Hyatt Regency Vancouver

Vancouver, BC

CANADA

June 30, 2004

 

The Annual Business Meeting of the Teratology Society was called to order by President Rochelle Tyl at 5:10 PM. Approximately 75 Society members attended the Business Meeting.

 

PRESIDENT’S REPORT – Shelley Tyl reviewed the progress the Society made in implementing our Strategic Plan over the past year. Goals for Council were to increase attendance at the Annual Meeting, improve the program offerings and highlight the advantages of the diversity present within the Society. We also improved communications with the membership, and are still asking for input from the membership. Our Public Affairs Committee Workshop entitled “Birth Defects and other Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes due to Maternal Obesity”, has been advertised through press releases and we have provided all members with an Outreach poster to be distributed to local area high schools prior to the start of the academic year next September. Additionally, the division of the Journal into three parts has been accomplished and all the additional Editorial Boards and Publications Committee members have been recruited and have been doing a fantastic job!

Shelley asked all present to provide comments, especially constructive criticism, regarding the Annual Meeting, Council representation and Committee participation.

 

VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT – Ken Jones reported that the program for the meeting was running smoothly. We had 368 registered attendees for the Annual Meeting. Foreign travel constraints may have influenced the number of governmental participants this year. The number of abstracts is up from the 2002 and 2003 meeting numbers as is the number of students participating in the meeting itself.

This year we sponsored a Sunday afternoon Symposium in conjunction with SPER entitled “Maternal-Fetal Medicine: Teratogenic Implications of Maternal Disease and its Treatment”, and a joint symposium with SPER dealing with the Epidemiology of Miscarriage.

Ken asked the membership to provide input into the program as presented this year and comments relating to any future programs.

 

VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT – Melissa Tassinari presented a slide show featuring the Tradewinds Hotel and Resort in St. Pete’s Beach, Florida; the sight of the Annual Meeting for 2005. The location for the Annual Meeting in 2006 was announced as the Loews Hotel in Tucson, Arizona and the site for the 2007 Annual Meeting will be the Omni William Penn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

These announcements were followed by requests that the membership provide input into program planning for next year and that the questionnaires placed in each registrants package be filled out and returned so Council has guidance from the membership in moving ahead with program planning in the future.

 

SECRETARY’S REPORT - George Dearlove put in a plea for more membership contributions to the Newsletter and to the Web site. The initiation of “Musing from the Members” with the inaugural article dealing with Zebrafish Development (presented by John Thomas, Emeritus) was highlighted as another attempt at improving Newsletter interest. George also noted that Council had made personal calls to a number of the individuals who had not paid their dues last year and the Society was able to recapture a number of these individuals.

 

TREASURER’S REPORT - John Rogers reported the current status of the Society financial figures. This report included current meeting income data and our account balances to date. The numbers indicate that the Society is still in a very strong financial position even though some or our revenue numbers are down compared to the previous year (our membership numbers are down and our printing costs are above budget). John also highlighted the unexpected $49,900 plus revenue above the guaranteed $50,000 Royalty income from the publisher. This revenue is dependent on Journal sales, and will vary annually.

The Fiscal Year 2003 income is approximately $85,000.

Approval of the Treasurer’s reports was moved, seconded and affirmed without further discussion.
Actual tables of numbers presented at the annual meeting from the Treasurer’s report are available in the Society Headquarters Office.

 

PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE – Richard Miller presented a power point discussion demonstrating the unarguable success of our three new Journals (with proper acknowledgment to the publisher, Wiley-Liss, the editors and the editorial boards). Each Journal editor had a prepared summary that was presented at the Issues Forum (the presentations are available if desired by individual members).
The highlights of the presentation were as follows:

The James G. Wilson Award for Best Paper went to Louisa Tang and Rick Finnell for the paper “Neural and Orofacial Defects in Folbp1 Knockout Mice.” The paper appeared in BDR-A 67:209-218. This paper also received the most online hits for BDR-A (462).

The most over all online hits for any of the three Journals was 635 for BDR-C 69 (No 1). Neural Crest and Cardiovascular Development.

BDR-C has also been nominated for New Publication Issue of the Year.

Rich then asked all members for suggestions on reviews.

 

PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE - Tina Chambers reviewed the work conducted by the PAC this past year. The Public Affairs Committee organized the symposium on obesity in pregnancy. Tom Flynn will seek Agency approval (FDA) to author a position paper on this timely and important topic.

The PAC was also responsible for preparing press releases for this year's meeting,

Finally, the PAC organized a workshop co-sponsored with NIAAA for teachers, psychologists, school administrators and resource specialists in several school districts in and around Vancouver. The NIAAA provided support for this workshop by paying speakers’ travel expenses and by supplying curriculum kits at no cost to all workshop attendees. The Teratology Society provided the meeting room accommodations and refreshments for workshop participants. Registration was capped at 100 due to space limitations and there were in excess of 85 attendees (even though our meeting occurred at a bad time for their academic year). This particular event topic with speaker support was possible because of the concurrent meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Vancouver allowing for the joint sponsorship. However, in future years, the PAC should consider sponsoring similar events that might appeal to local teachers or students as long as the school year calendar in that locale is amenable to off-campus activities.

The Tobacco Use position paper is in final review form.

For the coming year, continued press releases are planned as are new statements on Obesity and Pregnancy.

 

NOMINATIONS AND ELECTIONS COMMITTEE REPORT – Bruce Kelman announced the results of the 2004 election: Elaine Faustman was elected Vice President-elect, Ida Smoak was elected Treasurer and Karen Filkins was elected to Council. All candidates were thanked for their willingness to put their names forward.

 

STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE – Bruce Buehler reported that the Council had voted to give every student who had a presentation (either poster or platform) a $500 travel assistance award. Consequently, this year we had 50 travel awards (names are provided in the registration package inserts). In order to build on these numbers, the Committee is asking every University affiliate to push the Society and travel awards to their students.

There are plans to have a special “Students Table” at registration next year. The rationale being that we get the students introduced to each other very early in the meeting and permit them to build on associations for the future.

 

EDUCATION COMMITTEE- Michael Narotsky reported that the course attendance for the main continuing education course was 114 and for the mini course was 56. The course books for both courses were again prepared and donated by CTBR this year. Both sets of materials were excellent quality and the registrants were very pleased. The Society thanked CTBR for this donation and then acknowledged the sponsors of the breaks and breakfasts this year.

 

WEB SITE COMMITTEE - Robert Felix announced that the web site has been functioning well at UCSD. The Directory is now on-line, and may be searched by name, state, department or organization. The committee will add, by the end of August, the possibility of permitting a pdf file to be downloaded so the membership directory can be printed out from this single file. Any member needing a hard copy of the directory can write to headquarters for a copy.

Members should log on and change their passwords when convenient. Robert reminded the membership of the current login structure.

This year the committee added a Room Share section for students registering for the meeting. Student members are also now on the committee working group to develop a current student page.

 

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE - Ida Smoak provided the current new membership numbers: We have added 31 new Regular Members, nine new Associate Members, seven new Student Members and have “graduated” four Regular Members to Emeritus status. The list of names and affiliations was presented in the registration package for members to review. This brings our total of Regular Members to 565 (Total membership for all categories is 719)

MARTA and MTA were thanked for producing another successful student career event.

 

BYLAWS COMMITTEE – George Clemens reported that there were approximately 20 amendments that were being proposed by the Committee. The vast majority were clarifications or deemed necessary for consistency with the major changes to the Bylaws that were passed previously. All changes were accepted (with minor modifications) by Council and the membership will be receiving them soon to review and vote to accept or reject.

 

NOMENCLATURE COMMITTEE - Howard Solomon reported that the Committee is working with the IFTS to update the terminology. Consequently, a strong plea for input from the Society members was emphasized. The goal is to update the Glossary and publish. Additional information in the Newsletter or any interested parties are to contact Howard.

 

NEW BUSINESS - was called for from the podium. There being none, the meeting was adjourned at 5:55 PM.
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