Annual Business Meeting Minutes, October 11, 2006, Dallas, Texas

Mission
Strategic Priorities
Partnerships
Governance
International
Our History

The EDUCAUSE annual business meeting was called to order by Chair of the Board Robyn Render at 4:55 p.m. on October 11, 2006 in Dallas, Texas.

Render thanked the membership for the opportunity to serve on the Board.

Reports

Nomination and Election Committee Report - Martin Ringle

Ringle thanked the members of the committee. The charge of the committee is to develop a slate of four candidates. The committee evaluated 67 candidates, using leadership as the most important criteria, and then considering gender, ethnicity, and type of institution. Eight names were submitted to the Board. Four were selected to appear on the slate. The percentage of members voting was 31.6%. Tracy Mitrano and Scott Siddall were elected to the EDUCAUSE Board and will serve four-year terms beginning January 1, 2007. Ringle asked the membership to submit qualified nominations

Treasurer's Report - Robyn Render

Ellen Waite-Franzen could not be present, so Render read her report into the record.

EDUCAUSE continues to operate in a fiscally sound manner, while providing quality service and programs for its membership. The operating costs are in line with the annual budget and there are ample reserves.

The association received an unqualified auditor's report with no audit findings related to its grants or other operations for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2005.

EDUCAUSE is in good financial condition. The association has seen its reserves grow during the year and they are in good shape. Investments have done well through the years. The reserves are strong enough to allow the Board to approve a motion at its August meeting that would allow for a draw down on reserves of between 5% and 7% each year to be used for Strategic Initiatives. This is a positive move, as it will add additional services for the membership without providing additional risk to the financial well being of the association.

At its last meeting on Sunday, the Board approved the proposed budget for the 2007 fiscal year along with the 2007 Program Plan.

The annual conference, concluding tomorrow, provides a substantial amount of the annual revenue and appears to be a programmatic and financial success again this year. Registered attendees of the conference exceed 6,000 this year.

President's Report - Brian L. Hawkins

  • The past year has been very active, with many existing and new programs.
  • Each program is always operating in a sound financial manner.
  • The member survey returned the highest member satisfaction ratings ever.
  • The Terry Hartle presentation was mentioned. Of the four issues most important to higher education, financial aid is number one and information technology is number three. ACE and other higher education association are benefiting from their partnerships with EDUCAUSE.
  • Membership is up 5% from last year, the eighth consecutive year of increase.
  • Core data continues to be successful, with 920 participants.
  • Regional conferences continue to be successful.
  • Frye Institute continues to be successful and now has is guaranteed for the future.
  • We began to charge for the .edu domain service this year.
  • Thought leadership summits will continue.
  • The Board approved continuing work on the grand challenges. The specific programs are
    1. Renewing and rethinking campus IT services
    2. Determining what IT costs
    3. Improving student retention and graduation through analytics
    4. Managing cyberinfrastructure strategically
    5. IT workforce development

Vice President's Report - Cynthia Golden

  • Golden identified her area of responsibility as professional development.
  • New initiatives -
    1. The Enterprise 2006 conference was held this past August and will be held again in 2007.
    2. There was increased emphasis on administrative/enterprise systems at the annual conference this year in response to member requests
    3. A series of summits was launched and will be continued next year. These summits are thought-leadership events and focus on items of importance to our community. Business Continuity and Identity Management are topics for 2006. What we have learned from these events is resulting in presentations, guidelines, white papers and other resources to benefit the larger community.
    4. A book called "Cultivating Careers: Professional Development for Campus IT" was published as part of the EDUCAUSE e-book series.
    5. A leadership development institute was held.
  • The management and leadership programs of the EDUCAUSE Institutes continue to be in high demand, and the new learning technologies leadership program will continue for a third year.
  • A mentoring resource kit was developed to guide people through the mentoring process, and is available via the EDUCAUSE Web.
  • Mely Tynan will chair the 2007 conference which will be held in Seattle.
  • Darrel Huish will chair the 2008 conference in Orlando. Darrel will be the first individual from a community college to chair the conference.
  • The regional conference strategy continues to provide numerous professional development and career opportunities. This year the regionals served about 1800 people. It continues to be true from year to year that approximately 75-80% of attendees do not attend the annual conference, hence the regionals are serving a different market.
  • We continued to develop and enhance connect.educause.edu, a service that provides content created by both EDUCAUSE staff and members through blogs, news aggregation and other emerging technologies.
  • EDUCAUSE produced and delivered over 180 podcasts of EDUCAUSE related content, interviews, and conference sessions.
  • We significantly redesigned several Web sites, including the Security Task Force and Professional Development.
  • We continued to maintain syndicated information feeds (RSS) for all EDUCAUSE Resource Center topics, new Job listings, new EQ, and EDUCAUSE Review content, and new Resource Center content.
  • Next year you will see a new version of the EDUCAUSE resource center released that provides improved access to content and resources on the EDUCAUSE Web site.

Vice President's Report - Richard Katz

  • ECAR had another great year and is now at 409 subscriptions, which is up 50 since last year.
  • We published in the areas of research and IT.
  • We will conduct a second study on IT security.
  • Will also publish in December on IT and Students.
  • The first ECAR academy was held this year.
  • The 2007 research agenda is ambitious; we have studies planned on IT and Business Continuity, and on Students and IT.
  • Corporate relations remain good with 52 corporate partners and 33 new corporate members.
  • Collaboration-We contracted to do research for CHEMA, and we are planning to support the Australasia conference.
  • We worked with AGEISS on the enterprise conference and on tracks for the annual conference.

Vice President's Report - Mark Luker

  • EDUCAUSE has moved into a leadership position in the Washington, D.C. world of IT policy.
  • We have organized other associations, including the major presidential associations, to address the issues of CALEA and have provided staff support for the higher education lawsuit, in which it was determined that most universities need not comply. (The meaning of compliance has yet to be defined.)
  • EDUCAUSE has also led higher education on telecommunications reform, which is now focused on net neutrality, an important issue that will be a factor in the future legislation and regulations.
  • We are also active in P2P file sharing, data loss in security incidents, patent law, mandatory data retention, and open access to scientific data, among other issues.
  • The latest development in Net@EDU is the formation of the Campus Cyberinfrastructure Working Group. Future activities will address IT governance and funding strategies for cyberinfrastructure.
  • October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an occasion of very active outreach for our Security Task Force.

Vice President's Report - Diana Oblinger

Oblinger reported on the ELI program and its three major foci: learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technology.

  • A distinguishing feature of ELI's teaching and learning work has been its focus on students. The first major product was Educating the Net Generation, EDUCAUSE's first e-book, in 2005. To help institutions move the conversation from the conceptual level to their own situation, we produced a questionnaire designed to highlight differences between the Net Generation and faculty (or administrators) in their expectations and experiences with technology. We are now exploring how consistent the Net Generation profile is in North America and around the world. At this conference we've been interviewing representatives from other countries to better understand students' similarities and differences. We also maintain our focus on students by having them involved in conferences and writing papers. For example, the latest white paper on being Net Savvy was written by a student.
  • Learning Principles and Practices is our second major area of focus. This last year we have emphasized learning spaces. Higher education is experiencing the largest building boom in its history. On September 29th we released EDUCAUSE's third e-book, Learning Spaces. At this conference we've distributed CDs of the e-book. And, based on the feedback from many members, they've already used Learning Spaces to inform renovation and new buildings. In fact, the book has been so popular that it had over 10,000 unique visitors before it was ever publicly announced. A learning spaces tool allows institutions to view space from the perspective of learners.
  • The Learning Technologies is our third focus area. The series, 7 Things You Should Know About…, continues as our most popular product and consistently among EDUCAUSE most often used resources. We now have available an "Applying Technology" tool that helps institutions determine how best to implement a learning technology.
  • In terms of events, ELI events continue to be well received. Every event since ELI was created has sold out. Proposals for our last annual meeting were up 70% from the previous year. Ninety-seven percent of participants in the first ELI Web Symposium said they would participate again. For both face-to-face and online events, growth and satisfaction are positive.
  • Membership has increased significantly since ELI was created, approximately 18 months ago. And member satisfaction, as measured through a phone survey, is extremely strong.

New Business - Robyn Render

There was no new business. Render reiterated that it was a success year and a successful meeting.

Adjourned at 6:00 p.m.