ASA at 175 - Preparing for a Board meeting
By Ronald Wasserstein - April 92, 2014
This week's ASA at 175 blog takes you behind the scenes and on the set of an ASA Board of Directors meeting. Yesterday's blog provided an overview of the Board and its meetings. Today we'll look at the preparations for the meeting.
I mentioned yesterday the 250+ pages of reading Board members need to do. At the upcoming meeting, the Board will, among other things:
- review the financial results for the 2013 calendar year, including the association's annual audit, and also review the status of our investment portfolio
- hear detailed recommendations from our public relations consultant, Stanton Communications, about a national public relations campaign aimed at high school and college students
- receive recommendations from our development consultant, Campbell and Company, about enhancing the ASA's fundraising capacity
- consider a policy statement about the appropriate statistical use of value-added models in education, and discuss another potential policy statement that might need to be developed
- receive a report of the Membership Committee Council in order to stay in close touch with an important segment of ASA's committee structure (see Monday's blog for details)
- discuss the possible formation of undergraduate statistics clubs and an ASA connection with DataFest activities that are taking place around the country
- review progress in this year's strategic initiatives and consider plans for the coming year, all part of the ASA's strategic planning and execution
- review funding proposals made by members to launch some initiatives to further meet the ASA's role of promoting the practice and profession of statistics
- get updates on the activities of chapters and sections through reports from the chapter and section governing boards
- consider recommendations regarding the ASA’s role in professional and personal skills development for statisticians
For all of this to happen efficiently and effectively in a two-day period, much advance preparation has been done by ASA staff, by Board members, and by other volunteers. For example, the recommendations from Stanton Communications were carefully reviewed in a meeting last week by five Board members plus ASA staff. The recommendations from Campbell and Company were also thoroughly discussed by a six-member task force of senior ASA leaders and also by ASA staff.
Each item on the agenda has been organized to provide the Board with background and context, and to anticipate possible courses of action and their consequences. Board members have been kept up-to-date each month about activities of the Executive Committee and the staff following up on the discussions of the previous Board meeting (November 2013).
Today Board members are finishing their reading and preparing to travel to Alexandria for Friday's meeting. Most of the Board will arrive tomorrow afternoon or evening. President Nat Schenker will meet with me later today to review the agenda and make final meeting preparations. Staff has set up the Board meeting room, installing microphones and providing other needed equipment for the meeting. The ASA HQ is ready for the meeting!
We'll continue throughout the week to take you along on this Board meeting. We do so to bring you closer to the Board and its people, and to encourage you to stay connected with your association. Above all, we write to urge you to cast your vote in the ASA election that continues throughout April.
In 2014, the American Statistical Association is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Over the course of this year, this blog will highlight aspects of that celebration, and look broadly at the ASA and its activities. Please contact ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein (ron@amstat.org) if you would like to post an entry to this blog.