if possible), and for reporting to the Membership Secretary that the registration data has become available.

At present the major sources of registrations are regular conference attendees, who would send advance registrations directly to the Registrar; presenters, who usually send registrations and payments to the program chair or designated representative; and on-site registrants, whose registration information and payments are collected locally and would then be sent to the Registrar. The Registrar will have responsibility for registrations from other sources that may evolve in the future.

MOTIVATION:

1. The duties of the Membership Secretary, according to the bylaws are:

a. Maintain the record of the membership classes of the Consortium including mailing lists.

b. Be responsible for the delivery of dues notices and ballots.

c. Keep records and prepare such reports as may be requested by the Board of Directors.

d. Assist the Finance Committee in preparation of annual budgets.

e. Provide in a timely manner appropriate mailing lists as needed for any Consortium needs.

The duties of registration for regional conferences are not spelled out in the bylaws.

2. The current Membership Secretary has indicated that she is unable to expend the volunteer time necessary to fully accomplish the charges of the position. This proposal responds to that concern. It assigns a share of the work load to a position that will be responsible to the Board.

3. In an attempt to streamline the process, the current timeline proposed by the current Membership Secretary has downloaded many of the duties regarding registration to the individual conferences. This is not an acceptable situation because:

a. It removes both the control and, more importantly, the responsibility, for the accuracy of registration data from the Consortium to the region. That data must be carefully preserved, with appropriate checks and balances, and decentralizing makes this much more difficult.

b. Under the current proposed situation (and it should be emphasized that the timeline proposed by the current Membership Secretary has not received Board approval) regional appointees are being authorized total access to the database. This raises real issues of accountability for the accuracy and integrity of our data.

4. Financial considerations — there was a system of checks and balances set up de facto between the Treasurer and the Membership Secretary. This has apparently had its challenges — to wit there was a roughly $2000 discrepancy recently that the Treasurer was responsible for attempting to resolve, from what I understand caused by the local deposits of funds. This needs to be resolved by having one person who has sufficient time and specific responsibility to appropriately communicate financial statements to the Treasurer upon deposit of funds.

5. This proposal is in no way an attempt to underscore the importance of the position of Membership Secretary. Rather, it is an attempt to address the concerns of the current Membership Secretary regarding the ability to maintain the position within a reasonable time expenditure for a volunteer position.

DISCUSSION:

It is important to act on this relatively quickly, so that firm decisions can be made at our Board meeting at SIGCSE in about three weeks. Please note that the proposal only requests the creation of the position — feel that the proposal could go relatively quickly to a motion — and we get the position established! As I see it, the need is definitely there —and the pressure from Cathy, without waiting for board approval, to implement the "time guidelines" and to demand corresponding duty rosters from the regions is a clear

indication that we as a board must act quickly to ease her burden and at the same time retain control of our membership data resource by implementing the national registrar position.

Please note that none of the local registration duties — none of the regional conference procedures — are covered in the bylaws — that’s left for standing rules or whatever! Now that the Consortium has grown to eight (8) regions, we as a Board need to exercise our responsibility to those regions (and potential new ones in the future) by establishing this position of coordinator of registration for those regions!

John M. moved that the CCSC president in consultation with the board appoint for a term of three years a national registrar that reports to the Board in managing the registration process for Consortium sponsored conferences. Seconded by Liz A. In favor: 4, opposed: 5, abstentions: 3.

f. Operating procedures document

It was the consensus at the Fall board meeting that we should work on an operating policies and procedures document. The bylaws committee chaired by Richard reported that other than a standing rule change to include Eastern in the bylaws, the changes do not warrant immediate action and that the tasks of preparing the document and revisions of the bylaws/standing rules are so interwined that neither can be completed alone.

As a result of the committee’s recommendation, a new committee was appointed, the “Bylaws and Operating Procedures Committee” , chaired by Scott McElfresh. Committee members are:

Scott McElfresh (chair)

Peter Isaacson

Susan Dean

Bob Riser

Paul Myers

Richard Wyatt

The charge of the committee is to consider the current bylaws, standing rules and motions passed over the last few years with an aim of producing:

1. Updated bylaws

2. Updated Standing rules

3. An operating procedures policy

The minutes on the website were missing quite a bit. We have finally succeeded locating all sets of minutes since 1995.

No further discussion than what was listed in the agenda.

g. Updating regional mailing lists

Several conferences are working on moving toward a paperless process. As a result it is critical that their email lists are up to date. Concerns were expressed by some regions about a lack of a timely response from the membership secretary in this area. Concerns were also expressed regarding the lack of updating and maintaining our mailing lists. As a result, regions are maintaining their own lists and in some cases have their own database.

A number of regions have mentioned that consortium e-mail lists are not up to date.

It was also commented that as a result several regions are maintaining their own lists and databases.

h. Standing rule regarding Eastern

We need to update our standing rules to reflect the following:

Standing Rule 3 for Article VI, Governing Body, of the bylaws be amended to read: There are eight (8) regions authorized for elected regional representation (Article VI, Section 2b). These regions are Central Plains, Midwest, Northeast, Rocky Mountain, South Central, Southeast, Northwest, and Eastern.

Richard W. moved and seconded by John M. that the bylaws be amended to read: There are eight (8) regions authorized for elected regional representation (Article VI, Section 2b). These regions are Central Plains, Eastern, Midwest, Northeast, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, South Central, and Southeast. Passed unanimously.

i. Standing rule additions - bylaws Article VII

John made a request for the addition of two standing rules to our current list of standing .

Proposed standing rule addition for Article VII --

3. The Immediate Past President shall:

a. Notify the winners of any election with a congratulatory message copied to the President and the President Elect within one week of tabulation of the ballots.

b. Notify the unsuccesful candidates for any election with a message thanking them for their support of CCSC and encouraging them to continue active participation in the organization. Such notification should occur coincident with the notification of winners of such election, and should be copied to the President and the President Elect.

c. Within two (2) weeks of election results, request the winner's affiliation and contact information for public release and forward said information to the CCSC Publications Chair (for publication in CCSC official publications), the CCSC webmaster (for inclusion on the CCSC web site), and the Board listserv maintainer (for inclusion on the CCSC Board listserv).

Motivation: There was a major problem a couple years ago in that there was a breakdown in communications regarding who should notify the candidates. As it was, the successful candidates discovered that they had won their respective elections when the Publications Chair contacted them weeks later attempting to obtain Board roster information for publication. This creates a clear process of notification as well as a time line to insure timely notification.

Proposed standing rule addition for Article VII --

4. The President shall send a congratulatory and welcome message to winners of an election upon receipt of the copy of the notification of the Past President to successful election candidate with a copy to the

President Elect.

Moved by John M., seconded by Liz A. Passed unanimously.

j. Clarification on quorum definition for e-mail voting

Ingrid said that even though almost all voting board members voted this year via email, for future purposes we need to clarify how a quorum is determined when voting via email. Ingrid pointed out that over the last years, the board has interpreted our bylaws to mean: a motion passes if it receives a plurality of votes which is not what she interprets our bylaws. She felt a clarification of our bylaws is also needed regarding when a president breaks a tie ie how does abstention count? She also asked for clarification on how a quorum is defined when we do email voting.

Liz A. moved that for e-mail votes, for a proposal to pass it must receive a majority of those eligible to vote. Seconded by Bill M. In favor: 10, opposed: 0, abstentions: 2.

b. Treasurer report

Treasurer's Midterm Report - 2002

Actual Budget To Date Estimated

2000-01 2001-02 2001-02 2001-02

Income

Membership Dues $21,180 $13,000 $12,560 $12,550

Head Tax 26,240 11,398 23,290

Reserves from Prior

Year

National Vendors 2,000 2,000 6,000 8,000

Grants 1,200 2,000 3,200

Interest 2,029 1,500 863 1,700

Proceedings Sold 4,155 240 636 900

to conferences

Back Issues 30 50 10 20

Other Income 1,210 235

Conference 11,052 12,000 ?

Surpluses

Total Income $42,856 $55,030 $33,702 $49,660

Expenses

Board Travel $9,449 $16,000 $4,494 $13,375

Board Meet. Exp. 653 1,100 1,027 1,450

Audit Comm. Exp. 546 500 122 425

Journal Printing 17,085 19,000 12,533 18,800

Journal Mailing 1,458 2,000 1,900

Professional Fees 15 20 10 20

Phone/Fax 0 100 0 10

Office Supplies 335 200 8 50

Brochure Printing 0 100 0 0

Other Printing/ 28 200 0 100

Duplicating

Postage 334 500 0 400

NECC Expenses 0 1,000 0 ?

Web Expenses 323 50 0 50

Bonding 0 500 0 0

Checks/Bank Fees 2 50 10 50

Nat. Vendor to Confs. 800 800 2,400 3,200

Grants to Confs. 500 2,000 3,200

Conference Dev. 0 1,000 463 500

Miscellaneous 0 110 0 20

Total Expenses $31,526 $43,230 $23,067 $40,382

Reserves for Memberships $10,150 $10,150

in Spring Conferences

Head Tax

Surplus $11,330 $1,650 $10,635 ($872)

William Myers

Treasurer

Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges

Belmont Abbey College

Belmont, NC 28012-1802

(704)825-6823

FAX: (630)214-7451

myers@crusader.bac.edu

c. Proposed budget

Motion to approve 2002-03 budget with the change that we anticipate 5 national vendors (not 3 as listed).

9 in favor, 1 opposed

d. Membership report

The discussion about treasurer we have had reinforces my view on the future of the membership position. I have been looking for the best way for CCSC to replace me with as little trouble as possible. This will best mean training a person for a year and then giving him/her a year at the position by appointment which would then give him/her the advantage of incumbency when the vote comes up in two years.

So my plans for next year:
1) Work with Curt to identify the new person and work with the person to help him/her to learn the job
2) New person's duties will be
    a) learn the job
    b) identify areas of improvement
3) Continue duties nec. for the consortium to do its duties
4) Some of the future issues associated with the position that the new person will need to face are a challenge to a number of people on the board but have a strong influence on this position.
    a) There are eight different regions all doing similar but slightly different things.
    b) There are eight different regions doing similar things in different manners.
    c) The eight different regions are all on different time schedules.
    d) There are between four and ten different people in each of the regions doing things that need to be coordinated with the board in general and the membership sec. in particular. (This leads anywhere from a group of 30-80 people that must be coordinated and are constantly changing.)
    e) The people in the region are constantly changing and often quickly enough that long-term relationships with board members cannot be established.
     f) These eight regions are graphically widely distributed.
    g) People coordinating the regions (i.e. regional rep's) are constantly changing.
5) Whatever ideas you have to help address these challenges (both at the board and regional level), please email me or the new person for him/her to use as input to improve the position.

Cathy Bareiss

It was also noted that Cathy plans to resign from her position effective July 31, 2002.

e. Publications report

PUBLICATIONS CHAIR REPORT — CCSC BOARD MEETING, SPRING 2002

1. PROCEEDINGS

As always, Proceedings, which constitute issues of the Journal, are the big item. The Proceedings for both South Central and Central Plains are gone to the printers.

We had to split the issue due to page counts. Final page face count (including leader pages and blank pages at the end to achieve a multiple of four pages for printing purposes) was 228 for Central Plains and 232 for South Central. (South Central also included two late papers for Rocky Mountain that were not received on time.)

As an addendum of sorts, we had a problem with Central Plains. At the 11^th hour it was discovered that there was a plagiarized paper. The decision was to pull the paper, in spite of the fact that the final manuscript had already been submitted to the printer! The printer has been most cooperative on this, and we should have no problem making printing deadlines. I expect that by the time I arrive for the Board meeting the revised manuscript will have been double-checked and the proceedings will be on their way to final copy! However, it does underscore the responsibilities of the local conference committee to insure that papers submitted for the conference are publishable!

Progress is being made on Northeastern — we currently have 19 papers formatted with one still needing some sort of translation on the graphics, plus the 20^th paper has majour problems with graphics — my scanner is not currently working, so that is posing a problem. I anticipate that within a week after my return from the Board meeting that will be resolved. We have 16 of the 30 student abstracts completed. There was a miss on the remaining 14, and the manuscripts are currently in place needing reformatting. Barring unforseen problems we should be able to get the manuscript to the printer within workable time. There was a mixup on the leader information — regional steering committee roster, conference committee roster, and so forth. Hopefully that will also be resolved prior to the deadlines and will be received.

The following is a summary to date of submissions for the three Spring conferences:

	Central Plains			South Central				Northeastern
	Papers	Prof Pres	Papers		Student Papers	Prof Pres	Papers		Student Papers	Prof Pres
Submissions	20	8	20		10	3	19		16	10
Page Counts	196	17	144		56	5	194		34	23
Average Size	9.75	2.125	7.2		5.6	1.667	10.2		2.125	2.3

A note on student papers: without the student papers the joint Central Plains/South Central proceedings would have included 362 pages of content, 10 leader pages, two additional pages for the conference title page, three pages each for conference rosters, a blank sheet between the two conferences, the index, which would have no doubt gone to two pages, and a blank sheet at the end to achieve the multiple of four – 384 page faces. We would still have been tight on the total page count. (I would also note that there were two Board members that submitted for Central Plains, with final page counts of 8 and 10 each, in the range of the average paper length.)

There are arguments both for and against inclusion of student papers in the Proceedings. One of our goals is the field of computing, and it is very difficult to encourage our students to go on to Graduate School with the salaries that industry is paying. This might be one effort that we might be making to encourage students to continue on with Graduate School and becoming the leaders in the academic community. The principle argument against including student papers is page counts and the costs of publishing an additional issue of the Journal. As a personal aside, it would appear to me at this point that the professional contribution that student papers can make would outweigh the costs of student paper publication. (As an aside, though, I would caution against the number of papers becoming too high. Ten out of 15 student papers were included for South Central with a page count of 56. If the other five had arrived we could estimate a page count for student papers of about 80, a significant portion of the Proceedings. With 30 accepted student abstracts for Northeastern, it is doubtful that the Proceedings could accept the full blown papers.

I would also note that without the 17 page plagiarized Central Plains conference paper we would have been able to accomplish the joint issue. This is not a negative comment regarding their conference committee – the conference committees work very hard to put together the program. However, it does point out how critical each paper can be! First of all, there is the fact that the paper went very long — 17 pages in final form. While it does pose additional responsibility on the local conference that eagle eye is essential in preserving the credibility of our Journal. This is not the first time that we have encountered problems — in the past I have caught a number of almost mishaps, and they’ve been headed off ahead of time! Ernie Ferguson accomplished a lot more of the pre-editing this time than I’m used to, so that possibility would have been minimized in this case. However, it does point out the need for the editor of the Consortium Journal to be integrally involved from the beginning in the preparation of the conference proceedings. (I must admit that I would have never caught this one myself — and at this point wonder whether we’ve had other situations sneak through!!!)

A note on Conference Cross-Pollenation I am seeing a lot of authors presenting at multiple conferences. There are a number of authors presenting at both South Central and Central Plains and some with Northeastern as well. There are also presenters for Central Plains and South Central that are technically much closer to the Northeastern region. Thus, our regional conferences do not necessarily dictate regional only participation. This should be born in mind as conferences schedule dates. This year all Spring conferences are on separate weekends. Several years ago all three Spring conferences were scheduled for the same weekend. It would be excellent if conferences would communicate so that conference cross-pollenation can occur.

This has a majour impact on creation of future conferences! We have an ideal situation in the Northeast – a very healthy situation. There is the Fall Eastern conference and the spring Northeastern conference, and lots and lots of cross-pollination there! The two conferences are complimenting each other. Establishment of additional regions/conferences needs to bear this in mind. Additional conferences should not detract from the currently established conferences. I have already heard from conferences how additional conferences are reducing the number of submissions for existent conference, and this in turn leads to declining credibility in our refereeing process! I would very much regret seeing our degenerating to the point that we have to accept every submission in order to accomplish a complete conference program. We, as a Board, have an obligation to our membership to insure that the Journal remains a viable rank and tenure consideration! While we bask in the growth, we must consider our purpose and our responsibilities to our membership! If the Journal’s credibility as a refereed publication ends up jeopardized we will additionally lose the quality of the submissions due to their non-value in the promotion and tenure process! Let us not lose sight of that angle on the establishment of additional conferences and regions.

I am finding more and more difficulties with graphics being exported from Word. Final copy is becoming more and more difficult to generate due to the Adobe Acrobat printer not being able to “digest” Word graphics. This is a characteristic of Microsoft software — going its own independent route. I continue to ask that all figures also be transmitted as separate graphics files, although frequently that is not the case. A confusion of authors is whether they should include the embedded graphic as well, and we have attempted to make that very clear. Guidelines for author submissions continue to be a problem. Every change seems to bring with it more need for refinement. That continues to be an ongoing process. (It ends up a balance between keeping everything as simple as possible for the authors, while providing copy that is as close as possible to final on this end.)

2. WEB SITE

Myles McNally has done a superb job of giving the web site a new look. In addition, he is very, very prompt with updating materials for the web. My experience has been that when materials are submitted he has them posted within an hour. We mustn’t get accustomed to such service, but it certainly demonstrates the currency of the web site.

3. ACM DIGITAL ARCHIVES

Progress is being made with the ACM Digital Archives. Currently available are Northeastern Proceedings for 2000 and 2001, Northwestern Proceedings for 2000, and Midwestern Proceedings for 2000. ACM currently has all proceedings from Northeastern 2000 through the Fall conferences of 2001 and is working at putting them up, although the process appears to be quite slow.

They (ACM) did request that the copyright notice appear on all individual papers since the papers constitute individual entries in the Digital Archives. One conference for last fall was completely redone to accomodate such, and all proceedings are being done so at this point. Hopefully that will speed the process of placing the Proceedings on the Digital Archives. The Spring conference pdf format will be released to ACM as soon as the blue line is checked and all final corrections are made. (I would note that they distinguish panel discussions in the Digital Archive, but do not distinguish student abstracts — student abstracts appear as any other paper without distinguishing annotations.)

4. NEWSLETTER

The principle item that I would report regarding the Newsletter is that we are at the mercy of the US Postal System since we are using Bulk Mail. The December newsletter went out of here the beginning of December, but the copy was not received until late January/early February.

The way bulk mail works is as follows. It is considered low priority, so will go out of the local post office when there is room to do so without extra “effort”, i.e., if there is a large volume of mail the bulk mail sits in a bag in the sending post office. I have no doubt in my mind that is exactly what happened to the December issue. It would have hit the post office at the same time as the Christmas mail rush was starting. From past experience, once it goes out of the sending post office and is received by the receiving post office it appears to go out of the receiving post office relatively quickly, even though technically it again becomes low priority. However, the receiving post office receives it along with the first class and seems to move it out fairly quickly. I do believe that the December issue was an exception.

The Steering Committee for Eastern investigated this a number of years back. Certain post offices were notorious for bulk mail sitting in mail bags waiting to go out. This has not been the case in the past with the Allentown post office. I am regarding the problem with the December newsletter as a “glitch”. However, it does need to be kept in mind for the future. Whenever we have a December newsletter it really must bo out prior to the end of November.

5. PUBLICATIONS DETAILS

A concern that arose recently was the responsibility for establishing the print run. This is something that must be established since underestimating will cause an additional print run which involves setup, a majour cost item. Current membership data must be available and must be reliable. It also appears that the heuristic that Bill Myers had established a number of years ago based on previous years’ data has been lost. This reduces the ability to accurately establish print run numbers. (I was given that heuristic a number of years ago, but did not save it — unfortunately — since it, at the time, was not a responsibility that fell under the Publications Chair position the [false] assumption was that the responsibility would be maintained under the proper office. That was maintained by the Treasurer for many years until the Membership Secretary chose to assume it. Updates of bylaws and standing rules need to reflect this — who is responsible in the final analysis, particularly if an underestimate results in majour costs to the Consortium treasury.

6. SUMMARY THOUGHTS

Student Papers: We must consider our purpose, and if it is to promote the field we really need to include student submissions. I am very much in favour of recommending to the individual conferences that they seriously consider Northeastern’s model. Abstracts are published, so the publication thing is there, but at the same time the full paper is not published. That is most appropriate.

Extra Issues: If we have to publish extra issues in meeting our membership’s needs, we should be doing so. We really claim that the regional conferences are our big item. However, we are also providing the national (and international) forum for our membership to be heard and to hear. We need to consider the Journal as a majour part of our existence.

Manuscript Preparation Guidelines: This is something that is definitely needed, but something that is very much going to always be a work in progress. The more specific they become the more minor violations cause majour problems in final copy preparation! This is something that I will never be able to fully understand — the more complete the guidelines are implies that the final copy should require less work — that has not been my experience at all! This year Northeastern submitted nothing in WordPerfect, and I had less problems with that set of proceedings, knock on wood since I’m not done! However, because the manuscripts were not submitted in WordPerfect they were not as precise and were able to be worked with much easier!

Graphics are definitely a problem — and while Adobe Acrobat is tailored for Microsoft products the graphics that come out of Microsoft products end up causing even more problems!

I have no idea when we will have a set of manuscript preparation guidelines that really work. The poorest sets seem to give the least problems in final manuscript preparation!

In summary, we are healthy. We have some considerations to preserve our current respectability, but if we approach all of this properly we can actually improve our status, which is a service to our membership.

Respectively submitted,

John G. Meinke, Publications Chair

f. Conference coordinator report

Report to the Board of CCSC on Formation of the Mid-South Region

William Mitchell

I would like to share with the Board the level of interest that I have received in my second try to form a steering committee for a new region in the mid-south. I will present a motion to the Board to approve the exploratory meeting on April 20 at Christian Brothers University in Memphis and the recognition of a new region should they decide to organize a regional conference for the spring of 2003.

There are obviously preparations that the Consortium must make to add a new region. The first is adjust the workload on the Editor (and on the Registrar). We did not try to DECREASE the number of conferences so that one volunteer registrar could handle the load, instead we have spent most of this year debating how we can reorganize how the Consortium operates to handle the requirements of growth. We may have to spend part of next year helping the Editor prepare for a greater workload.

The second is the impact that a new region will have on existing regions. I have 10 institutions that have volunteered representatives to serve on the steering committee. It is apparent that many of these institutions have never sent either a presenter or attendee to one of our conferences and the non-involvement of these schools is the reason for starting the region. The remaining volunteers are enthused about ONE past encounter, indicating that while they enjoyed the experience, they did not feel a part of the region they attended, principally because the region conference only came into their geographic area infrequently. The folks at Millsaps have flown to South Central conferences for years and have been rewarded now with the hosting of a second conference (I visited with Dr. McCarley three years ago about starting a new region and he said that he’d have to fly up to Missouri, so he’d just as soon fly to Texas). Other Mississippi schools will come when the conference is in Mississippi, every five years (3 Mississippi colleges and 4 Louisiana colleges sent presenters to the 1998 conference in Millsaps (10 of 31 presentations). Only 6 presenters came from those Mississippi Colleges in the next three SC conferences and 5 from the Louisiana colleges (out of 110 presenters). For some of these schools it will still be shorter for them to drive to Texas than to Memphis. UALR will go to the Mid-South region instead of Central Plains or South Central, given the new alternative. We are about as far west in Arkansas as will be affected.

ARKANSAS

Dr. Mitchell,
I think a regional conference, such as you propose for Memphis, is a good idea. My faculty and I would be willing to support such a conference if the conference including programs specifically addressing the concerns of Computer Information Systems programs.

One of my faculty, Ms. Jean Hendrix, has expressed an interest in serving on the steering committee.
Dr. James Roiger, Chair
Division of Computer Information Systems
University of Arkansas at Monticello

Dr. Mitchell,

I am interested in attending any future conferences in the Memphis area and would be willing to recruit my students as well.

Thanks,

Terri Hopkins

Division of Computer Information Systems
University of Arkansas - Monticello

Sounds great. I miss the conferences.

Donna Satterfield (steering committee of original Midwest Conference)

Cybercollege of Arkansas
Instructor of Information Science
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

MISSISSIPPI

William,

Thank you for attempting to form this conference. I would be interested in participating and working on the steering committee.
I have copied a collegue that may be interested in this conference.

Thank you,
Carla Lowery
MIS Instructor
Division of Business and Communications
Mississippi University for Women
W Box 940, Columbus, MS 39701

I did go to the conference at Millsaps. I would not be interested in hosting the event at MC any time soon, but I would be willing to travel 300 or so miles to the three organizational meetings and assume some responsibilities for organizing the conference..

Deborah B. Woodall                            woodall@mc.edu
Computer Science                               Box 4025.Clinton.MS.39058
Mississippi College                               601.925.3466

I'm willing to help. If you hold a meeting in Memphis, let me know and I will attend if possible. The name "Consortium for omputing in Small Colleges" is not that attractive to some of us... But, I think this sounds like a good idea overall!

Several years ago, I helped start the "Southern MIS Association" which we turned into "Southern AIS". It is still going strong as a
regional affiliate of AIS, with meetings in Atlanta each year.

Best wishes,
Brian

Brian J. Reithel, Ph.D.,CDP
Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations
and Area Coordinator for MIS/POM
Holman 240
University, MS 38677
reithel@bus.olemiss.edu

ALABAMA

This was my first year to attend the conference at Nashville and I was impressed with both the organization and papers. I brought a group of students who participated in the programming contest. Would a new conference also include the chance for students to attend and possibly have a programming contest

Jean Henderson
University of North Alabama
LOUISIANA

I do think that this is a good idea, and I would be willing to serve on the steering committee. ULM has a new library with facilities for
hosting small conferences such as this. Furthermore, the Dept. of Computer Science will be moving into a new building this ummer. I would like to see ULM host one of the spring conferences.

Virginia Eaton
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Louisiana at Monroe

TENNESSEE

I think this is a good idea and you would like to serve on the steering committee (meet in Memphis)

Valerie Chu at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis

We will not be at SIGCSE, but would be interested in a planning meeting here or elsewhere in the mid-south ...

From: "Dan Brandon" <dbrandon@cbu.edu> Computer Science, Christian Brothers University

MISSOURI

This is a good idea. Several years ago there was an attempt to set one up for eastern Missouri and Western Illinois, but, unfortunately, there was not enough interest. I would certainly come to such a conference (please schedule so it doesn't conflict with the Missouri Academy of Science - I hate conflicting loyalties). I would be willing to serve on the steering committee and otherwise help to get this off the ground.

David Naugler
Department of Computer Science
Southeast Missouri State University

g. Guidelines for small departments committee

Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Guidelines for small departments

William Mitchell

Rick Koontz, Grace College (MW), Scott Thede, Depauw University (MW), James.Caristi, Valporaiso University (MW).

Cathy Bareiss, Olivet Nazarene Universtiy (MW), Will Mitchell, UA-Little Rock (CP), Susan Dean Samford University (SE),

Barbara Owens, Southwestern College (SC), Laurie Smith King, College of the Holy Cross (NE).

The committee met by listserv and reached the following consensus.

1. Small computing programs have difficulty maintaining expertise even in the core topics of an expanding discipline. Faculty regularly have more than six course preparations a year and have little time left for researching a specialty.

a. “With only 3 people in a department, a faculty member easily ends up with 3 (or more) preparations per semester. Course preparation is always very time intensive since courses never stay the same from one year to the next. So it boils down to no time. No time for good preparation, no time for grading, no time for keeping current. “

b. “This is certainly one of the larger frustrations of our small department, and I would love to find better ways to stay current in the many different subject areas that I am required to teach. In addition, trying to determine which new technologies should be incorporated into the program adds another layer of complexity. For example, what do I do with Microsoft's .NET initiative? If I decide to move to .NET, when do I learn it, and where are the students shorted because I decided to take that direction?”

c. “yes, it is practically impossible to main focus on a specialty, at least if one teaches in that setting year after year after year with no way to get away.”

2. Because so much effort is devoted to delivery, there is little energy left for assessment. Small programs have little idea how to measure their success or improve their weaknesses.

a. “Assessment is vital. If we have to choose only 1 area to attack, assessment would get my vote. I urgently need to improve our ability to objectively measure the quality of the program here.”

b. “I see issues number 1 and 2 as the major problem facing small departments
and finding a solution would be something I would like to see us tackle.”

3. There seem to be few standard tools for assessment of computing education that are relevant to small programs. Curriculum 2001 only applies to CS.

a. “We've used the MFAT, and don't feel that it tells us anything useful. To me, the most useful potential of this whole project would be if somehow we can develop meaningful alternatives for assessment.

b. “Standard measuring tools are indeed inadequate. It would be helpful
for a group coming from CCSC to develop something in this area.”

c. “In terms of issue 3 - we specifically decided not to use the MFAT test because it did not meet our needs, so our assessment (that we end up actually doing) is more antidotal. In terms of Curriculum 2001 - we take it as strong guidance but have deviated from it as appropriate. “

4. ABET standards are not appropriate measures of quality for small programs.

a. “A way to judge the quality of my program in comparison to other small programs. ABET cannot meet this need. This could help me show my institution where changes are necessary (they don't always just take my word for it - but usually take the word of people from the outside).”

b. “I am thinking that creating some benchmarks is a doable first step.”

Solutions to these problems are not easy, but the committee had the following suggestions:

1. “Practical help in meeting the challenges unique to a small department. This could involve sample curriculum, topic mentors (for example, I am teaching graphics and feel very unprepared and would appreciate help from someone else - but I would be very willing and able to help others teaching database if they felt weak in that area), etc.

2. “’information sharing’ and if there was an effective, attainable way to accomplish this, I would say this should be our focus.”

3. “One idea for help could be funded workshops for small college faculty that develop sets of course materials and provide some instruction in course content. This would be especially helpful in some of the new courses in the compressed approach in CC2001.

4. “It would be helpful to have some small college benchmarks which could be used for comparison (and maybe as leverage with the administration.) In addition, the ability to jointly develop or trade departmental assessment instruments and results could be extremely beneficial.”

5. “Benchmarks may be usable as indirect assessment measures (2 and 3), and may also provide some additional leverage (might help with 1). In the process, we may be able to identify some 'best practice' ideas that can also be distributed back to the other schools (1).”

6. “ Develop draft criteria and circulate at least to each regional CCSC conference for discussion and suggestions. I think this would generate a lot of ideas and possible assessment tools.”

7. “Certainly one step would be applying as a consortium to NSF or the like for workshops geared to small colleges. These workshops could be both process and product to adapt the 2001 curriculum.”

8. “I think an NSF grant will eventually be the way to go, but we must do a bit of ground work first before we can write the proposal (including justifying the need).”

The committee is in favor of CCSC taking on a project in the area of helping small colleges assess their programs and address their weaknesses. The project must aim at some short-term, practical information that can be disseminated through conference panels. The project could collect data through our website and with a survey form inserted in the September newsletter. The Board is asked to authorize this committee to act as a steering committee for another year with the authority to do the following:

1. Develop a survey instrument that can be distributed to our membership that solicits “best practices” in delivery of computing instruction, maintenance of the computing environment, program assessment, and faculty growth. A subcommittee will develop and pre-test the instrument and will place it on the web and in the newsletter. The results will be presented at panels at regional conferences during the year.

2. A curriculum subcommittee will survey curriculum at a sample of small computing programs to develop a profile of topics being taught so that comparisons with Curriculum 2001 can be made. The goal of this preliminary study will be to clarify the overlap of CS, IS, IT, etc., in small computing programs.

3. A third subcommittee will study our membership to determine the nature of the computing programs they represent and learn how representative our members are of small computing programs nationally. This data will be useful in justifying a proposal to NSF that would be based on studying our membership for attitudes and opinions and reactions to sample standards.

4. As the work of the subcommittees becomes available, members of the committee will develop an NSF proposal that addresses the needs that have been clarified. This proposal would seek support for large-scale data collection and fund the development of tentative benchmarks that would be useful for program assessment.

h. In-cooperation with SIGCSE

In-Cooperation with SIGCSE Report

Submitted by Ingrid Russell

All eight CCSC conferences for 2002 have submitted the SIGCSE in-cooperation form to ACM. When requests are approved, announcements of these conferences will be available at ACM’s on-line calendar. I have requested that they also appear in CACM. However, the change of staff at ACM has apparently delayed this process.

Please note that all printed as well as web brochures and conference material should indicate the in-cooperation with status. Please note, this is not a sponsorship, it is an in-cooperation status. Please use the correct words. Also, make sure the ACM logo appears on the printed material as well as the website, in addition to CCSC’s logo.

Conference chairs as well as vendor chairs should be aware that SIGCSE may send some material for display at the conferences.

Each conference must submit a report at the end of the conference. I recall Bill discussing a template to use for sending the report. Have we been doing this?

i. National Vendor report

National Vendor Report

Submitted by Ingrid Russell

I have contacted several book and hardware/software vendors. Many have expressed interest. At this time, the following vendors have signed up:

Microsoft (check in the mail)

Metrowerks

McGrawHill

Scott Jones (from last year)

In addition, Microsoft has committed to be a sponsor of all programming contests at CCSC this year.

NCSI, the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) indicated interest and will be sending us a check.

I plan to go around at SIGCSE and recruit more national vendors. The national vendor form will also be available at CCSC’s booth. If you know of any possible vendors who I should contact, let me know.

The following information has been given to vendors as a benefit to the national vendor program:

- vendors will be allowed to attend all 8 regional conferences at no extra cost and will be given a display table in the vendor area.

- Vendors will be acknowledged in all printed and web conference material with a link to their website

- Vendors will be acknowledged on CCSC’s website with a link to their website

- Vendors will be acknowledged in each issue of the journal.

- When made available by a conference, vendor representatives are eligible to receive a copy of conference attendees.

Please make sure you let your conference chair and vendor chair know of the list of national vendors as well as of the benefits to vendors. While national vendors are informed that it is their responsibility to contact the conference vendors chair and make arrangements, please ask your vendor chair to contact the local representative of each national and encourage them to attend. Participation at several of our conferences will encourage vendors to renew next year.

j. Approval of conference budgets

Will states that we need to address the question as to whether a conference is allowed to plan a deficit. Can a region plan a conference one year with a surplus and then follow with a conference the next year with a deficit.

Liz moved to accept Southeastern budget as submitted and to accept Northeast=s budget with the change that they increase the number of national vendors by +1. Seconded by Cathy B. Passed unanimously.

k. Report of audit committee

Susan Dean reported that financial records are in good shape. Cathy supplied sufficient membership reports.

There is currently no auditing system for comparing registrations to deposits.

Report follows:

Report of the Audit of CCSC Fiscal Year 2000-2001 2/27/2002

Take each bank statement provided by the treasure and match the July 31^st amount with the amount stated on the treasurer’s report. All accounts checked.

Randomly select a month in one of the accounts and match the checks entered in the treasurer’s record with the list of checks shown in the matching bank statement. We verified February 2001.

Randomly select a month in one of the accounts and match the deposits listed by the treasurer to those listed on the bank statement. We verified May 2001.

Pick a random disbursement for each month and verify the documentation supporting this reimbursement (match check written to check request or bill statement; check requests and bill statements are organized by region). Done – proper documentation found for every one of them.

Determine whether deposits reported by, or through in case of locally deposited funds, the treasurer as being CCSC dues match the list of new memberships and membership renewals as reported by the Membership Secretary for the appropriate time periods.

Unable to verify for 2000-2001. This reporting item must be significantly redefined and broadened in scope. We were able to verify that the funds shown in the deposit reports provided to us by Cathy were accurately reflected in the bank statements and in the Treasurer’s records, but we need significantly more ability to cross-check the relationship between the money amounts and the actual membership information.

We are working on a detailed definition of what information we need, and from what sources, in order to be able to do this task properly. In order to properly perform this function, we are essentially going to need to be able to audit not only the CCSC’s financial data, but also the CCSC’s other valuable information resource, the membership data.

We have also discovered that there are other funds, such as payments made by national vendors, which come to the CCSC through other sources, such as the President, and we need to include tracking of these in our revised instructions.

Verify that all the appropriate amounts have been reported on the tax forms.

We are convinced that the amounts are accurate, and have verified that the revision we made after auditing 1999-2000 to the audit instructions have made this more straightforward.

Verify that all appropriate forms have been filed when due.

Date of Bill’s signature on the copies of the forms are clearly within the period allowed.

Final Report on 2000-2001

We feel confident that the financial matters for the Consortium were correctly handled and recorded by the Treasurer during fiscal year 2000-2001.

For the future

We look forward to completing the definition of and implementing a process by which we can similarly audit the membership data, and track the relationships between that and the financial side! With the extremely rapid increase in the number of regions in the last few years, and with establishment of new sources of income such as the national vendors, the flow of membership and financial data has become correspondingly more complex, and we are working to establish a procedure by which the audit committee can receive sufficient information to support tracking and verification of what is happening in all these areas. We also need to include in our process ways to verify that actual practices conform to the standing rules and bylaws, and items passed by the board as reflected in the minutes. A more comprehensive version of the audit procedure is being designed, and we expect to make a proposal to the CCSC Board of how this should be done, by April 17, 2002.

2000-2001 Audit Committee

Susan Dean, Chair

Joanne Sexton

Suzanne Smith

l. Relationship between national and regions report, submitted electronically by Rob Bryant:

Dear Board Members,

The committee formed to study current relations between the national

CCSC (national) and individual regions (regions) has reached the

conclusions indicated below in this report to the board. Members of the

committee were: Rob Bryant (chair), Anne Cable, Ingrid Russell, and Dean

Sanders.

The charge of the committee was to solicit feedback from regions as to

how their region functions in relation to the current national

structure, and what potential problems might occur if some more

regulatory structure was imposed on the regions by national. This

feedback was prompted by asking regional board members to respond to

some questions about regional governance. We also asked for any

additional feedback not covered by the prepared questions.

The committee received responses from six regions (RM, NE, SC, SE, CP, &

NW). Below are the conclusions the committee reached based on the

received feedback.

1. It was clear to the committee many regions do not currently have

bylaws in place and it would be beneficial to do so.

2. Since only two regions specified defined positions and others are

getting them specified, it might be useful to define a common set of

positions for all regions. The core set of positions will continue to

evolve as the need is warranted by regions or national.

3. Most regions do not have a clear set of policies/procedures for

regional organizing members to follow from year to year. Developing a

common set of policies/procedures would help with the governance of

regional activities.

4. To this end, a template provided by national would go a long way

toward solving problems down the road for both national and regions.

5. National needs better organizational structure also. Most regions

are operating effectively due to a set of core committed people. Adding

structure will help to continue to attract such types.

In light of these conclusions, the committee recommends the following:

1. Each region establish bylaws for their region (preferably using a

national supplied template).

2. Each region establish a core set of key positions as defined by

national. (already begun, if not completed due to Cathy Bariess'

efforts). The recently approved key positions are:

regional treasurer

regional editor

regional registration chair

regional webmaster

3. These efforts be completed in a reasonable time period established by

the national board members (hopefully we can set a date this spring

meeting).

Complete survey responses are available from Rob Bryant

(bryant@gonzaga.edu).

Respectfully Submitted,

Rob Bryant, committee chair.

IV. New Business

Liz A. stated that work is in progress for monetary support for having SIGCSE speakers present at CCSC regional conferences.

Anne C. raised the issue of plagiarism and how to address.

Meeting was adjourned at 12:20am.

I. Call to Order

II. Reports / Discussion

Regional Reports

2003 Conference

2004 Conference

Travel Reimbursement

Format for Journal Papers

Web Submission of Papers

Respectfully submitted by

Respectfully submitted by

Respectfully submitted by

Respectfully submitted by

Proposed standing rule addition for Article VII --

Proposed standing rule addition for Article VII --

Other Reports

In-Cooperation with SIGCSE Report

National Vendor Report

Report of the Audit of CCSC Fiscal Year 2000-2001 2/27/2002

Final Report on 2000-2001

IV. New Business