Minutes from the Section A Business Meetings

2005 Preliminary Business Meeting, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Call to Order

Chair Brian Wiegmann called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. with 72 members present. He expressed thanks for the organization help in rescheduling the Annual Meeting, and recognized President Mike Ivie and Program Co-Chair Susan Weller for significant contributions to the Section and the Society.

Steve Ashed moved to approve the minutes to last year's business meetings. Anthony Cognato seconded. The minutes were approved unanimously.

J. McPherson acknowledged outgoing Section A Governing Board Representative Jackie Miller.

Summary of Appointments

Incoming Chair: Carol von Dohlen
Incoming Vice Chair: Michael Caterino
Incoming Secretary: Paul Goldstein

Incoming Governing Board Representative: John Heraty.

Summary of Awards

Section A gave a strong performance this year. New Fellows include Masner, Howden, Ball, and Lawrence. Mike Ivie noted that the Fellows were identified by well-hounded nominators, the job of the Section A chair. We are poorly represented proportionally by Fellows. We must keep up the effort to recognize prospective nominees while there is still time.

In addition to Fellows, Carolina Chaboo won the Foundation's Snodgrass Memorial Research Award. Peter Adler won the Foundation's Thomas Say Award. And Richard Zack won the ESA Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching.

Standing Committee Reports

Education and Youth (Dan Young)
Letter from Frank Gilstrap to outgoing chair, look into setting up liaison to build web-based information for educators, two subcommittees formed for content and assessment.

Ethics (Andy Brower)
Brower knows of no committee meeting to be held this year.

Fellows
Manya Stoetzel needs replacing.

International Affairs (Martin Hauser)

• Non-U.S. members should have international branch

• Increase presence of ESA at international meetings

• Appeal to members to promote society internationally

• Poster session for foreign societies to promote themselves at ESA – increase interactions

• Jackie Miller: International affairs committee not yet settled in new restructure

Membership (Floyd Shockley)

Program (Susan Weller)

• Program Enhancement Funds, etc. discussed. Weller assisted in a planning meeting – main topic, how to facilitate Program Committee's job; symposia can be partially supported, so don't forget to apply for them

•  Accomplished many section A symposia

• Student talks/posters: 51/26

• Large number contributed Section A talks/posters: 53/66

• Requiring more judges and moderators – plea for more help

• Program symposium deadline: February 1, 2006

• Section symposium deadline: March 6, 2006

• Named 2005 program and Section symposia

• Emphasized that two symposium organizers were students

• Numbers of posters: 700+ (ESA-wide)

• Symposium organizers, make sure to sign for Program Enhancement Funds and turn in to LAC office.

• Relaxed rules for one presentation/presenter due to Hurricane Wilma, to allow non-attendees to have their papers presented.

• Weller clarification: Only students required to submit abstracts; also with regard to presentations, may be one contributed AND one invited, but not more than one of each.

Strategic Planning
Covered already.

Systematic Resources (Dave Furth)
No longer an ESA standing committee, but is now a Section A committee. One one main issue: What resources to systematists need/want? Floyd Shockley will compile answers from many respondents. Post to website, will be list of links.

Publications Reports 

American Entomologist Editorial Board (John Heraty)
"In the Field" section should be filled with Section A submissions.

Annals Editorial Board (John Oswald)
Some statistics for 2005:

• Pages published: 1022 (of 6422 for all ESA journals), somewhat down from 2004 year (1372 pp.) because of efforts in 2004 to reduce an existing backlog; no current backlog of papers

• Articles submitted: 168

• Articles published: 119

• Acceptance rate (1/1/05 to 11/30/05): 62%

• Average time to first notification: 9.8 weeks (ca. 2 mo.) [this is time from submission to first editor contact with author with notification of accept/accept with modification/reject/withdraw]

• Average time to acceptance: 25.1 weeks (ca. 6 mo.) [includes time for author to make modifications]

• Average time to publication: 43.1 weeks (ca. 10 mo.) [includes time for final publication]

• Subscriptions (through end of November): 1069 (up ca. 30 from 2004; ca. 450 from individuals, 620 from institutions) [individual subscriptions up ca. 50 over last year; encourage all Section A members to subscribe to journal, excellent value at <$20 year; continuing member subscriptions to print version of journal will be critical maintaining print run of journal in long run]

Page Waivers: Used full amount of waivers granted from governing board: $3800, and (in addition) all waivers from C. P. Alexander Fund: $2220 – waivers used up by September, so best to have paper accepted early in year if wish to request waiver (based on average ca. 6 months to acceptance, suggests submission about mid year to have best shot of getting waivers)

New Subject Editors:

• Dr. Yves Alarie (systematics of Coleoptera)

• Dr. Britt Bunyard (broad background in insect life history, insect-fungus interactions, plant genetics)

• Dr. Ann Fraser (plant insect-interactions)

• Dr. Donald Thomas (systematics of Hemiptera, fruit fly studies)

• Dr. David Wagner (systematics of Lepidoptera)

Book & Media Reviews Editorial Board
Jason Cryan not present.

Environmental Entomology Editorial Board (Nathan Schiff)
Page waivers are not being used. Also, the journal has new section on transgenic plants

Journal of Medical Entomology Editorial Board (Quentin Fang)

• time to first notification 7.6 weeks

• time to final acceptance 28 wks

• time to publication 48.3 wks

• 834 subscriptions

• 36% rejection rate (159 of 266 submissions published)

• Walter Tabachnik will replace John Erdman as editor-in-chief

• impact factor highest 1.609 of ESA journals

Publications Council
John Oswald will attend the meeting on Saturday.

Thomas Say Editorial Board (Joe McHugh)
The editorial board will meet Saturday morning.

Other Reports

Governing Board Report (Jackie Miller)

·        Jackie showed 'books' to J. McPherson, comparing paper reduction

·        Budget in the black: membership, investments, and savings increasing

·        3 new ESA-based handbooks through APS next year

·        Special recognition to Susan Weller and Kathleen Shields for organization; also Rebecca Simmons for helping to retype the program; Michael Caterino for sending out messages; hooray for Coleopterists, fellows, Michael Ivie

·        Art show – grants and sponsored partly by NEA; reception there after section meeting

·        Mentor boards – Michael Ivie's idea, but submissions low; discussion whether should be continued; not too late to post additional recognition

·        Resolutions: Evolution vs. Intelligent design – put forward by CEDA, other resolutions need to be posted by noon Saturday

·        Mike Ivie: Technical issues kept Ivie from giving a presentation on restructuring at plenary session; stood and briefly gave overview on proposal, over 500 members have contributed comments; meeting Saturday morning 9-10:30; Section A has been the model for much of the restructuring; based on theme of networks and decentralization; not a done deal; three more approvals needed; Sunday morning Governing Board will decide whether deserves further development; two additional years of work would need to be done before proposal could be fully implemented; new constitution needed, etc… Jackie Miller: Need feedback to represent full diversity of members' opinions. Mary Liz Jameson: Funding for Sections in proposal? Jackie Miller: Each Section would have a treasurer; Section-based ideas could be funded separately from ESA central. Mike Ivie: Governing Board controls 80% power and decisions, Sections control 20%. New proposal would reverse this to give Sections more control. Branches operate much this way already. Sections may choose to assess additional fees to support specific (member-approved). Would increase our public voice, and would enable faster action on time-critical items. Brett Ratcliffe: Would this affect the dues structure? Mike Ivie: Not total, but how it was apportioned. Joining multiple sections might require additional dues. This would give member votes in each section. Becky Simmons: Would we still have access to all journals? Mike Ivie: We think so, but it's a long way off. Jackie Miller: Fee to join additional sections will be nominal. Mike Ivie: Things that new structure would enable: Sections could hire independent lobbyists to work in Washington. ESA central would manage funds for Sections. Sections could establish scholarships, etc.  Possible that additionally assessed fees for these sorts of activities would probably have to be voluntary, to avoid members changing sections to avoid fees. Biggest concern so far has been that this proposal might cause ESA to break up. But Section A has had many affiliated groups (ECN, Taxon focused societies), that has not impacted section A itself. We have synergy because of our network. Andy Brower: Will this be discussed more at Final Business meeting? Jackie Miller: Should attend one of the Saturday meetings. Mary Liz Jameson: Is special presentation in program? Mike Ivie: Yes, in program.

Entomological Collections Network (Paul Goldstein)

• Jackie Miller, Paul G., Marc Branham organized

• Anthony Cognato, Chris Marshall, Andrew Smith for next years meeting

• 97 preregistered, 97 showed, but not identical 97

• issues that came up at business meeting

  • maintaining relationship with ESA

  • scheduling, maintaining vigilance to keep from overlap with Section A and end of ECN

  • many folks involved with ESA management have to miss much of ECN

  • exploring new roles for ECN

  • standards for teaching collections, how can ESA perhaps help to develop these standards to help such curators

Web Affairs (John Oswald)
ESA peer-reviewing websites?

• 6 or so people met after ECN to discuss developing this idea; further discussion welcome

• developing this process will help professors attaining advancement by allowing ESA stamp of approval for reviewed sites

• ESA publications council might develop and implement such a system

• prototype would be implemented, maybe with Section A as a test case

• Oswald will develop draft guidelines to help pub council develop process

• Nathan Schiff: it's difficult to develop universal standards where goals for web developers may be very different

• John Heraty: long way to go here before a final development done; not going to be a rating, probably going to be a pass/fail system

• Alma Solis: ARS sends out web databases for reviews, internal and external; and scientists get some credit.

• Catherine Duckett: at her new job (OBIS) they're also discussing this issue

New Business

• Lisa Spurlock wondered if Section A members might assist with an identification tool for website, aimed at K-12 level. Dan Young might interface with Education and Youth committee.

• Brian Wiegmann reminder that bridge up Saturday 6:30 – 8:30

• Wiegmann: Women in Entomology breakfast Sunday morning, cybercafe in convention center

• Art Show open house with food and srink

• Heraty: John Pinto retired, new position at UC Riverside Systematic entomology available

Jackie Miller moved to adjourn the meeting; Susan Weller seconded the motion. The meeting adjourned at 7 p.m.