PHILOSOPHY of EDUCATION SOCIETY
Executive Board, 2004
Minutes
Philosophy of Education
Executive Board Meeting
March 25, 2004
Thursday, March 25, 5pm - 8:15pm
In attendance Bob Floden, Fran Schrag, Kal Alston, Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, Kathy Hytten, Chris Higgins, guest - Nick Burbules
• Approval of minutes of 2003 Executive Board Meeting and 2003 Business Meeting
Motion to accept by Kal Alston, Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon seconded, minutes approved.
• President's Report - Francis Schrag
• Proposed Policy on PES Resolutions Concerning Public Policy
a. A resolution adopted by a majority of the PES Executive Committee, at the request of any member, shall be placed on the agenda of the regular business meeting.
b. Any resolution which purports to represent the collective sentiments of PES on matters of public policy must be voted on by the membership on an electronic ballot, if a motion to do so is authorized by the majority of those present at the annual business meeting.
c. The Executive Secretary shall allow a period of at least two weeks from announcement for members to debate the motion. The ballot shall include a summary of the arguments presented.
d. The outcome of the membership polling shall be forwarded to the membership. For a resolution to be used in publicity outside PES, it must have the backing of the majority of those voting and at least 25% of the membership must cast ballots.
Fran offered that he developed this from a similar statement from APA. The committee discussed the mechanics of the policy, particularly in terms of an electronic ballot. The policy was taken to the Business Meeting for approval by the membership.
• Executive Secretary's Report - Kathy Hytten
Membership
At the start of the 2003 meeting ( 3/27/04 ), 384 members had paid 02-03 dues. At the start of this meeting, 443 members have paid for 03-04 - and we expect more will pay at the conference. I sent out several email messages over the last few months to people who hadn't paid dues, so it looks like that helped. Here are the membership numbers for all the years we have in our database:
1989-90 239
1990-91 250
1991-92 279
1992-93 310
1993-94 322
1994-95 358
1995-96 465
1996-97 441
1997-98 459
1998-99 527
1999-00 522
2000-01 479
2001-02 459
2002-03 445
2003-04 443
New Members
We have 49 new members so far this year (total last year we had 54, in 01-02 we had 41). 16 of these new members attended the conference.
The committee discussed several issues regarding membership. Should we necessitate that one needs to be a member of the society to give a paper? How can we encourage people to join the society? Should we develop more materials and invitations? The Executive Secretary should coordinate with the Program Chair to get the names of people who proposed but who are not members, then a registration packet/letter should be sent to the people who are accepted. This should be added to the program chairs handbook.
Financial Status
Even after transferring $9140 last year out of our operating account in order to create the Legacy Fund (thus far we have received $5860 in donations), we are currently operating within our budget. Our conference expenses last year were about $3700 higher than in Vancouver (the difference can largely be accounted for by room use charges), but lower than in Chicago in 2002. One issue to consider for the conference this year is that we were not able to secure as much in institutional contributions (we did get $744.66 from OISE ). This may be something we want to talk about further.
Our dues increase seems to be working, as it has generated more income with fewer members. We have had few complaints this year after instructing emeritus members to pay at the rate at which they felt most comfortable. Attached is the cash flow comparison for the previous two fiscal years.
Investment Committee
In the summer of 2002, we shifted our investments based on the advice of the investments committee. Since we moved our funds to Morgan Stanley in Florida , there has been noticeable gain in our investments. When we moved the Kneller account in August of 2002, we had $71,162.81 in that account. After a slight loss, the account has been steadily growing. As of February 29, 2004 , we have $75,900.73 in that account (bearing in mind we withdrew $2500 for the Miami Conference).
The Legacy Fund has grown as well. We started that account with $15,000 in October of 2002. As of March 12, 2004 , we have $18,972.38 in that account.
Budget Approval
I based the budget for 04-05 on figures from the past several years, and the agreement we signed with the hotel in San Francisco . The committee approved the proposed budget.
Kneller Budget for 2005 Conference
Because the Kneller fund is has not gained that much interest, we should keep our spending from that fund at a maximum of the previous year's amount of $2500.
Committee Appointments
The precedent we establish in 2002 is that committee appointments for the upcoming year (to begin on July 1, 2004 ) should be made prior to the conference and announced at the business meeting that precedes the appointment. Bob had these appointments in place by the end of the meeting.
Council for the Social Foundations of Education
The status of this council is unclear. We did not pay dues for 02-03, largely because no invoice was sent and no information could be found out about the council via the web. We will discuss the issue of whether we should continue our membership if and when we are sent information from CSFE.
• Approval of Candidates for Fellow
• Jeffrey Milligan
• Leonard Waks
• Chris Higgins
Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon motioned, Kal Alston seconded. All three approved as fellows.
The committee once again discussed the issue of whether the category of fellow should be eliminated. When it was originally conceived, only fellows could vote, and only fellows could be officers. This latter policy has not been followed strictly, and the committee considered whether we should amend the constitution to take out the statement necessitating that officers be fellows. It was then argued that fellows are part of the scholarly philosophy tradition and they help to preserve a particular scholarly community. One concern is that we don't have an accurate list of current fellows. The Board will continue to look at this issue.
Educational Theory and Yearbook Reports - Nick Burbules
Nick talked about new developments with Educational Theory. He is thinking about contacting the membership about ideas for how to recruit the journal. One idea in progress is to create more themed issues. Several of these special issues are in process. He is also thinking more about the journal in international terms and making some connections with other journals, especially considering the possibilities that exist with the two other philosophy journals to which Blackwell offers our members reciprocal subscriptions. He is also considering reconstituting the associate editor board, and getting them more involved.
The production of Educational Theory is back on cycle with Blackwell. Joyce Atkinson has been the managing and production editor and this has resulted in good quality control. The budget with Blackwell is a bit strange, as we will not start collecting money from then until 2005, but we will be able to cover our expenses until then.
There have been several new initiatives with Blackwell
• Reciprocal Subscriptions: All members now have on-line access to several journals in addition to Educational Theory. These are the Journal of Philosophy of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, the British Journal of Educational Studies, and Curriculum Inquiry.
• My Synergy Page: Nick is working with Blackwell to develop the on-line site so that members can access a variety of resources there (e.g., a work space to copy references and ideas within this site, where you could keep notes, quotations, references, etc.).
• Archive of Back Issues: Blackwell is working to put all back issues of Educational Theory on-line. They are aiming to put 10 year blocks of journals on line each year, so that all back issues of the journal will be on-line within 5 years.
Nick talked about using these changes with Blackwell to help initiate a significant new membership drive. Five journals for the price of one is a big selling point. The membership committee should think about reaching out to lapsed members and people who have attended meetings but who have not joined the society. We should do this before another organization that links with Blackwell gets them to join.
Nick then shared some thoughts about the yearbook while reminding us that he has no official role in relation to the yearbook. Diana Dummit, the production supervisor, and a graduate student currently publish it, working with the Program Chair/Editor. There have been consistent problematic issues with yearbook, especially being behind schedule. There is little consistency with the Editor changing each year and with no one person accountable for producing the yearbook in a timely and efficient fashion. The board discussed the question of how we should handle the yearbook in the future.
One option is to turn over the publication to yearbook to Blackwell. The problem with this is that it would increase the cost of yearbook for PES members and it would likely be priced higher than we could afford. Another option (and probably the easier long term solution) is to consider appointing a person who is the Editor-in-Chief to oversee the process from year to year. This would result in an accountable person - someone who knows the rules, procedures, and expectations - who could maintain continuity and who could say no. The issue is that we need somebody to play a firmer role in the production process. A permanent Editor-in-Chief would provide us a single accountable person.
The committee then discussed issues surrounding a permanent Editor-in-Chief. We concluded that it would be ideal if the person was at or near Illinois . The question was raised about whether this person would be compensated. Our initial thinking was that this probably wasn't necessary as the program chair does some editing of the manuscripts and most of the significant editing is done by staff. The role of the Editor-in-Chief would mostly be to shepherd the process and keep the production on track. It would probably not involve that much hands on responsibility; rather it would mostly be a management position. Once this person is in place, they may decide not to keep publication at Illinois and/or they may put out bids to go with a private publisher. Once they are in charge, they can possibly change things.
The next steps we discussed consider finding out who in this society might like to do this job. The decision of whether we move in this direction has a lot to do with whether we can we think of somebody for this job. Some enticements include calling it a Series Editor and setting a fixed term (e.g., five years). The committee decided to bring this issue to the Business Meeting.
• Old Business
• Legacy Fund
We briefly discussed the need for a specific proposal for how to use the funds. This year our decision was to support graduate students who were on the program. Maybe the perk shouldn't be to accepted papers. A better alternative might be a simple application form that prioritizes people (Have you gotten help from us before? Have you already checked from you school? What other questions?) We wondered how much we should plan on awarding per year. Bob, Sophie and Chris agreed to work on this issue further.
• Committee Reports, Approval of Site, budget, Program Chair, and Program Committee for 2004 conference
These were all addressed at the general Business Meeting
Meeting Adjourned, Thursday at 8:15pm
Respectfully Submitted,
Kathy Hytten
Executive Secretary
CONTACT: PES Executive Director Jeff Milligan
850-644-8171; milligan@coe.fsu.edu