Minutes, SSRIC Meeting, Friday, May 3, 2013, San Francisco State University
Attending in person: Greg Bohr (San Luis Obispo), Rhonda Dugan (Chair; Bakersfield), Francis Neely (San Francisco), Ed Nelson (Fresno), John Korey (at large), Tim Kubal (Fresno), Ali Modarres (Los Angeles), Lori Weber (Chico), Annie Whitmore (Dominguez Hills)
Attending online: Ellen Berg (Sacramento), Stephanie Burkhalter (Humboldt), Stafford Cox (Long Beach), Mario Guerrero (Pomona), Matt Jarvis (Fullerton), Josh Meisel (Humboldt), Carl Stempel (East Bay), Rich Taketa (San Jose)
Introductions. Annie and Ali will be leaving the Council at the end of the academic year. They were thanked for their contributions and wished all the best. We hope that they will stay in touch. Tim will be joining the Council as the campus representative from Fresno. Ed, who completes his FERP this year, will remain on the Council as an at large member.
Administrative matters. The minutes of the Winter meeting and the agenda for this meeting were approved.
Updating email list. Campus representatives are reminded that they are responsible for updating their campus’s “long list” (see http://ssric.org/updates). If you need an account to access the list for your campus, contact Michael Harper at mdharper@sfsu.edu. If you having any problems in accessing the list, contact Ed.
Roster. Earlier this week, John sent out a draft revision of the SSRIC roster. Please send him any updates.
Chair for 2013-2014. Ali will be leaving the CSU to take a position at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and so will be unable to serve as Council Chair. Instead, John will be chair. The chair’s term of office begins on July 1.
Committee structure for AY 2013-2014.
Executive Committee:
- Rhonda Dugan, Bakersfield
- Matt Jarvis, Fullerton
- John Korey (chair), at large
- Ed Nelson, at large
- Lori Weber, Chico
Teaching Resources Committee:
- Gene Turner, Northridge
Field Committee:
- Ed Nelson (chair; non-voting), at large. Additional members to be appointed by committee chair. Except for the chair, committee members may not be current Council members and may not be from the same campus as an applicant.
Digital Information Virtual Archive (DIVA) Committee:
- Lori Weber, Chico
Newsletter Editor:
- Ed Nelson, at large
ICPSR Summer Program Liaison:
- Greg Bohr, San Luis Obispo
Web Liaison:
- Greg Bohr, San Luis Obispo and
- John Korey, at large
Workshop and Outreach:
- Ed Nelson, at large
Field Fellowship. M/S/P to award the fellowship for the proposal dealing with attitudes toward Proposition 13. If, for any reason, the person who made this proposal is unable to accept, the award will be given for the proposal dealing with immigration.
Role of campus librarians in accessing datasets. Sarah Phillips (librarian, Humboldt State) discussed with the Council ways campus libraries could better publicize availability and use of datasets. She has volunteered to prepare a library guide to research with social science datasets, and solicited suggestions from Council members. The guide would be available for adoption by other campuses. Her generous proposal was enthusiastically endorsed by the Council
Student Research Conference debriefing.
- The Council thanked and congratulated Francis for an outstanding job in organizing a successful Conference and Stafford for developing a first-rate registration system. There were about 30 presenters from about 8 campuses.
- Suggestions for future conferences:
- Impose earlier deadlines for submissions, perhaps four weeks before the date of the Conference. [Editor's note: the deadlines in 2013 were April 15 for award consideration, April 22 otherwise]
- Expand the Conference with better publicity, more involvement of deans, etc. Follow up with whoever has replaced Beth Ambos at the C.O.
- Increase budget proposal. $2,300 is insufficient if the host cannot obtain free use of facilities. For each of the past two conferences, the host representative had to obtain additional local funding for facility rental. We should request $3,500 for next year’s Conference.
- Consider arranging a conversation (by conference call) among evaluators of papers submitted for award consideration.
- Enforce existing policies that papers submitted for award consideration must be no longer than 20 pages long, with 12 point font and standard margins, and that awards will require both a written paper and an oral presentation. Make policies clear in flyers as well as online.
- Include on the Conference web page information on host campus policies for parking by those visiting from other campuses.
- As an experiment consider including a teleconference panel organized at a campus the location of which would make it difficult for students to travel to the Conference site.
- Messages automatically generated and sent to registrants should be sent only following consultation with and approval by the host representative
- In addition, when a student checks a box on the registration form indicating an interest in carpooling, doing so should not generate an email to the representative at the student’s campus that appears to be coming from the student.
Scheduling of the Student Research Conference. Josh noted that scheduling the Conference in the spring causes conflicts with other conferences, notably that of the Western Psychological Association. After some discussion, the Council decided against moving the Conference to the fall or winter, as many students will not be ready to present. The Conference will remain in the spring, but every reasonable effort will be made to avoid direct conflicts with other meetings.
Dates and locations for 2013-2014.
Fall (SLO): hybrid business meeting – Friday, October 4
Winter: online business meeting − Friday, February 7.
Spring (Fullerton): Student Research Conference – Thursday, May 1 (preferred: geography conference at CSULA is May 2) or Thursday, May 8; hybrid business meeting – Friday, May 2 or Friday, May 9.
ICPSR Summer Program. Considerations to be included in evaluating proposals: Preference will be given to:
- faculty;
- those going to Ann Arbor rather than to other sites (in order to improve networking with ICPSR staff);
- those whose attendance will benefit both their teaching and research;
- those who have not gone in the past.
There were three applications submitted this year: two by faculty and one by a grad student. At the recommendation of Greg (Summer Program Tsar), the Council selected a faculty member who has not attended in the past and who will attend a workshop at Ann Arbor. The other faculty applicant attended last summer and was proposing to attend a workshop in Berkeley.
ICPSR biennial meeting of Official Representatives (ORs). We have $1,000 to help pay the expenses of the person or persons attending. The ICPSR will pay the expenses of anyone making a presentation at the meeting (but not those merely chairing roundtables).
ICPSR Council. Now that Lori has completed her service, we no longer have representation on the ICPSR Council. The next elections will take place in 2015, and we should begin thinking about possible candidates. Anyone who might be interested should consider attending the OR meeting as a way of becoming better known.
Renewal of campus subscriptions for AY 2013-2014. A letter asking campuses to re-subscribe will go out from the Chancellor’s Office early this summer. Look for a list of campus contact persons to whom the request will go and, when you receive it, check to be sure it’s up to date for your campus. In addition, we currently have a couple of campuses without representatives to the SSRIC. Rhonda will contact Kevin at San Bernardino to discuss his replacement. We seem to be at a standstill regarding San Diego.
Budget proposal for 2013-2014. In the proposal that she submits to the C.O. for next year, Rhonda will ask for $3,500 for the Student Research Conference (see above). The proposal will also include a $4,000 increase in the cost for the Field database. There will be no increase in the ICPSR subscription, and probably none for Roper. Because the C.O. is phasing out its support, subscription fees to campuses should be increased by 5%.
Workshops. If you have conducted, or will conduct, any workshops on your campus this year, let Ed know the topic(s), the presenter(s), and the number of attendees. He will need this to assist John in preparing the Annual Usage and Service Report. Let Ed know about needs for next year, including workshops on online analysis, including but not limited to SDA.
Technical Resources. We are planning on expanding the list compiled earlier this year (see http://ssric.org/tr/links). Ed will prepare a section on survey design. Josh and Stafford will prepare one on online analysis. Let Ed know if you’d like to do something. New sections should be ready in advance of the Fall meeting.
Website (ssric.org). Ed, Greg, and John have met to discuss what archival materials should be posted to the website, and have agreed on some guidelines. John will have something prepared in advance of the Fall meeting. Ali suggested that the site also include suggestions from Council members regarding especially useful examples of data available online, whether from the databases to which we subscribe or other sources.
