2002 EDUCAUSE Annual Business Meeting

The EDUCAUSE annual business meeting was called to order by Chair of the Board Martin Ringle at 7:00 a.m. on October 4, 2002, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Nomination and Election Committee Report - Jill B. Arnold

The 2002 Nomination and Election Committee was quite active, with eighty-three names submitted for consideration. This number was eventually reduced to seven names which were submitted to the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors for selection of a final slate of four. That slate included Paul Gandel, Jeffrey Noyes, Scott Siddall, and Robyn Render. Noyes and Render were elected by the membership to three-year terms on the board.

Treasurer's Report - Joel L. Hartman

EDUCAUSE continues to operate prudently and efficiently, seeking to maximize services and programs for its members, while operating in a fiscally responsible manner, as has been the case every year since the association's formation. In the audit report for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2001, the auditors found no material weaknesses in the internal controls or procedures of the organization. The past year has been a time for fiscal caution, as will be the next 12 - 24 months. Although the value of the EDUCAUSE portfolio has decreased, its returns were in line with the overall equities market. Reserves remain strong because the association has only 16 percent of its reserve funds in stock; the remainder is in bonds, CDs, and money markets. The annual conference is a significant activity and the source of a substantial portion of the association's annual revenue. Fortunately, the 2002 conference was a great success, drawing an all-time record attendance. The organization's fiscal performance year-to-date is better than the approved budget and the Board, has reaffirmed the proposed 2003 operating budget and program plan. EDUCAUSE continues to operate with appropriate account practices, policies, and controls.

President's Report Brian L. Hawkins

Major issues and accomplishments for 2002 were as follows:

• The EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research was launched and was a great success in its first year.
• Assumption of responsibilities by EDUCAUSE for .edu domain went smoothly and we are now into the phase of determining whether changes should be made in policies and practices.
• We expect to launch the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service by the end of the year, to meet members' need for comparison in benchmarking and planning for IT on their campuses.
• EDUCAUSE supported a working group charged with discussing IT funding challenges and practices, with the aim of producing a publication in the coming year.
• Professional development offerings continue to grow with an expanded regional program
• The Institute for Computer Policy and Law (ICPL), to be launched in a few weeks, represents a successful partnership between EDUCAUSE and Cornell University to provide all EDUCAUSE members with access to seminars and a database of policies is available via the EDUCAUSE Web site.
• The Management, Leadership, and Frye Institutes have continued successfully. These institutes now offer a coherent curriculum and guide to help participants determine which institute is best for them.
• In 2002, EDUCAUSE published a book on IT leadership and staffing challenges and a book on portals. Two other books are in progress to be published next year.
• EDUCAUSE welcomed new communication services staff who have brought a different approach to communications to avoid overwhelming members with e-mail.

The 2003 Program Plan includes six new initiatives:

• System Security Initiatives and Communication. In 2002 EDUCAUSE greatly strengthened the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force by hiring an expert staff leader for the project, applying for NSF support of workshops to develop a community-based response and action plan, and establishing a strong link with related federal activities in homeland and cyber security.
• Continued Development of the Higher Education Bridge Certification Authority. In 2002 EDUCAUSE, NIH, and partners developed and demonstrated a new system that greatly simplifies the task of implementing networked identification and authorization. In 2003, EDUCAUSE will continue HEBCA development to involve more campuses, additional vendors, and more federal agencies to demonstrate the capability of supporting most institutions of higher education in the future.
• EDUCAUSE Web Site Redesign and Deployment. Users of the EDUCAUSE Web site already view it as a primary source of information about information technology in higher education. The Web redesign, begun in 2002 and scheduled to conclude in 2003, will implement an evolutionary framework that is adaptable to changes in Web technology.
• Completion of Regional Conference Strategy. EDUCAUSE will host its first Midwest Regional Conference in Chicago in March, 2003 and will plan for a Western Regional in California in 2004.
• Online Professional Development Experiments. In 2003 EDUCAUSE will experiment with ways to more widely distribute information generated through our conferences, advisory committees, etc., and will continue experiments to facilitate interaction among these groups.
• Presidential Awareness Programs. Throughout the year, EDUCAUSE will work in partnership with other associations including the American Council on Education (ACE) and NITLE to deliver IT awareness programs for college and university CEOs.

Vice Presidents' Reports - Carole A. Barone

• In January, the NLII held its largest and highest-rated annual meeting to date. Plans include capping attendance to ensure that it remains small enough for maximum interaction among participants.
• The NLII also held two focus sessions, one on transformative assessment and the other on convergence of learning design and technology. Results of these sessions are highlighted on the NLII "key themes" section of the NLII Web site.
• NLII welcomes two new fellows: Patricia McGee, an assistant professor in the school of education at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and Darren Cambridge, who is responsible for Web design and development at the American Association of Higher Education. This year's fellows, Jeremy Haefner and Collen Carmean, collaborated on work focused on course management systems, resulting in an article in EDUCAUSE Review and another in EDUCAUSE Quarterly.
• EDUCAUSE continues to collaborate with the American Council on Education on a monograph series
• At EDUCAUSE 2002, NLII held a session to train facilitators for four online communities.
• Phil Long will chair the 2003 EDUCAUSE Advisory Committee on Teaching and Learning, whose focus will be on the relationship between space and learning.

Vice Presidents' Reports - Richard N. Katz

• Corporate relations with EDUCAUSE are excellent; we experienced a very positive year within a broader context of steep recession. EDUCAUSE has record corporate support at this conference.
• The EDUCAUSE Advisory Group on Administrative Information Systems and Services (AGAISS) has been responsible for delivering and organizing forums convened jointly by EDUCAUSE and NACUBO to bring together leaders from around the country to work on topics at the intersection of business and technology, such as portals and Web services.
• ECAR has existed for 275 days and now has 120 subscribers (five corporations and 115 institutional members). We have published nineteen research bulletins and two major research studies. Two planned studies will address distance education and enterprise systems. ECAR delivered a very successful symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and another is scheduled for October in San Diego.

Vice Presidents' Reports - Mark A. Luker

• The Net@EDU program has 12 projects under way related to advanced networking, including one on middleware to bring together grid computing and supercomputing with central IT campus computing
• The HEBCA program won a prestigious national award for digitally signed applications for research grants with NIH. In 2003, another application even more important to higher education, financial aid, will be addressed through a pilot that will impact all types of campuses.
• A task force on security in partnership with Internet2 succeeded in getting higher education recognized as a major segment in the national strategy to secure cyberspace. This task force is helping to figure out how higher education will secure its segment of cyberspace.
• The Federal policy area has been very active, revolving mainly around security and intellectual property as it relates to cyberspace, with digital rights management.

New Business - Martin Ringle

2002 Chair Martin Ringle thanked the EDUCAUSE staff for doing such a good job during a difficult year. There being no additional new business, the meeting was adjourned at 7:45 a.m.