Annual Business Meeting Minutes, October 22, 2004, Denver, Colorado

2004 EDUCAUSE Annual Business Meeting

The EDUCAUSE annual business meeting was called to order by Chair of the Board Kathleen Christoph at 7:20 a.m. on October 22, 2004 in Denver, Colorado

Christoph announced the new Board officers for 2005. They are Perry Hanson, Chair; Kathleen Christoph, Vice Chair; Robyn Render, Secretary; and John Bucher, Treasurer

Nomination and Election Committee Report–Roberta Lembke

The charge of the committee is to develop a slate of four candidates. The committee evaluated 91 candidates, using vision and leadership as the most important criteria, and then considering gender, ethnicity, and type of institution. Of a possible 1,314 votes, 518 ballots were cast. Rebecca King of Baylor University and David Smallen of Hamilton College were elected to the EDUCAUSE Board and will serve four-year terms beginning January 1, 2005. Thanks were extended to Denny Farnsworth, Brian Hawkins, and the full EDUCAUSE staff for the support received.

Treasurer’s Report–William Pritchard

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, 2003.

Despite the relatively difficult times for many, 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 so that the Board approved 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 Monday, the Board approved the proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year along with the 2005 Program Plan.

The annual conference, concluding today, 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 are in the neighborhood of 7,000, an all-time high in the history of the association.

President’s Report–Brian L. Hawkins

As of mid-day yesterday, we had 6,870 registrants for the conference. We won’t know the final total until after our registration audit, which is conducted about two weeks after the conference.  The conference has been a tremendous success in both size and quality. The size of the conference provides us with a financial advantage and quality has remained high.

Major accomplishments in 2004:

• A successful transition was made in NLII from Carole Barone to Diana Oblinger and Carole received special thanks for her ongoing professionalism.
• The new Web site was launched and is receiving positive comments.
• A special effort was made last year to do outreach to community colleges.
• EDUCAUSE will be doing a set of presentations at the upcoming League for Innovation meeting in Tampa.
• There has also been a focus on presidential professional development. We have now spoken to over 600 presidents in the last three years.
• The Core Data Service is in its second year with an increase in number of institutions participating.
• The Frye Institute will continue for at least the next two years.
• The Student Guide has been revised and was sent to high schools guidance counselors.
• We are continuing to work on the .edu domain. Sometime during the next year, we will have to begin charging, and the fee will be about $40 per year per domain name.

The Program Plan for 2005 has four major directions:

• Expand E-Content initiative
• Expand on-line offerings
• Increase professional development  opportunities with local one day seminars
• Promote understanding and awareness of the Open Source movement.

Vice Presidents’ Reports

Cynthia Golden

Cynthia is responsible for the professional development and E-Content areas. In 2004, we launched the E-Content initiative in conjunction with the Web site redesign. One of the new features of the Web site is the Resource Center, which offers many new features.

In the professional development area, Management Institutes are still selling out and are receiving good reviews. The regional conference strategy is now complete with the addition of the Western Regional Conference which was held in Sacramento. Regional conferences, in addition to NERCOMP, have been held in Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, and Sacramento. The communities being served by the regional conferences are the members that do not typically attend the annual conference.

The EDUCAUSE Live series was successful this year and will continue next year.

Our relationship continues with the Council of Independent Colleges and all regional conferences will include a session on security during the coming year. Also during the coming year, the Professional Development Committee will emphasize mentoring.

Richard Katz

ECAR passed a milestone this year by achieving financial independence. In 2002, ECAR had 115 subscribers. Today, there are 315 college and university subscribers with another seventeen soon to come from a cooperative agreement with NERCOMP. The latest study to be released is Student use of IT. Our feedback indicates that the studies are being read by presidents and provosts, which is what we hoped for. Next year’s agenda has been determined by the EDUCAUSE executive team. Four studies will be done and they are:

Students and IT Use in Higher Education, IT Support for Research, Open Source in Higher Education, and Identity Management.

The Corporate Relations program experienced record participation in this year. Corporations are very pleased with the audience at this conference. Corporate participation is important to EDUCAUSE because it provides financial support for continued programmatic excellence.

We have a large and loyal cadre of international members in the EDUCAUSE community and we are grateful for their participation. As a result of this international participation and exposure, members of the EDUCAUSE executive team have been invited to speak at their international conferences

Mark Luker

The Net@EDU working groups have been very busy this year. The Broadband Pricing Group, now called the Broadband Policy Group, is helping EDUCAUSE develop position papers for the upcoming telecom debates in Congress. Efforts of the PKI working group and related committees have led to the development of the Higher Education Bridge Certification Authority. HEBCA, which is now operational at Dartmouth University, will help to verify digital identification and signatures between campuses and federal agencies.

The Security Task Force has been exceptionally active. EDUCAUSE now represents higher education to the Department of Homeland Security and related industry sectors in matters of cybersecurity. We are leading several national activities now as part of the October Cyber Security Awareness Month.

Perhaps the hottest policy issue at the moment is CALEA, a proposal before the FCC to require network operators to re-engineer their networks to facilitate wiretapping by law enforcement agencies. EDUCAUSE is leading a coalition in higher education to mitigate the potentially large cost and barrier to innovation that such a regulation could impose on higher education.

Diana Oblinger

Diana thanked Carole Barone for the support she has received.

NLII does a number of conferences each year and they are moving from face-to-face to blended types of meetings. We are also concentrating on content generation. Focus sessions lead to EDUCAUSE Live sessions, new Web content and executive white papers. We will also be conducting a second Leadership Seminar next year at the University of Central Florida.

NLII is undertaking many new activities, such as new information on the Web site and a new look and feel to the NLII Annual Review. Cyprian Lomas, an NLII Fellow has a learning technology blog on the NLII Web site, which has become very popular.

NLII has grown by about 30% this year.

In the process of reinventing and repositioning itself, NLII will have a focus on learners and learning. The value proposition for NLII addresses the issue of learning for institutions and will be built on awareness, enablement, and integration. One of the outcomes of NLII’s strategic planning exercise might be a name change from the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

New Business–Kathleen Christoph

Marty Ringle offered a resolution expressing recognition and gratitude to Brian Hawkins, the EDUCAUSE executive team, and all staff members for the excellent work done during the year. Those in attendance voted unanimously to adopt the resolution.

Adjourned at 8:00 a.m.