Minutes

Western Political Science Association
Executive Council Meeting

August 31, 2001
Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, CA

Members Present: President Timothy Kaufman-Osborn; Program Chair Amy Bridges; Treasurer Gilbert St. Clair; Recording Secretary Peregrine Schwartz-Shea; Council Members Manuel Avalos, Mary Caputi, Diana Dwyre, Ron Kahn, Michael McCann, Michelle Saint-Germain, Andrea Simpson, and Raphael Sonenshein..

Members Absent: Victor James, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Barbara Morris, Stephanie Witt (now resigned), and ex-officio members Ann Crigler and Ken Godwin.

Ex-Officio members present: Harold Clarke, Ron Hrebenar; and Executive Director Elizabeth Moulds.

Guests Present: Elsa Favila, WPSA Associate Director; Bill Haltom, Program Chair Elect for 2003; Ted Jelen, Local Arrangements Chair for 2001; Julie Novkov, Nominations Committee; Ron Schmidt, Local Arrangements Chair for 2002; Gary Segura, Chicano/a Status Committee; Nicole Villescas, PRQ Editorial Intern, University of Texas, Dallas.

Introductions: Nicole Villescas was introduced as the PRQ Editorial Intern at University of Texas, Dallas.

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Tim Kaufman-Osborn at 5:36 pm

I. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
The minutes of the March 15, 2001 Executive Council meeting in Las Vegas were approved.

II. INFORMATION ITEM from Chicano/a Status Committee: Manuel Avalos and Gary Segura

The Status Committee sponsored a workshop in Las Vegas. Ken Godwin of PRQ spoke at the workshop regarding editing and how to publish. The Status Committee is considering a workshop in Long Beach on Thursday.

The first issue is funding. In the past, the APSA Status Committee scheduled its meeting at the annual WPSA meeting so that APSA paid the cost of room. The committee is requesting the council to consider $500 per year budgetary support.

The second issue is whether WPSA can negotiate hotel space for the meeting for the pre-conference day. In San Jose they had to pay for the room.

Betty Moulds responded that WPSA has already taken care of the second issue. As to support, there is already some money in the budget for the work of committees.

Amy Bridges suggested posting flyers for the pre-conference on the WPSA web site with appropriate links to the Latino/a Caucus web site.

The Executive Council will revisit this issue in March, if necessary. The association can probably accommodate the requests.

III. REPORTS

Program Chair's Report: Amy Bridges
Amy reported that efforts for the Long Beach 2002 meetings are underway. She has a good team and she and the section chairs had a great meeting in San Francisco.

Deadline for submission of panels and papers: September 14, 2001.

Local Arrangements Long Beach 2002: Ron Schmidt

Recall that there is a shift in days for Long Beach. The conference will be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (March 22 to 24). The room rate for the (in this case, Thursday) pre-conference events has been secured to the benefit of the Latino Caucus and the Feminist Theory meeting. The WPSA will again host a Minority Scholars Reception at the conference. The Executive Council will meet the first day, Friday, March 22, from 8 a.m. to noon.

Executive Director Report: Elizabeth Moulds

1. Conventions:

Las Vegas 2001: For this convention, the work on the budget was done in Sacramento instead of on site. Thanks to the hard work of Tim Kaufman-Osborn in building a strong program and Ted Jelen in watching costs, the convention was a substantial financial success. Money was also saved via savvy negotiations with the hotel.

Long Beach 2002: Incoming APSA President Bob Putnam will be there and there will be an APSA session on APSA governance.

Denver 2003: Dan Smith, University of Denver, will be Local Arrangements Chair. He has been working with Betty.

Portland 2004: WPSA has signed a contract with the Portland Marriott Downtown for $124 per room; Richard Clucas from Portland State will lead local arrangements. The Hatfield Institute will also be supporting the conference.

2. Finances:

Expenses ran a bit over estimates in terms of staff time. It has been difficult to predict the cost of setup of new web-based systems for aiding the program chair. Nevertheless, in the long run these new systems will be cost-effective.

Running the (Las Vegas) convention budget out of Sacramento was a huge success to the relief of local arrangements. Centralization has produced cost-containment and revenue was boosted due to the success of the on-line pre-registration system.

The Long Beach conference may be smaller than Las Vegas because of scheduling conflicts with the Southwest Political Science Association and International Studies Association conferences.

Web-based pre-registration was very successful in preventing deadbeats. Tim added a special thanks to Elsa for reminding conference attendees of the need to register.

3. Fall focus - financial planning:

Treasurer Gilbert St. Clair has noted that professionalization of the Association will increase staff expenses, i.e., the association has to pay appropriate salaries.

It should also be noted that conference revenue can be erratic, so the issue is whether the revenue stream can be stabilized. An endowment is one possibility to consider; others include increasing membership, a dues increase, or applying for grants for technological improvements for running the association.

Betty proposed that financial planning be an agenda item for the next WSPA Executive Council meeting.

There was additional discussion on the technicalities of producing the conference program in terms of the need for "auto-correction" so that changes in the preliminary end up in final program and other forums. Direct entry by program chair and section chairs (just like APSA web) would avoid html conversion and help the program chair to check for conflicts. Tim noted that the Las Vegas conference was a transition year: half paper and half web. This coming year should be simpler, thanks to Elsa.

There was also some discussion of developing a central location with exhibitor information at the web site.

Local arrangements Las Vegas 2001 Final Report: Ted Jelen
Ted handed out his report and thanked the association, Elsa, Betty and Tim. There were some hotel bill problems but it was not a matter of deception and it was resolved in our favor. One area that might have been improved: obtaining more exhibitor revenue. This task is charged to the local arrangements chair who is usually inexperienced. Institutional memory is needed. There were also some problems with the final program as a function of the need to communicate between Sacramento and local arrangements.

Tim Kaufman-Osborn thanked Ted Jelen for all his work.

Nominating Committee: Julie Novkov
Julie reported that the committee met in cyberspace and she handed out the slate:

WPSA Nominating Committee Slate
For Election at the March 2002 Membership Business Meeting

Vice-President and Program Chair 2003-2004
Still under committee deliberation

Treasurer 2003-2006
Gilbert St. Clair, University of New Mexico

Executive Council 2003-2006

Region A
Howard Gilman, University of Southern California
Joel Kassiola, San Francisco State University

Region B
David Camacho, Northern Arizona State University

Region C
Susan Burgess, Ohio University

Executive Council 2002-2003

Region C
Clive Thomas, University of Alaska

The committee is still working on a nomination for Vice-President. The individual should have administrative skills, a strong scholarly profile, and a record of service to WPSA. That name will go out with the slate to members in the December mailing.

The nominating committee received a letter of resignation from Executive Council member, Stephanie Witt, who was a liaison to the Membership Committee. Tim needs a council member to volunteer until March to serve as a liaison. Clive Thomas has been nominated to fill the remainder of Stephanie Witt's term in Region C.

Recall that the committee is now working two years out in nominations. One problem is that the committee does not receive nominations but has to "beat the bushes."

Diana Dwyer observed that perhaps an email list could be used to solicit nominations, especially for the executive council. Discussion followed on the details of obtaining an accurate list of members.

Thanks to Julie and the nominating committee for their work.

Political Research Quarterly Report: Harold Clarke
The big news is that both editors have moved to other institutions. Harold Clarke is now at the University of Texas at Dallas. Ken Godwin is at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. They both have new editorial interns and both universities have been very supportive. They have weekly email meetings as in the past and are receiving floods of manuscripts, both paper and electronic.

The biggest challenge at this time is lack of availability of the journal on JSTOR. There are many inquiries about this and the journal is going to be "left behind" if something is not done. In particular, student use will drop off if there is no on-line availability. Clarke predicted that there will be 1st and 2nd class journals as a function of availability on line. If the journal is not on-line this could possibly hurt citation counts and prestige rankings dramatically.

Tim recollected that there was a discussion in 1997-98 about joining JSTOR and the council endorsed the idea. It was reported that PRQ was turned down by JSTOR at that time. Now APSA wants to help us to pressure JSTOR.

ACTION:
It was moved (Michelle Saint-Germain), seconded, (Andrea Simpson), and carried that the WPSA request the support of APSA in getting PRQ's inclusion in JSTOR..

Tim will write the letter.

There was discussion about whether there was any cost to putting the journal on JSTOR. JSTOR has a "3 year firewall" such that association members will still need to join WPSA to get current issues.

The possibility of a completely on-line journal was discussed. Harold argued that authors still want their articles in paper form. This will happen in the future but let's let others experiment. Now JSTOR is the key issue.

Tim asked council members to encourage submissions to PRQ. He also expressed concern about the award committees, but noted that there is still time to nominate papers for the awards. Except for the Pi Sigma Alpha Award (which had a June 15 deadline), the deadline for WPSA awards is October 15. Award committees have significant problems when they lack a sufficient number of submissions.

Michelle Saint-Germain suggested using an email list to ask for submissions.

Professional Development Committee: Ron Kahn on behalf of Manuel Avalos

Ron Kahn reviewed the letter to the council from the committee which contains many suggestions for professional development including: assistance to scholars at non-PhD granting institutions, both new scholars and more senior; building networks for scholars at liberal arts colleges because they may not get monetary support to go to a national conference but only to a regional conference. We need outreach to invite such scholars to WPSA and provide them with appropriate panels and roundtables for professional development.

Tim asked the committee to rank the many ideas and then communicate the most promising to Amy Bridges in the form of panels for the 2002 meetings.

Michelle St Germain argued that another useful panel would consider the transition in scholarship from graduate student to assistant professor, i.e., a focus on publishing and grants.

Those in the west need assistance with grants because, it was observed, the grant process is not neutral regionally.

A representative from the Professional Development Committee could speak at the March reception for graduate students, though it is also important to reach individuals 1-2 years out of graduate school.

IV. OLD BUSINESS:

Betty reported that Portland Marriott along the river is the choice for 2004. The room rate of $124 has been locked down and 3 rooms for pre-conference workshops nailed down. The conference will be back to its regular Thursday-Saturday schedule. There was little support for returning to the Portland Hilton, which was under construction the last time the conference was in Portland.

2005-There is a bid from Sacramento to consider along with the bid from Monterey. There was discussion of the perceptions of Sacramento. Either place the conference will be a small meeting. Publicity would be needed for Monterrey.

The Council makes these decisions three years out. Ideally, the decision should be made by March 2002 but a bit longer is acceptable.

V. NEW BUSINESS: Timothy Kaufman-Osborn
Tim handed out the numbers on membership. There has been stability since 1995 but what is not happening is growth.

Michelle asked whether we have a sense of "potential membership" looking at schools from the West as a baseline.

It is difficult to differentiate old versus new members. We have no longitudinal data. Some suggested a survey or a sample of individuals for interviewing.

It was suggested that we begin to study membership by using the web site and finding a way to retain membership information in the data base. We would like data in two forms: the percentage of membership at different ranks and the percentage of potential members.

It was suggested that Michael Alvarez, of the membership committee, explore these issues and the possibility of a survey. It was suggested that Clive Thomas might be the liaison to the membership committee. A logo for the association is another possibility to consider. Tim also requested that the membership committee report its preliminary findings as well as its future plans at the business meeting in March 2002. Tim will follow up with Michael Alvarez.

Meeting adjourned 7:25 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Peregrine Schwartz-Shea