Conference call began at 2:30 pm.

In attendance:  Executive Board Members: Cliff O'Donnell, University of Hawaii (Chair), Jim Emshoff, Georgia State University (Chair-Elect), Alan Tomkins, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Past Chair), Alison Martin, University of Missouri-Kansas City (Student Representative).

Absent: Pat O’Connor, The Sage Colleges (Treasurer), Cathy Stein, Bowling Green State University (Secretary).

Cliff had emailed the agenda to all members and newly elected members.
 

1.  Announcement and welcome of newly elected Board members:

Results of the election are:
Member-at-large: Not yet known
Community Interdisciplinary/Other: Brian Wilcox, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
 Community Masters: Robert Hoffnung, University of New Haven

Jim noted that he hoped the at-large position would be filled within a few days.

2.  Status of Student Representative election:

Alison will oversee this election.  She has contacted David for specific details as to how he handled the previous election.  After determining this process, she will put together a timeline and solicit nominations via the student listserv.  Emails will also be sent to the student liaisons of member universities.  The goal is to have the election completed by September 20, 2000.

3.  Treasurer's Report:

Jim will contact Pat immediately and ask her to email all of us a copy of the report.  Cliff said there were a number of programs who had not yet paid their dues.  Cliff had followed up with seven directors and five reported they were going to pay.  Cliff will forward that list to Jim.

4.  Coordination of Program Lists:

Jim has discovered discrepancies in terms of our lists of member programs.  It seems that several lists are available (e.g., website, survey sample, program director contacts, etc.), none of which are precisely consistent with each other.  This is problematic for elections and dues collections.  Jim suggested tasking the next secretary with rectifying our membership list with who has paid dues, who is the current program director of member programs, and what is the contact information for the director.  This task seems to be consistent with the role of the Secretary.  Cliff and Jim may both have some of the information, but the information is piecemeal, and therefore needs to be systematically collected by one person.  Cliff added that as a matter of policy it is critical that changes in roster information are immediately forwarded to the website manager.

5.  Recruitment of international, national, public health, and community development members:

Cliff has contacted international programs to expand our membership world-wide.  He was happy to report that we now have our first new member from Africa, the University of Zululand.  They have no email address so he will forward post mail and telephone contact information for the program to us. Currently, there are no graduate programs from Asia or the Middle East, however, Cliff has obtained a list of programs in South America, Europe, and Australia.  Cliff will send our annual report along with a CPDCRA brochure to community research and action programs on those continents.  In addition, Alison will take brochures and other information with her to the Third European Conference on Community Psychology in September.  Cliff will send her copies of the report along with brochures prior to leaving for the conference (September 7, 2000).

Pat was to contact US programs that were not members, but had participated in the survey, to recruit them.  Thus far, Cliff has not heard about the progress of that recruitment effort.  Cliff reiterated that it was critical for the new treasurer to actively continue this process.

Alison reported that Doug Perkins is the Community Development Society (CDS) liaison to SCRA.  She emailed contact information for Doug to Jim.  Jim had previously suggested that the Council contact the APA public health division, and he will assume that task.

6.  Status of 2000 Community Psychology Reading List:

Cliff reported that the reading list was finished, but was not yet posted on the web.  He will be contacting David to remind him about the posting.  Cliff also posted the list on the SCRA listserve, and it will appear in the next issue of The Community Psychologist (TCP).

Alan and Jim suggested adding the Wiccan and Altschul reference on Needs Assessment.  Can someone send me that reference so that I can fix this?

7.  Status of student exchange program:

Cliff had contacted all program directors by email and asked if they were interested in participating in a student exchange.  Programs that were interested returned contact and descriptive information to Cliff.  Alison was wondering whether she had the most recent information Cliff had received back, which Cliff confirmed she does.  Alison will merge that information with the introductory information presented in her last student report, post the information on the listserve, and send it to David for website posting.

8.  Status of TCP distance learning article:

Kelly Hazel and Alison prepared their sections of the article, which Cliff integrated with his section.  Cliff emailed the final draft to board members yesterday and requested their feedback.  Jim thought that the deadline for the fall issue had been pushed back, so if the draft was emailed to Shelley this week it might still make the fall issue.  Cliff asked that everyone send their comments ASAP.

9.  Status of distance learning lecture series:

Jim had contacted Andrea Solarz regarding whether the APA Advocacy Training could be presented as part of the series.  Andrea was unsure that the exact training received by the SCRA Executive Board could be presented, but felt that there were enough members of SCRA with advocacy experience to present a similar lecture.  Jim also felt that APA would be happy to disseminate the training materials to participants of the lecture series.  Alison had been in contact with Andrea who was very enthusiastic and supportive of the series.  Alison had sent Andrea an email outlining the broad steps discussed at our last CPDCRA meeting.  Jim and Alison decided before publicizing and inviting member programs to participate in organizing the series, a specific lecture needed to be outlined around something similar to the advocacy training.  Jim will work with Andrea to determine the content and general outline of such a session and develop a write up to use promotionally.  Jim will email this description to Alison.  Alison will write up the history and purpose of the series, including an invitation to participate in the organization of the series.  Participants will be asked to include the name of the technological person at her/his school.  Alison's tech contact at her school was willing to talk with tech staff at other school directly, rather than going through people.  Thus she was hoping other tech staff will do the same.  Alison and Jim will continue to formulate the invitation, and then disseminate it to program directors.

10.  Preparation for 2001 Award for Contribution to Training and Education in Community Psychology:

Cathy was to send out a copy of the award as it looked last year at the Biennial.  Cliff has not received it.  Jim needs to get a copy from Cathy.  A request for Award nominations was disseminated through the SCRA listserve  and will be in the next issue of TCP.

11.  Feedback on drafts of survey analysis papers for TCP:

Cliff provided David with our feedback, for which David was very appreciative and gracious.  Cliff believed David wanted to reconceptualize the write-up, which was on hold while David addressed dissertation work.  As there were no specific recommendations for Stephanie's paper, and everyone felt was ready to publish in TCP, Alan will email Stephanie so she can submit it.  The third paper's author was unable to continue pursuing the paper.

12.  Status of list of student liaisons from CPDCRA member programs:

Alison reported the list had no additions from the mid-winter meeting.  Cliff asked that a copy of the liaison contact information be sent to the new board members, who could solicit a student in their program if there was not one already.

13.  Status of mentoring project:

Cliff provided a historical perspective on the initiative.  The initiative originated with the SCRA student representatives approaching SCRA President, Andrea Solarz, with a proposal to address mentoring issues expressed by students at the 1999 Biennial.  The basic components of the mentoring initiative are: 1) to improve the mentoring of undergraduate students providing training for graduate students to work with this group, 2) improve mentoring of graduate students and under-represented student groups through the linking of students to faculty in other educational or applied settings, as well as to provide an annual dissertation workshop specifically focused on research with under-represented groups, and 3) provide mentoring to new post-doctoral graduates in both academic and applied settings.  This initiative was presented to CPDCRA by SCRA, asking us where we might be able to provide assistance in its realization.  At our mid-winter meeting, it was suggested that CPDCRA might provide assistance in the following three ways: 1) providing information to undergraduate students on graduate programs in community research and action, 2) provide a workshop on how to apply to graduate school, and 3) promote the graduate student exchange enabling students to work with mentors at other educational settings.  A specific concern expressed by Cliff was the lack of actual time graduate students have to mentor undergraduate students; mentoring of undergraduate students really should be coming from the institution's faculty.  Cliff suggested that a survey might be conducted to determine the extent to which graduate students finding mentoring to be a problematic educational experience.  Andrea then designed a survey, had it sent out, and the data were being analyzed by APA.  At the time of the mid-winter meeting, Andrea was still waiting for the analysis of the results.

During the month of June, Andrea had suggested to Rae Jean Proscholdbel, most recent past SCRA student representative, that an invitation be extended to Alison to participate with the mentoring initiative on behalf of CPDCRA.  Alison believed it very important that the CPDCRA student representative be included in this important and needed initiative; however, she herself could not participate due to time constraints.  Alison had asked Rae Jean if it was possible to keep Alison informed of the initiative's progress to be able to transition the new CPDCRA student rep onto the committee, to which Rae Jean agreed to send Alison periodic committee updates.

Jim said he was trying to discern where the driving force was behind the initiative, with SCRA or CPDCRA.  From the information he had, SCRA was motivating the initiative, but was seeking avenues where CPDCRA may be of particular assistance.  It was suggested by Alison that we expand the purpose of the "Partners in Graduate Programs" project description to include "acting as a resource" for each other.  In this way, graduate students and/or faculty of community research and action graduate programs might travel to nearby educational settings not having such graduate programs.  The purpose would be to meet with undergraduate students to promote community psychology and related graduate programs.  Cliff agreed to make this change to the project description.

14.  Status of "partners in graduate programs" project:

Jim wondered where the motivation had originated from with this project as well.  Cliff stated that a couple years ago Cary Cherniss had contacted Alan, as chair of CPDCRA, to present the idea as one for the Council to pursue.  The history of it should appear in previous meeting minutes.  Alan said that due to the nature of the project, focusing on graduate education, that this was a Council project.  Cliff said that it was appropriate for the Board to contact program directors about the project.

15.  1999-2000 Annual Report:

In late June, Cliff emailed the Board a copy of the report.  Only one change was suggested to the report concerning the "Partners in Graduate Programs" (see point 14).  Cliff said that he would try to include the Treasurer's report in it.  The report would be sent to current program directors, potential new members, and posted on the website.

16.  Review of website change to be submitted to David:

Currently Cliff has the following to be submitted to David: the 1999 and 2000 annual reports, the links to program websites, the previous meeting minutes with the student report, and program changes.

17.  New Business:

The election of new officers is typically done at this meeting with the old board electing the new officers.  This election will be postponed as the election process is not yet complete (see p. 1 of these minutes).  In explaining the responsibilities of participating on the Council's Board Jim had alerted each of the new members that it would entail serving in any of the elected positions, so each new member is aware of the possibility.  Jim will email the old board as soon as elections are complete to let us know to vote.

Cliff reminded Alan to bill Pat for the conference call.

Farewells were said, well-wishes made, and the meeting was adjourned at 3:45 pm.

Minutes were recorded by: Alison Martin.