You are here:  home > committees > april01minutes

Meeting called to order at 1:10 pm.

Executive Committee Members in Attendance:

Pat Greany, Lance Peterson, Howard Frank, John Capinera, Richard Mankin, Teresa DuChene, Nancy Epsky, Jeff Shapiro, Rob Meagher, Tom Walker, Norm Leppla, Ken Bloem, John Sivinski, Herb Oberlander, Katie Heggemeier andStephanie Bloem.

Opening Remarks (President Greany) - agenda on file

President Greany thanked everyone for attending. Minutes from the Executive Committee meeting of December 2000 were reviewed. A motion to accept them as printed was approved. In the future the Executive Committee minutes will be e-mailed to Committee members 1-2 days before the next scheduled meeting. President Greany announced that Herb Oberlander agreed to serve the remaining term as Member-at-Large instead of Susan Webb.

Business Manager Report (Teresa DuChene) - written report on file

Financial report current up-to March 31^st. Steady flow of membership renewals. Thirty-six memberships have been paid with credit cards. Average monthly cost for credit card purchases between 6-8%. This can be reduced further if additional information from the members is available to the credit card company. For example, street address where credit card statement arrives and "V" code number, which is a 4-digit number in addition to the numbers on the credit card.

The IRS sent a letter to the Society with a fine for $800.00 for late submittal of form 990. Teresa contested the fine and the IRS reversed the ruling with the understanding that the filing in the future will be done on time. Teresa filled-out and filed the 990 form, but recommends that a new person be hired to file the tax form on time. John Capinera asked whether the Financial Committee reviewed the 990 submitted by Teresa – yes they did. Discussion about who should do the Society’s taxes for the year 2001. Teresa could do the taxes but some compensation for this service should be agreed upon, as this is above-and-beyond her current responsibilities. Rob Meagher suggested that we should get an idea of how much the tax preparation firms in the area charge for such a service.

Financially the Society appears to be slightly better off that at this same time last year. Perhaps the new invoicing has contributed to this or the availability of credit card charges may have helped. A motion to accept the Financial Report as submitted was passed.

John Sivinski requested clarification from the Executive on whether each FES symposium will still receive the $1,000.00 to help cover the costs for some of the invited speakers. Yes, the money will be available. Some discussion about whether available monies should be transferred from one symposia to another. It was agreed by all that no movement of monies should be made. However, it was agreed that the Behavioral Ecology Symposium could still receive the customary allocation of up to $1,000. John thanked the Executive and left the meeting early.

2001 Meeting

Local Arrangements Committee (Howard Frank Teresa DuChene) - handouts & written report on file

Teresa and Howard visited the Hotel property where the next annual meeting will be held. They toured the rooms that are available for different activities. Some rooms have pleated separators between the larger meeting rooms and this may be a problem if one room has a soft-spoken speaker and another has a very loud speaker. Perhaps microphone rentals should be considered. Commercial exhibits can be set-up in the foyer outside of meeting rooms. A nominal fee will be charged to those exhibitors that need electrical power to their areas. Riverside Lobby will have the Registration desk. Scallywag's restaurant opens at 7 am and serves all 3 daily meals. The McCoy room is where the awards luncheon will be held. The room is noisy - air conditioner is very loud. The plan is to have only ceiling fans during the luncheon. Poster session could be held in the Riverside Lobby or Evinrude room. Good shuttle/tram service to the beach. Umbrella rentals are available but only sign-out for beach towels. Luncheon menu still needs to be firmed-up. Ant workshop can be held in different rooms depending on the number of participants. Reception will be held in a space adjacent to the pool area. Live music can be hired for $500.00. Historical sites close by to Hotel. Gas and deli are available across the road from the Hotel.

Renting of audiovisual equipment. We could save some money if we brought our own. Poster board rentals - the price quoted was $90.00 per board per day plus a $30.00 delivery charge - versus buying our own poster set-up equipment. The recommended number of panels to purchase is 6 panels that hold posters on each side. For the 2000 meeting the rental fees were about $470.00. The problem is transportation of the panels to and from the meeting site rather than storage. UF could store the panels for the Society. Transportation would require a passenger mini-van. The Committee gave Howard discretionary authority to spend up to $2,000.00 in the purchase of poster boards or to make the decision to rent these items.

Possible site visits to USDA and UF laboratories at Fort Pierce and Vero Beach. The station directors at these locations should be contacted. No formal bus ride will be provided, but interested persons should sign-up one day in advance so that the laboratories know how many visitors to expect.

Program (John Capinera) - no written report submitted

Three Symposia are in the works for the FES Annual Meeting: David Hall and Norm Leppla on Augmentative Biological Control, Jim Carpenter, Ken and Stephanie Bloem on Safeguarding US Agriculture and John Sivinski and Jim Tumlinson on Behavioral Ecology. It was agreed by the Committee that no extra funds can be allocated for Symposia. Only the assigned $1,000.00. Ant Workshop organized by David Oi - will be a hands-on training to ID ants. Attendees can earn CEU's, is this true? The arrangements for CEU's can be made. Last year the price for the workshop was $70.00 and attendees received lunch. If no lunch is provided there should be a reduced rate for the workshop participants. An estimate of how many participants are expected should be made and a reduction of the fees should be attempted. The $250.00 donation from Dow Chemical should go towards this workshop. It was agreed that no lunch would be provided. Fee should be no more than $50.00 which is 1/2 of the registration.

Will students be coming to the luncheon?

Only two-paper submission have been received thus far.

Pioneer Lecture (Norm Leppla)

Norm reported the John Sivinski and Joe Funderburk have agreed to be nominated as members for the Pioneer Lecture Committee. Norm, Howard Weems and Harold Denmark will continue to be part of this Committee; Norm will continue to be chair. Norm and Waldy Klassen have been editing the paper written by Alan Baumholder on the screwworm fly - already have been requests for this article. Trying to eliminate the pictures and reduce it in size for publication in the Florda Entomologist. At this time an abstract with reference to the HTML file on the web should be considered. Howard Weems and Norm have also been working on the paper written by Lewis Wright on John Creighton. A speaker has been confirmed for delivering the Pioneer lecture honoring Carrol Smith. The speaker is Phil Callahan his title will be "The paramagnetic force in plant growth and insect control".

Norm also informed the Committee that two of the speakers for the Augmentative Biological Control Symposium are coming in from the across the nation (AZ and CA) (symposium outline on file). The Committee discussed making the complimentary or reduced-cost rooms available to these speakers.

Newsletter (Nancy Epsky) - no written report submitted

Items needed for the next Newsletter - May to June volume #2: Please have these items to Nancy or Lois by May 15^th at the latest. Presidents message, minutes from this meeting, hotel and FES registration forms to attend the 2001 Annual Meeting, biographies for the new nominees for Members-at-Large, second call for nominations for honors and awards, program highlights, general meeting site information. Also, Nancy wondered about the FL State Science Fair winners. Some discussion by Committee members that indicated that the FES awards at the State Fair were a bit confused - appears that they were announced but not awarded.

Publications - Florida Entomologist (Pat Greany for Richard Baranowski) - no written report submitted

The first issue with new format for the Florida Entomologist is now in print. The new format allows each page to contain approximately 30% more information. The new cost per page is $58.00 up from $45.00. The cover continues to be goldenrod color and each article begins on a new page. Bell and Howell Inc. has proposed to the Society to reproduce and scan the Florida Entomologist into their database and offer the information only to their subscribers. Provide them with1 or 2 copies of the Journal and they will do the rest. They will pay royalties to the Society. The issue of intellectual property was discussed. Propose to Bell and Howell to buy a subscription ($50.00 per year) and then deduct the royalties from this amount. A motion to accept this proposal was passed by the Executive, but the vote was not unanimous.

President Greany informed the Executive that Teresa and Pat still have not been able to collect payment for page charges from two articles submitted by members to the Florida Entomologist - one from Tennessee (Sudbrink) and one from Venezuela (Hugo Cerda).

Publications - Florida Entomologist Online (Tom Walker) - written report on file

Tom had several recommendations concerning the IFWA charges.

Letter by John Heppner objecting the IFWA charges - The Committee members read a copy of the letter and the response drafted by Tom Walker was discussed.

Reduction of IFWA charges - Tom suggested that the IFWA charge be reduced by 50% to $50.00 per scientific article and $25.00 per scientific note. This is in response to the Florida Entomologist having received a (much) higher than expected number of Library subscription renewals. At the last Executive Committee meeting, only 10 Libraries had renewed their memberships. By April 5 Teresa had received 148 subscriptions down from 176 in the year 2000. After some discussion, a motion to maintain the IFWA fees at current values for one entire year was passed by the Executive.

Set IFWA fees each spring for June through March issues - In order to more accurately estimate subscriptions for the year. Motion to accept this suggestion was passed.

Beginning with June 2001 issue, contact Painter Printing to deliver ready-to-post files for each issue no later than 7 days after the issue has been mailed - Motion to accept this suggestion was passed by the Executive. Teresa should investigate if additional costs need to be incurred in order to guarantee speedy service.

FES should investigate making the HTML versions of articles complete and easy to browse - In lieu of PDF files. HTML files could include graphics. Committee agreed with this suggestion. HTML loads very easily and is much faster than PDF files especially if the user is on a modem. Also relevant if our journal were ever to get into something like PubMedCentral.

Computer Resources (Richard Mankin)

The new newsletter mailing list has been well-received by the membership and 5-10 new list members are being added monthly as Florida Entomological Society (FES) members request to be added. Painter Printing is now producing (for a small fee) the html files that the web site uses for full text searches. The new issue searches ok, but we are still working out a few "bugs" in the web page display. The web site is now up to about 700 requests per week, most of them for Florida Entomologist searches or articles. Colony One modified the access to the FES membership database so that we can now download copies to use in making mailing lists. Teresa DuChene has compiled an updated database that we plan to use as a replacement for the version on the web site now. This means that some members who have updated their web site information since February may have to re-enter the changes if they did not also notify Teresa.

Student Affairs

Student Activities and Awards (Greg Nuessly)

No report at this time. Greg was absent from the meeting.

Student Members

Katie Heggemeier is getting a list of current student members that she will forward to the President; the list includes about 5-10 members. Committee members remarked that students are not eligible for awards if they are not members of the Society. Teresa reported that 18 students had not renewed their membership. Katie put letters in all the student's mailboxes informing them about the Society and the upcoming Annual Meeting.

Education Committee (Jeff Shapiro) - no written report submitted

Working on Operating Guidelines update. State Fair went well. Displays from DPI, APHIS, UF, mosquito control and beekeepers were present at the Fair. The issue of recognition of the FES was discussed. Perhaps banners over the doors acknowledging FES.
 
 

Membership Committee (Steve LaPointe)

No report at this time. Steve was absent from the meeting.

Sustaining Members (Lance Peterson) - no written report submitted

Membership Drive - A letter to 61 current, past and potential sustaining members was written by Lance and sent out through Teresa in January informing them of the Society, mentioning that we are soliciting exhibitors for the Annual Meeting and suggesting a possible financial contribution to the FES. Bill Rhodes from Becton-Dickinson volunteered to help Lance with membership drive. So far we have received no response. Sustaining membership is only $65.00 per year. Perhaps time to send out another letter, perhaps this time the letters should return to Lance.

Operating Guidelines and Bylaws (Lance Peterson) - no written report submitted

The updating of the guidelines and bylaws continues forward. President Greany has found many pages that need updating. Please e-mail Lance any changes that need to be incorporated, preferably in the next couple of weeks. Lance is making every effort to have the files updated and ready to hand to John Capinera on July 1, 2001. The Education committee needs to submit an updated statement to include in the Operating Guidelines. Should a hard copy be printed to hand over to the incoming President? PDF file that can be downloaded through Acrobat Reader as a read-only file. Richard Mankin will help with this. Lance will have the Word file to Richard before the end of June.

Honors and Awards (Ken Bloem and Stuart Reitz) - no written report submitted

No nominations have been submitted to this Committee. A follow-up call for nominations will be published in the next Newsletter. Will be in contact with Gary Leibee for advice on how to get nominations.

Fiscal (Rob Meagher) - no written report submitted

Fiscal committee met earlier today and revised all the books; everything looks in order. The Committee is seeking a new member.

Old Business

Question by Stephanie Bloem concerning the amount to pay for a family membership - when 2 entomologists with the same last name only want to receive 1 copy of newsletter and journal. Committee agreed that $60.00 was a "fair" price.

Copies of the Program be made available at the Annual Meeting Site. John Capinera will have the UF Secretary format the Program and have them available for those who want them.

LCD Projectors for presenters at the Annual Meeting. Send an e-mail confirmation for paper submission acceptance and mention the LCD policies there.

Next meeting will be held at the Marriott Hotel during the Annual Meeting in August. Date and time are still to be determined. Meeting adjourned at 3:50 pm.

MINUTES PREPARED BY S. BLOEM, SECRETARY, FROM RECORDED TAPES AND NOTES.

You are here:  home > committees > april01minutes