Annual Business Meeting Minutes October 25, 2007, Seattle, Washington

The EDUCAUSE annual business meeting was called to order by Chair of the Board John Bucher at 4:55 p.m. on October 25, 2007, in Seattle Washington.

New officers for the Board in 2008 were announced:  Chair – David Smallen; Vice Chair – Lucinda Lea; Secretary – Tracy Mitrano; Treasurer – Scott Siddall.

Nomination and Election Committee Report - Linda Deneen

Incoming chair Linda Deneen thanked outgoing chair Martin Ringle, who could not attend, for his leadership of the committee over the past two years and also thanked the members of the committee for their service. The charge of the committee is to recommend up to eight individuals to the board, which in turn selects the slate of four candidates. The committee evaluated more than 60 nominees, using leadership as the most important criteria, and then considering gender, ethnicity, and type of institution. Of the four originally selected to appear on the slate, one withdrew before the election. Voting representatives of member institutions elected Thomas Maier and Carrie Regenstein to serve four-year terms beginning January 1, 2008.

Treasurer’s Report - Tracy Mitrano

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. Board treasurer Tracy Mitrano reported the following:

• EDUCAUSE is in good financial condition and continues to operate in a fiscally sound manner. Operating costs are in line with the annual budget and there are ample reserves.
• Investments have done well over the years and our reserves have grown this year. A board-approved motion allows us to draw down reserves between 5% and 7% each year to be used for Strategic Initiatives. This allows us to provide additional services for our membership without any risk to our financial well being.
• EDUCAUSE received an unqualified audit report from on the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2006.
• The Board approved the proposed budget for the upcoming 2008 fiscal year as well as the 2008 program plan in it's October 22nd meeting.
• Due to space limitations, we had to cap attendance at our Annual Conference. However, revenues for this event will still exceed those expected (budgeted) and another financially successful conference is expected.

President’s Report - Brian L. Hawkins

• The past year has been very active, with many existing and new programs, and growing respect for the association’s work in the higher education community.
• The annual Member Satisfaction Survey showed the second highest level of satisfaction with association value ever.
• Especially notable in this year’s survey were results for the question about EDUCAUSE providing a unified voice for higher education IT; this was rated 6.3, up from 6.0 the previous year, on a 7-point scale.
• In a survey of 25 leaders of other higher education associations, EDUCAUSE received an overall perfect score of 7.0.
• Membership is up 5%—to more than 2,200 colleges, universities, corporations, and other organizations—from last year, the ninth consecutive year of increase. Total membership has increased 54% since the merger of CAUSE and Educom in 1998.
• The Core Data Service survey and interactive database continues to be successful, with 952 participant institutions.
• EDUCAUSE has acquired the Adobe Connect communications package which will allow for extensive social networking for committees and ad hoc groups.
• The Frye Institute continues to be successful and is developing a sustainable model for the future.
• The board approved the 2008 Program Plan which will bring several of the Grand Challenges set forth last year to completion. These were:
• Renewing and rethinking campus IT services
• Determining what IT costs
• Improving student retention and graduation through analytics
• Managing cyberinfrastructure strategically
• IT workforce development

Vice President’s Reports

Cynthia Golden

Cynthia Golden reported on three major areas:  Conferences, Professional Development, and Content and Technology

Conferences

Annual Conference

• Program was developed under the leadership of Mely Tynan, of Tufts University, with extensive help from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Program Committee.
• The 2008 committee will be chaired by Darrel Huish, of Maricopa Community College District, began its work last April.
• Joanne Kossuth, CIO of Olin College of Engineering, will chair the 2009 program committee.

Regionals, Affiliates and other conferences

• The six regional conference continue to be successful, serving nearly 2,000 (up by 200) this year, more than half of which were first-time attendees.
• Approximately 80% of these attendees do not attend the EDUCAUSE annual conference; we continue to reach a broader segment of the membership through these events.
• Professional development opportunities offered at the regionals included:
  • 65 people served on regional program committee;
  • 683 people were speakers or discussion session leaders;
  • 230 people served as session conveners.
• Continued successful partnerships with affiliates NERCOMP and The Seminars on Academic Computing (SAC) to deliver annual conferences with each group. In addition, continued the highly successful Executive Seminar and New Directors Seminar.
• In agreement with the SAC Board, we have officially ended the Seminars on Academic Computing in Snowmass, Colorado, this year, and are re-defining the event to align more with its roots. In the future, it will return to being a set of small, intimate meetings that focus on the issues faced by IT leaders, and that provide an opportunity for leadership development of the next generation. The new Seminars for IT Leadership will be held this coming July outside of Boulder.
• Last year saw the first Enterprise Conference, focused on administrative computing topics and issues, filling the gap in our offerings when CUMREC folded in 2005. This year we held the 2nd one, again in Chicago, and, based on very positive evaluations, have made the decision to continue.
• This year’s summits on topics of importance to the higher ed IT community were comprised of small groups of 50 thought leaders who examined current strategies and practices in the area of Cyberinfrastructure in July and IT Governance in September. What we have learned from these events is resulting in presentations, guidelines, white papers and other resources to benefit the larger community.

Professional Development

The EDUCAUSE Professional Development advisory committee conducted a workshop to identify key issues that our association should be addressing:

• Offer a curriculum that we might call “Higher ed 101” -- what does every IT professional need to understand about higher education. We were able to pilot a pre-conference seminar at this conference, very successfully, through the good efforts of colleagues Marilu Goodyear and Casey Green. We expect to evolve this content into a series of in-person and online offerings at many EDUCAUSE events.
• Place a greater emphasis on management and leadership development, as well as creating opportunities for professional engagement for people at earlier points in their careers.
• Consider re-branding our management and leadership offerings so that the progression through the curriculum is more clearly presented. We are embarking on this project in upcoming months.
• Conduct annual “refresher” courses for attendees at the various institute programs. This recommendation is being carried to the institute programs, and we hope to have special pre-conference seminars at EDUCAUSE 2008.

Leadership/Management Development

• This year we conducted the EDUCAUSE Institutes (two management programs,  one leadership program and one learning technologies leadership program), with more than 200 total participants, with all four events selling out well in advance of the programs, and receiving strong evaluations.
• Held the 8th Frye Institute and are in the midst of conducting an evaluation of the program.
• Conducted day-long seminars billed as “boot camp for new managers,” and expect to expand those seminars in the coming year.

Content and Technology

• Last year changes were made to the EDUCAUSE website, including the introduction of connect.educause.edu, which houses our blog and wiki sites and our resource center. We continued to improve upon that site this year and have also begun a merger of connect.educause.edu and the EDUCAUSE www.educause.edu web site. We have successfully migrated EQ magazine to the new interface, and work has begun on migrating other sections of the primary website so that there will be a single interface into all EDUCAUSE content. The end result will be that members will have increased ability to interact and comment on content, will have faceted search filtering, better graphics support, and detailed author information.
• In addition to the migration, we are working on investigating features for the next version of connect, as we prepare for a major upgrade to the Drupal open source software system.
• We continue to expand the way we deliver content to the community. Our twice-monthly EDUCAUSE-Live! series will offer a new “Spotlight” series of webinars that focus on a particular topic, beginning with Identity Management, early next year.
• Podcast interviews and podcast sessions for EDUCAUSE events continue to be popular. They are distributed via http://connect.educause.edu/podcasts.

Richard Katz

• ECAR was launched in 2001, had 50 subscribing organizations in 2002, and is now at 466 subscribers, which is up 57 since last year. Thirteen percent are international.
• The robust research agenda this year included major studies on business continuity, IT collaboration, and the updated study of undergraduates and IT
• Yet to come in 2007 is a study on the IT help desk.
• The 2008 research agenda is ambitious, with studies planned on cyberinfrastructure, IT governance, and IT leadership and workforce development, as well as the annual update on students and IT.
• Corporate relations remain good in a challenging year for association-corporate ties, which are receiving new scrutiny throughout higher education. The EDUCAUSE executives’ essay in EDUCAUSE Review counseled moderation and common sense in articulating guiding principles.
• Richard Katz and Ted Dodds, of the University of British Columbia, have completed 3.5 months of European engagement, including a survey of IT management in European institutions, which is also being administered in Australia and Asia. The EDUCAUSE name is perceived positively around the world.

Mark Luker

• Provisions of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) are of concern to colleges and universities if their legal counsels determine that their networks are subject to surveillance regulations and associated technology requirements. EDUCAUSE has provided guidelines and related resources.
• The Reid amendment to the Senate version of the Higher Education Act would have required the Department of Education to disclose the top recipients of RIAA notices of alleged file sharing violations involving institutional networks, making the DOE a de facto agent of the entertainment industry. That provision along with one requiring institutions to deploy flawed technologies for blocking illegal file sharing were vigorously opposed by EDUCAUSE and the higher education community. Thanks are due to EDUCAUSE member campuses that participated in the effort to oppose these provisions. Further efforts may be needed to oppose similar provisions that could appear in the House version of the legislation.
• Telecommunications reform and net neutrality are an important arena for higher education action. EDUCAUSE let a coalition of presidential associations, campuses, and concerned content providers to oppose possible regulatory changes that would allow network providers to selectively constrain broadband performance to customers.
• EDUCAUSE sponsored a cyberinfrastructure summit to address emerging concerns about how to implement good/best CI practices. A forthcoming ECAR study on CI will provide a useful digest of exemplary implementations and advice for preparing campuses.

Diana Oblinger

Diana Oblinger reported on the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) program and its three major foci: learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technology.

• The ELI program model has matured with a three-pronged approach focusing on collaborative intelligence, use of new media to deliver content to members, and interactivity.
• The new membership model has resulted in a 25 percent increase in paid organizational members.
• ELI events have shown gratifying increases in attendance and satisfaction: The ELI Annual Conference had a 40 percent increase in attendance and an 11 percent increase in overall satisfaction. New features such as learning circles and informal learning spaces at the conference contributed to attendee satisfaction. The 2008 conference will pilot citizen journalism, student-generated media, and twitter interaction.
• The two focus sessions in 2007 yielded 95% participant satisfaction. New elements included resources on video newsreels, immersive environments, and being net savvy.
• ELI resources included new contributions to the 7 Things… series; the 2007 Horizon Report, in collaboration with the New Media Consortium; white papers and case studies on authentic learning environments; a new series of student voices on technology uses; and continuing popularity of the e-books on educating the net generation and learning spaces.
• Discovery tools are being planned with modular campus workshop guides, technology guides, and student input tools.

New Business-John Bucher

There was no new business.

Meeting adjourned at 6:00 p.m.