Loews Ventana Canyon Resort
Tucson, Arizona
June 24, 2006 

Council reconvened for a working dinner at approximately 6:45

Attending – The second pre-meeting Council Meeting was attended by voting members, M. Tassinari, President; E. Faustman, Vice President; T. Knudsen, Vice President-elect; K. Jones, Past President; G. Dearlove, Secretary; I. Washington, Treasurer; E. Carney, K. Filkins, and R. Parker, Councilors. Non-voting members B. Hales, Chairperson, Publications Committee and T. Masson, Executive Director were also present.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Website Committee - R. Felix reported that the Website Committee had spent $3300 in 2006. They are within their budget ($5,000) but are still waiting for guidance from Council on further Website revisions.

The committee is understaffed and needs assistance, especially from students. T. Knudsen said he has someone in his lab who would be interested. This person will be approached and asked to take on revision of the student page on the website.

The membership directory has been too large to upload on the Web; however the Primer has been put on the Web in the members section. Each chapter is a separate file. More guidance is requested to determine if this should be put in the open access section. Council to discuss and advise the Web Site Committee.

Robert questioned our position of permitting a Head Hunter to post a job advertisement on our career page. Council thought reactivation of a position page would be beneficial. Council will check with A. Hoberman to determine what rules were in place with the old placement service.

Council asked Robert Felix if he would be willing to remain on the committee for one more year to help with the transition to a new committee.

E. Faustman indicated that she planned on making the Web more of a Society Communications page during the coming year.

Council suggested that the FASEB communications would be one of the items placed on the web to encourage membership usage.

Education Committee – G. Jahnke, Chair and C. Lau, Secretary indicated that the speakers were well received, that the course materials were again of excellent quality. There were 137 pre-registered and an additional 5 registered today. This number includes the speakers. There are 94 registered for the mini course.

The Chairperson for the Committee next year will be C. Lau. There are a few gaps that need to be filled due to members dropping off or not participating. M. Rocca was appointed to a 1 year term to replace one of the committee members. Council discussed future appointments and the suggestion was made to retain some balance with the committee.

This year, the speakers were all able to upload their slides to a restricted site and they were able to review each person’s slides to avoid duplication. Only one speaker had issues with using the electronic format provided.

Council is to send thank you letters to Charles River with special attention to Sal DelaCorte and Keith Robinson. Some discussion followed regarding the lack of authorized slide presentation materials by some of the speakers.

There was some concern expressed the Charles River may not want to donate all the time and effort required to produce the course books if the pages are blanks. This is not an issue that can be readily changed because some speakers are not able or willing to get approval for use of the slides in their presentations from the various publishers. Council is to try to assist speakers in writing letters to publishers in the future. Council also agreed to ask the attorney for the Society for advice on any legal implications and offer a template letter that should be acceptable to the publishing community.

The committee will discuss this issue further at the noon meeting on Wednesday.

Student Affairs Committee – W. Harrouk reported that the early student get together was attended by 10 students. The early meet and greet will be tried again next year if the students support the idea when asked at the MARTA/MTA official Student Reception on Monday.

Discussion about selection of the Taubeneck winner will be selected followed. This may be a good use of the Web in future years. The abstract form currently requires a check in a box to indicate that the student wants to be considered and the mentor must write a letter. Council discussed the need for an annual award, or just when there is a clear winner. Council asked the Student Affairs Committee to come up with a new format to select the winner and what qualifications were important.

The Chair next year will be G. Shaw. Need 5 regular members and 4 student members. Council has expressed the view that one of the committee members be experienced in grant writing (and be successful in awards). Council will more clearly describe the expectations and duties of this committee for next year.

Nominations and Elections Committee – D. Stump reported the results of the election. The new Vice President-elect is T. Chambers, the new Secretary is D. Hansen and the new Council member is K. Augustine. Don also noted that one ballot had a write-in candidate for President.

MOTION to certify and accept the report of the Nominations and Elections Committee was not made. This may have to be done as an after the fact event.

Membership Committee – A. Faqi, Chair. (Report presented by G. Dearlove.)The names of the new members are listed in the registration packet. Council is to charge the membership committee with more proactive contacting of members who have not paid their dues. There must be a long term strategy provided by Council to increase the retention rate of members.

Constitution and Bylaws Committee – report presented by G. Clemens (written report sent to Council prior to the meeting). The committee was asked to review the possibility of adding a Distinguished Fellow category of member with the potential of deleting the Emeritus category. There is nothing in the by laws that would preclude this action. The Committee was opposed to the action and felt the wording for the criteria was inadequate. The committee suggested that Emeritus be retained for retired members and more specifics be provided for the new criteria.

There were a number of minor “word-smithing” changes to the constitution suggested by the committee (typos and spelling errors, etc) that probably can be made without a full membership vote. The changes to the Publications Committee (Section 5) will require a full membership vote.

Council approved presentation to the membership at the business meeting, after which the changes will be sent to the membership for approval.

WRITTEN REPORTS:

FRASER AWARD COMMITTEE – report submitted in writing by K. Augustine who was unable to attend the meeting. Karen reported that all candidates submitted impressive research backgrounds and publication lists. The winner of the award this year is Christina D. Chambers from the University of California in San Diego.

PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE – B. Hales provided a written report that contained the editor’s summaries of activity for the year to M. Tassinari. K. Augustine will assume the role of Chair next year (Discussion followed regarding the potential issues with a Chair of a major committee being a member of Council. This would have been an issue if either G. Shaw or K. Augustine had won the election as G. Shaw assumes the Chair of Student Affairs Committee this year.)

Post meeting note: K. Augustine was elected to Council and stepped down from the chair of the Publications Committee. M. Collins agreed to serve as the chair.

The Wilson Publication Award had 17 nominations this year and five were selected as finalists prior to selection of D. Juriloff as the winner this year.

The Wiley-Liss Symposium topic was selected from a number of proposals. This area has been one of great activity the last couple of years and many scientific meetings have highlighted miRNAs.

The impact factor for both BDR-A and BDR-B has risen this past year. The immediacy measure has also increased for both Journals and the number of downloads of articles is increasing monthly. There is no impact factor calculation for BDR-C as it is a review Journal.

There is ongoing discussion with the publisher regarding electronic access to one or all parts of the Journal for the members in good standing. These will be discussed and presented to the membership along with the $5.00 price increase for 2008

The membership will be requested to voice their opinion on the electronic only versus paper and electronic options at the Business Meeting. A decision should be made at the October Council meeting to let Wiley-Liss know so they can plan ahead.

Discussion of the Code of Ethics followed and M. Tassinari was designated as the person to present to the membership at the Business Meeting.

B. Hales reminded Council that the Editors were in the fourth year of their five year terms. Reappointment or Replacement was discussed and Council unanimously agreed that the Publication Committee should discuss this issue with Editors individually and ask each Editor if they would remain for an additional five year term.

A question was raised about the need to modify the terms of the Editors so that they are staggered. One option presented was to identify an Associate Editor who could become the editor at the completion of the term.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE – M. Tassinari announced that T. Scialli had resigned from the committee and J. Polifka take over as Chair and will present the Committee report at the Business Meeting. T. Scialli had submitted written reports to Council prior to the meeting. This report discussed what the PAC had accomplished (position papers published, etc) and what had not gone well (Teacher outreach program).

Council discussed the outreach program to try to define the exact targeted audience, the goals of the program and potential ways to make it successful in the future. The PAC will need to determine if they will attempt to have a program in Pittsburg and let Council know within the next two months so K. Filkins and other Council members can help organize the event.

The discussion and decision on the future “home” of the Primer was deferred to Council II.

OLD BUSINESS

The Interdisciplinary Committee is schedule to meet Wednesday to discuss future plans to get this committee functional. Council asked to have a firm proposal for discussion at the Strategic Planning Meeting.

Student Affair Committee membership was deferred until Council II.

SOPs and Job Descriptions for all offices and Council were deferred to Council II or to electronic communications after Council II but prior to the October meeting.

Membership Dues were discussed and no changes were determined.

Distinguished Fellow vs. Emeritus membership status was deferred until next year.

Meeting adjourned approximately 10:20

Minutes Approved August 4, 2006.