Minutes of the Board Meeting

Society for Glycobiology

Boston Park Plaza

Nov. 10, 2005

 

In attendance were Board Members: Marilynn Etzler, Fred Brewer, Nancy Dahms, Chris West, Jamey Marth, Karen Colley, Michael Pierce, Linda Baum, Ron Schnaar, Tom Oeltmann, and Kelley Moremen

1. Meeting was called to order by President Ron Schnaar at 12:30 pm
   
   
2. The minutes of the previous Board Meeting (2004, Honolulu, Hawaii) were approved.
   
   
3. President’s Report:

a.   Thanks and Announcements:
Past President Marilynn Etzler was thanked for organizing the successful joint meeting with the Japanese Society in Hawaii. She steps off the board the board as past-past president.

b.   Meeting Statistics (from the Profit & Loss Statement prepared by Scientific Association Management): The 2005 Boston meeting was a reasonable success with over 400 registrants as of the Board Meeting. By comparison, the 2000 Boston meeting had 450 attendees, the 2002 Boston meeting had 384, the 2003 San Diego Meeting had 526, and the 2004 Hawaii meeting had 771 attendees. It was noted that attention should be paid to the balance sheet for the meetings where the 2002-2003 meetings were run at a profit, whereas the 2004 Hawaii meeting had a $9407 loss (split evenly with the Japanese Society), and it appeared that the 2005 meeting will break even. Discussion focused on the increased costs for the 2005 meeting. Catering costs were considerably higher than at the 2002 Boston meeting and accounted for the most of the decreased profit. The site negotiations were largely handled by Scientific Association Management (SAM) based on recommendations by the Board for when catering should be provided. The Board decided previously to include breakfasts as a catering expense, since it was considered to be an important opportunity for attendees to come together.  It was mentioned that the banquet charges or registration fees could be raised to compensate for the increased costs.  General discussion indicated that the speaker compensation has doubled (increase by ~$8000) in the last 2-3 years and specifically the costs for catering the breaks has gone up considerably (~$23,000 since 2002). It was concluded that nothing urgent has to be done, but a long-term memory should be incorporated into the Society and Board matters that will carry these concerns through to future years, especially in future discussions with SAM.
Regarding speaker expenses, the President noted that this did not appear to be a major deciding factor regarding the acceptance of the offers to present at the meeting. Speakers were offered to have their registration covered and a flat figure of $500 for domestic and $1000 for foreign travel expenses.
A discussion of the registration fee schedule indicated that the fees were considerably lower than some comparable meetings (i.e. the IGO meeting). The conclusion was that a minor tweaking of the expenses, registration, or speaker fees in discussion with SAM should bring the profit and loss statement more securely back into the black.

c.   Discussion moved to the subject of the Society website. With the passing of Dr. Charles Warren in the summer of 2005 there was an active effort by the web services company, Inmerge, to get access to all of the Society files on Charles’ server to complete the process of registration and abstract submission. As a tribute to Dr. Warren, much of the work on the website related to abstract submission worked smoothly in the absence of an active management. The President was pleased with the efforts and accomplishments of Inmerge (Tom Thomas and his son Will) and their responsiveness in the pressured situation. The ongoing costs for to website management by Inmerge ($20,000/yr) will be higher than the prior expense for Dr. Warren and needs to be incorporated into the ongoing costs for the Society. Problems were noted with the Society web interface that had been forwarded to Inmerge and it was anticipated that they would be dealt with as the completion of the membership drive proceeded through the end of the year. The eventual goal was a device/browser-independent website by early 2006. It was noted that the Directors should forward problems/concerns with the website to Inmerge, but send copies to the Secretary so that a record is maintained.

d.   Memberships will now be received directly by the Society by an online process rather than through Oxford University Press, with an additional screening of membership and abstract submissions for companies that wish to take advantage of memberships for advertising purposes. Memberships exist at three levels: student, regular, and emeritus. Regular memberships require a description of the institution or company and a summary of the applicant’s history and interest in the field. Sponsorships are no longer required for the application process. Student applicants are required to include an email address of their mentor, who gets an email indicating that their student has applied and requests a confirmation that the student works in their lab and has a project related to glycobiology. Post-docs in their first two years can apply at a student rate. The emeritus membership rate is the same as the student rate. No requirement for mentor acknowledgement is requested (!!!), but certification that a full salary is no longer received from their academic institution is required.  Student and emeritus members are exempt from the membership fee, but they do have to pay subscription fees for Glycobiology (online $95 or print $130).  Members of the Board of Directors do not pay dues as long as they serve on the Board and members of the Glycobiology editorial board do not pay the journal subscription fee. A membership drive will be instituted in late 2005 to update the membership rolls.

e.   NIH review of Glycobiology grants:  The Society President (Ron Schnaar) and Dr. Bill Lennarz met with NIH CSR staff Tony Scarpa and Don Schneider for a frank discussion about NIH study section composition and representation within the reorganized study section panels. CSR agreed to receive a list of people that the Society feels are top glycobiologists, but they do not need additional data for the members on the list, since NIH has an informatics system that is capable of profiling potential study section members. A list of ~60 names was assembled by present and past Presidents of the Society and provided to Don Schneider at CSR. An emphasis was made for Society members to actively investigate the members of potential review panels by profiling their expertise. If a grant is assigned to a panel with insufficient expertise, then a request needs to be made to the CSR staff for inclusion of appropriate expertise on the panel.  If appropriate expertise is not provided in the case of a declined application, then it can be considered as a potential component for a rebuttal. Mention was also made that a sufficient number of applications need to be generated in the major study sections that handle glycobiology applications in order to increase the opportunities for successful funding. This was considered a structural issue within NIH that will hopefully be resolved over time. The President has generated a honed list of keywords that can be used in a Pubmed search to identify contemporary glycobiology expertise among NIH study section panel members and it will be made available to members via the Society web site. The members of the Board appreciated that Don Schneider agreed to come and give a lunch presentation at the Society meeting summarizing the status of the NIH review process. In the subsequent discussion it was mentioned that an ongoing follow-up of the dialog with the CSR staff should be pursued.  Obtaining additional ongoing information on funding success rates from NIH based on selective requests for data was also discussed.

f.     It was mentioned that there was an absence of coverage by high profile journals at the Society meeting. Potential complementary registration to journalists was discussed as well as including the Society meeting on the calendars of as many other societies as possible (i.e. FASEB).

g.   Discussion was made to include a legal note on the Society web site disavowing any association with companies that attempt to use their association with the Society for advertising or promotional purposes. Appropriate wording is being pursued for liability purposes. It was also mentioned that the board should pursue Director liability insurance.

4. President Elect’s Report:

a.   The 2006 meeting will be held in Universal City (Sheraton Universal). Rates will be $145/night and there are trains available from the airport, as well as plenty of local restaurants, clubs, and music. The program for the meeting will be assembled in early 2006. Concern was expressed that the entire meeting package needs to be considered to keep the costs down.

5. Secretary’s Report:

a.  Minutes of Board Meeting from 2004 were distributed and election results were summarized: Jacques Baenziger was elected as President-Elect and Kelley Moremen was elected as Secretary to succeed Tom Oeltmann after 13 years of service to the Society. The Awards Committee is comprised of the President Elect (Jacques Baenziger, chair of the committee), Past President (Ron Schnaar), and the past three Karl Meyer awardees (Ajit Varki, Bill Lennarz, Pamela Stanley). The Nominations Committee is comprised of two members elected by the membership (Rick Troy and Paul Weigel with terms until 2008), the outgoing President acting as chair (Ron Schnaar), and one appointee by the board (Carolyn Bertozzi was reappointed). The Program Committee will be chosen by the President, Past President, and the President-Elect. The Publication Committee was altered when Ann Dell stepped down as an Associate Editor of Glycobiology and Anne Imberty agreed to join as Associate Editor and member of the publications committee.  The Karl Meyer Award Committee selected Ajit Varki.  Travel awards ($1000) were given to 44 students/postdocs.

6. Treasurer’s Report:

a. A summary of the treasurers report of the Society accounts was presented. The balance was maintained at a level similar to prior years. $39,000 was spent on student travel awards. The unspent portion of the $5000 web services contract were contributed to the Charles Warren memorial. The board expressed appreciation to Ron Schnaar for his prior work in establishing the strong financial basis and the investment portfolio for the Society.

 

7. Editor’s Report:

a.  Glycobiology advanced from an average Journal Impact Factor of 3.5 – 3.7 to a present value of 4.1, suggesting an improvement in the visibility of the journal. There were ~500,000 full-text article downloads from the journal web site this year.

 

8. Committee Reports: There were no Committee reports
   
   
9. Old Business: There was no additional old business in addition to the Officer’s Reports

 

10. New Business:

a.   A request was made from Paul Gleeson and Malcolm McCoville to provide student travel awards for the International Glycoconjugate Society Meeting in Australia in 2007. Because of difficulties in anticipated NIH funding over the next few years a motion was passed to not commit to travel funding at this time.

b.   A request was made to have a joint meeting in November 29-December 4, 2009 with the IGO in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The discussion by the Board led to a concern that the interests of the Society should be considered as important criteria for the negotiations with the IGO. A motion was made that an agreement for the joint meeting should be contingent upon the Society management team (SAM) maintaining control, that decisions and responsibilities regarding costs would be shared between the two organizations, and that abstracts should be published in Glycobiology. The motion passed unanimously.

c.   A request was made to reduce the word limit for submitted abstracts to the Society meeting from 500 to 250 words. The motion passed unanimously.

d.   A request was made to have economical housing be a major consideration for future Society meetings, and Annette Herscovics suggested Montreal as a future site because of favorable currency exchange rates. No action was taken on the request.

e.   A comment was made that the increased ongoing costs for the web services company might necessitate a future increase in registration fees, membership fees, or a decrease in travel awards.

f.     A suggestion was made to convert the future applications for travel awards into an electronic submission format. This should facilitate distribution of the applications for judging if a reduced number of awards are indicated in the future.

g.   The possibility of increasing the dollar amount of the Karl Meyer Award, the premier award of the Society, was discussed and it was concluded that Linda Baum as the incoming President would pursue further research into the dollar amounts of equivalent awards in other societies.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Tom Oeltmann, Secretary

Kelley Moremen, Secretary-elect

Society for Glycobiology