"Minutes" from the 3/1/00

Q&P Conference Call


Present: Veronica Czitrom, Tom Boardman, Eric Lagergren, Rick Carlson, Jeff Hooper, Cheryl Jennings, Gwen Stimely, Geoff Vining

I. Minutes from the December Conference Call.

There were no minutes to approve. However, we did spend some time reviewing the details of the December conference call. Some concern was expressed about the lack of minutes. Cheryl Jennings agreed to follow up with Lisa Custer.

II. Officer Reports

a. Chair's Report

Lisa Moore has pointed out severe problems working with ASA to produce the joint SPES/Q&P newsletter. Janet Buckingham (past chair of SPES and former senior editor of the newsletter), Fred Hulting (current SPES chair), Tom Boardman, Lisa Moore, and Geoff Vining set up a conference call to discuss this matter. We decided to go with ASA for the June issue for several reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity to do our homework for a possible switch. Given the nature of ASA's problems and the fact that we are looking at the June issue right now, we did not decide to alter the basic schedule (to make it more robust).

Our action items are:

(1) Continue with ASA for the June issue (responsibility: Lisa)

(2) Send a memo of understanding to ASA with a clear timetable, expectations, clearly designated person responsible for each action, and a clearly designated contact person (responsibility:

Lisa and Janet)

(3) Survey other ASA section newsletter editors to see what they do (responsibility: Janet)

(4) After the survey has been conducted, develop alternatives to ASA, possibly put out requests for proposals (responsibility to manage this process: Geoff and Fred)

(5) Have this same or similar group meet at the JSM in August to make decision whether to continue with ASA for the December issue.

b. Chair-Elect

We briefly discussed the upcoming strategic planning session at the Spring Research Meeting.

c. Program-Chair Elect

Cheryl discussed the luncheon program at the upcoming Joint Statistical Meeting.

d. Publications Chair

Gwen reported on our attempt to move to electronic proceedings. An action item was for her to work with Jose Ramirez to get authors to submit their proceedings in either Word, PowerPoint, or pdf format. The basic idea is for the authors to submit their proceedings in a format suitable for posting on our web page. It was suggested that we use the June newsletter to attempt to get email addresses of our membership.

e. Spring Research Conference

Jeff reported that the 2001 conference will be held in Austin, Texas from 5/23 - 5/25/00. SEMATECH is a definite sponsor. AMD and Motorola are possible sponsors. The 2002 conference will be held in northern New Jersey during June. Honeywell and Allied Signal are sponsors.

The Mary Natrella scholarship is set up and will cover two students to attend the conference. The Q&P section funds one student. The conference funds all other students, especially the registration for local students.

The 2000 conference joint with SPES and is in Seattle from 6/26 - 6/28. Workshops are on 6/29. We have a strong program.

f. Mary Natrella Fund

Veronica reported that as of the conference call, we had 14 applicants for the Mary Natrella scholarship, of which five were international. We plan to recognize Mary on Monday of the Spring Research Conference. At that time, we also plan to give out the awards.

III. Other Business

a. Rick Carlson talked about the Baldridge Awards, which were given out the previous Friday.

b. We scheduled a tentative conference call for early May to prepare for the Spring Research meeting and the strategic planning session there.