2014-02-07: Winter 2014

Minutes, SSRIC Online Meeting, Friday, February 7, 2014

Participants: Ellen Berg (Sacramento), Greg Bohr (San Luis Obispo), Stafford Cox (Long Beach), Rhonda Dugan (Bakersfield), Gilbert Garcia (Los Angeles), Mario Guerrero (Pomona), Matt Jarvis (Fullerton), Kimmy Kee-Rose (Channel Islands), John Korey (at large; non-voting), Tim Kubal (Fresno), Josh Miesel (Humboldt), John Menary (Dominguez Hills), Francis Neely (San Francisco), Ed Nelson (at large; non-voting), Rich Taketa (San Jose), Jill Yamashita (Monterey Bay), Lori Weber (Chico)

Guests: Steve Stambough (Fullerton), Andrew Roderick (San Francisco)

Note: recorded votes are italicized; action items are in boldface.

1. Approval of Fall 2013 Minutes: M/S/P

2. Approval of Agenda: M/S/P

3. Election of Chair, 2014-2015: The Council elected Matt Jarvis by acclamation.

4. Student Research Conference:

  • John K will contact Gene Geisler and invite him to come to the Conference and address the participants. If he can’t make it, he will ask him to address participants from San Francisco State. In this event, Francis will coordinate with Gene and with Steve on the logistics.
  • When participants register, they will be asked to give us permission to publish their abstracts on the SSRIC website following the Conference
  • For logistical reasons, we will need to limit the Conference to 80 presentations. This may necessitate cutting off registrations earlier than the deadlines. A warning to this effect is already posted on the Website. Stafford will check into the feasibility of creating a waiting list and inform John K.
  • CSU Fullerton does not honor student or faculty parking decals from other campuses. Faculty staying on for the Friday Council business meeting should contact Steve to request a complimentary visitor’s pass. Those staying at the Fullerton Marriott (adjacent to campus) can park there.
  • As soon as possible, let Steve know if you or anyone else from your campus will be staying at the Marriott, so that he can try to obtain a group rate.
  • Ed has sent out to the Council a copy of an email sent by the chair of the Fresno State Sociology department to majors urging their participation. Representatives are encouraged to ask their chairs/deans/etc. to do something similar.
  • The name of the Conference, the CSU, SSRIC “Student Research Conference,” 1) gets confused with the CSU’s “Student Research Competition,” and 2) doesn’t include the term “social science.” M/S/P to change “Student Research Conference” to “Social Science Student Symposium,” effective in 2015. The nickname will be S4 (pronounced “ess four”), which should be easy to incorporate into logos for publicity purposes.

5. Interim Data Utilization Report: Ed distributed a report (attachment A) comparing utilization for the first six months of 2013-2014 with the first six months and full year of 2012-2013. Compared to the same point a year ago, usage this year is up so far, but only slightly. Ed will check with Andrew about the possibility of tracking SDA usage.

6. Participation at Meetings: We have had several problems trying to run all-virtual and hybrid meetings, listed here in increasing order of importance:

  • The first and least important, though frustrating, problem has been technical glitches of various sorts. As the result of such, today’s meeting was quite late in starting, and two representatives were unable to participate at all.
  • Second, in-person participation has suffered. The nadir was reached at the Fall meeting in SLO, when the only voting member (i.e., excluding Ed and John K) physically present was the host representative.
  • Third, online participation tends to be unfocused. When representatives are participating from their offices, they are subject to interruption by students and colleagues, and may be away for extended periods to teach a class or attend a meeting.
  • Fourth, and a consequence of the other problems, the Council “culture” suffers from more limited interaction, both formal and informal. Cohesion has clearly declined. In the past, some of the most important Council business took place over dinner, and friendships formed led to professional collaboration on research projects and instructional courseware development.

7. ADA Compliance: We need to ensure that the Website complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Andrew reported that problems occur in three areas:

  • Technical issues regarding site structure. The staff at San Francisco State is working to fix any problems, and should complete this process soon.
  • Content. SFSU staff will go through the site to identify problems and solutions.
  • Attached files (e.g., PDFs, PPTs, DOCs). These are the most difficult  to fix. Priority will be 1) future files, 2) existing files of critical importance and 3) other files. We should ask visitors to the site with concerns about specific files to contact us in order to move these files to the head of the queue.

Michael Harper (for the Website staff) and John K (for the Council) will coordinate.

8. ICPSR 2013 Official Representatives Meeting. Matt reported that most of those in attendance were data librarians, and that the meeting dealt in large part with issues of data curating. Sessions on teaching and learning dealt mostly with the use of ICPSR instructional materials.

9. Budget for 2014-2015.

Ed will check with ICPSR, Roper, Field, Berkeley, and SFSU re charges for next year.

Though the idea was not introduced as a formal motion, extended discussion took place about the possibility of discontinuing our Field subscription, and using part of the funds to reduce campus subscriptions and the remainder to provide modest travel funds for workshops and meetings and for other purposes. Instead, the Council took up a motion to keep Field in the budget and to request a budget augmentation to fund travel to one meeting per year for a representative from each campus. M/S/P. In addition, campus representatives should ask their chairs, deans, etc. for funding for a second meeting.

10. Workshops:

Let Ed know if you’d like one or more workshops on your campus.

Consider a) surveying faculty in informal groups or via online software such as survey monkey to ascertain felt workshop needs; b) asking to be invited into colleagues’ classrooms to conduct mini-workshops on finding and downloading data, c) publicizing and utilizing online workshop materials (see http://www.ssric.org/participate/workshopsd) making short presentations at department meetings and meetings of social science department chairs.

11. Subscription renewal letter:

Early each summer a letter goes out to campuses asking that they renew their subscriptions to the SSRIC. The Council chair and Pamela Estaniel (for the Chancellor’s Office) cosign the letter. John K’s recommendation to Matt is that, in addition to talking about the databases, the letter should emphasize other goods and services we offer, including the Student Research Conference, workshops, instructional materials, the Field Research Corporation Faculty Fellowship, and the ICPSR Summer Program. See attachment B for a list of campus contacts for subscription renewals.

Check the information for your campus and let John K know of any corrections or updates. Among other things, check to see what office is listed as approving payment. Note that both nomenclature and organization structures are sometimes unclear. It appears that, currently, approvals break down as follows:

IT: 10 campuses
College: 6*
AA/Provost: 4
Library: 2

* includes two campuses (SLO and Pomona) on which individual departments and the library share costs with the College.

12. Information Items:

  • Field Research Corporation Faculty Fellowship. The deadline for proposals is April 15. See http://ssric.org/participate/field_institute, and contact Ed for more information.
  • ICPSR Summer Program. We’ll follow the same procedures as last year, with a deadline of April 18. Greg will send an email to the long list or ask Ed to do so on his behalf. See http://ssric.org/participate/icpsr_summer, and contact Greg for more information.
  • Please update the “long list” for your campus. See http://ssric.org/updates, and contact Ed for more information.
  • John K will send out a copy of the Council roster.  Please reply with any changes that have occurred since the last iteration.
  • See http://ssric.org/newsletters for the latest SSRIC newsletter.
  • See attachment C for the priority list for the 2015 ICPSR OR meeting, and see Article VI of the Bylaws at for more information.

Attachments:

A.  Interim Data Utilization Report
B.  Campus Contacts for Subscription Renewals
C.  Priority List for 2015 ICPSR OR Meeting