2014-05-09: Spring 2014

Minutes, SSRIC Spring Meeting

Friday, May 9, 2014, 9 a.m.
California State University, Fullerton

Attending in person:

John Korey (Pomona), Matt Jarvis (Fullerton), Gene Turner (Northridge), Stafford Cox (Long Beach), Greg Bohr (San Luis Obispo), Jennifer Murphy (Sacramento)

Attending via Collaborate online:

Gerard Wellman (Stanislaus), Ed Nelson (Fresno), Meredith Williams (new campus rep from Humboldt), Francis Neely (San Francisco), Ginger Shoulders (San Diego), Jill Yamashita (Monterey Bay), John Menary (Dominguez Hills), Lori Weber (Chico), Mario Guerrero (Pomona), Rhonda Dugan (Bakersfield), Richard Taketa (San Jose), Timothy Kubal (Fresno), Josh Meisel (Humboldt), Gilbert Garcia (Los Angeles), Carl Sneed (Dominguez Hills)

Meeting called to order at 9:10 a.m.

Approval of minutes from winter meeting

Sconded, and approved

Agenda approval

Voted and approved

Student Research Conference

Winners at the Student Research Conference

  • Charles McCall Award for Best Undergraduate Paper: Jennifer Bernard, Economics, CSU Fresno for “An Examination of California’s Realignment Policy and Property Crime Rates”
  • Betty Nesvold Award for Best Graduate Paper: Gokh Alshaif & Noor Qwfan, International Relations, CSU Bakersfield for “Daughters of Sojourners: Yemeni American Females’ Experience in Education”
  • Gloria Rummels Award for Best Paper Using Quantitative Data: Jody Lewis, Public Policy Administration, CSU Sacramento for “Improving Bachelor’s Degree Completion Rates: An Examination of First Year Experience at Sac State”

Data from past conference

  • Stafford Cox summarized data
    • Qualtrics shows great participation across campuses
      • All but 7 campuses had representation
      • 86% from Southern California
      • 90 presentations – 60% of those from psychology, sociology, and political science
        • 59 were papers – 3 times as many as usual
        • 54 undergraduates, 36 graduates (90% submitted papers)
    • Steve produced a program with 90 presentations

Is the conference considered a “field trip” by CSU?

  • Executive Order by then-Chancellor Reed called “Field Trip Policies & Procedures”
    • Definition of “field trip” is ambiguous
    • It’s directing campuses to set policies regarding field trips
    • It has to be directly related to a course to be considered a field trip, and we’re not university course-related
  • We’re going to assume that we’re not a field trip
    • We need to be aware of these policies so we don’t accidentally turn the conference into a “field trip”
    • We need to remove references to car pools

Online presentations at the conferences

  • We’ve gotten requests from out-of-state and even from out of the country
  • Could we teleconference from remote sites? There are a few hard-to-reach campuses
    • Discussion
      • Could help remote places like Humboldt
      • Could result in lower attendance at the physical site, empty audience
      • Funding is limited and there are other conferences that could be more helpful than SSRIC
      • Maybe a policy that you can present online if you’re more than xxx miles from the conference site
      • Training our students to present research is important so we should continue our onsite meeting
    • Motion to consider exploring creating a policy allowing teleconferencing at student conference, with Meredith taking the lead on policy creation. Motion carries but not unanimous

Steve Stambough’s report on the Spring 14 conference

  • Conference was very large
    • 90 presentations from 17 campuses
    • interdisciplinary
    • we should consider moving the deadline for abstracts earlier
    • potential for continued funding for awards and possible expansion for other awards
        • There are concerns about the effects the increased awards have had on the conference

Systemwide Qualtrics site license

  • Supporting Lori at the Chico library
  • It makes sense to have a centralized source rather than having the licenses piecemeal by campus
  • Lori – it will save money to have a systemwide license
    • Gerry’s leaning is toward SurveyMonkey rather than, and this is unfortunate
    • Qualtrics is less accessible because of its cost, but it’s a better fit for more advanced research
  • We will write to Lori and say as a council, we support this

Executive Committee

  • Floor is opened to nominations for executive committee membership by Matt
    • John Korey, Ed Nelson, Rhonda are nominated in addition to Matt

Relationship of SSRIC with CASSRC (Consortium of Applied Social Science Research Center)

  • Dr. Jim Till, Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor, Research Initiatives and Partnerships joined the meeting for a discussion of the relationship between these two organizations.
    • Very impressed with the conference
    • There may be some value in triggering dialogue between SSRIC and leadership and representatives of the consortia of applied research centers
    • The missions overlap at times but there are differences between the organizations. SSRIC is markedly student-oriented, but also works with faculty and service objectives.
    • A future relationship may be useful and even necessary.
    • Asking us to dialogue with these consortia and consider joining them in certain collaborative exercises.
    • Each organization will appoint a liaison to thew other group to help coordinate activities.

2014-15 business meetings and conference schedule

  • Sites for next year for our business meetings and our symposium
    • Winter meeting will continue to be all-online
    • Fall meeting will be in CSU-Long Beach, spring symposium at Sacramento State

Budget for 2014-15

ICPSR Summer Program

  • Training sessions and workshops on quantitative methods
  • We have two allocations for fee waivers for individuals to attend the workshops
  • We received four applications for the fee waivers
    • Three faculty, 1 graduate student; 1 faculty applicant addressed both criteria asked, and has received fee waivers in the past; another faculty indicated the session would benefit research more than teaching
    • A lecturer is wanting to attend long sessions in Ann Arbor
    • A grad student also applied
  • Recommendation is unopposed

Field Committee Report

  • Ed: Fewer proposals this year – only two; one study on perceptions of gas taxes and one on immigration reform
    • Review committee recommends the study on gas taxes
    • Vote to accept the committee recommendation is unanimous
  • Ed: new version of SDA out – SDA 4.0. When it’s operational in August it will change the way we access data drastically. We’ll be able to search, download, and analyze all field polls up to the current one. FTP will no longer be used. We’ll be able to access it through our campus or library proxy server
    • Susan has offered to do a workshop and to help us revise the materials on our website. We should schedule a workshop during/before the fall meeting. The date for the fall meeting has not been set.

Workshop(s) for next year

  • This past year there were 4 workshops – 1 in Bakersfield, 2 in Stanislaus, and 1 in Pomona
  • Potentially combine teaching resources and databases
  • Need to address the issue of more graduate students attending the workshops

Student Research Conference IRB approval

  • John: we currently have no mechanism of verifying IRB approval, we have to take their word for it?
  • We’re going to do something about this and develop this further in the fall

Meeting adjourned at 11:59 a.m.