Present: Judy Goldberg (President), Joel Greenhouse (President-Elect), Jane Pendergast (Secretary), Linda Young (Treasurer), Scott Zeger (Past-President), Kathy Hoskins (Executive Director), Tim Gregoire (RAB Chair), Ji Zhang, Tom Capizzi, George Williams, Estelle Russek-Cohen, Edward J. Brizendine, Carolyn Boyle, Joan Chmiel, Lynne Billard, Peter Imrey, Jeff Meeker, Sam Greenhouse, Barbara Tilley.

1. Introduction: ENAR President Judy Goldberg opened the meeting at 6:17 p.m. and introduced Kathy Hoskins, the new Executive Director of ENAR through our contract with the Drohan Management Corp. Kathy announced that they would be operating under more of a team structure than was operating when Stephanie Savage was in that position, and introduced two or her team members, Amy Doyle (Director of Meetings and Exhibits) and Lauren Maimone (Assistant to Kathy Hoskins). In addition, members of the Accounting and Publications Departments of Drohan would be called upon when needed. Nineteen members attended.

2. Minutes of Previous Meeting: The minutes of the previous August Business Meeting at the Chicago JSM prepared by Walt Piegorsch were distributed. It was moved and seconded that they be approved, subject to having Jane Pendergast correct a few minor typos. (See attachment.) The motion passed unanimously.

3. Treasurer's Report: Linda Young distributed copies of the current financial information and gave the Treasurer's Report. (See attachment.) Whereas last year we were showing a deficit of approximately $12,000, this year we are showing a surplus of about $6,000. She noted that these figures do not include this meeting in Memphis, which is projected to be a very successful meeting financially.

4. Success of this Meeting in Memphis: Regarding this success, special recognition was given to Segun George, the local arrangements chair for this meeting. In response to a question asking why the attendance was larger than projected, the fact that approximately one-third of the registrants were students was mentioned. Other possible explanations included the location of the 1997 JSM (Anaheim, CA), the fact that Memphis is pretty centrally located in the Midwest, and the strong short course/tutorial program presented here. It was suggested that a small, informal, non-scientific survey be taken on the River Boat Cruise later that evening to ask participants what prompted them to attend.

   Linda Young offered to contact the ASA and obtain the survey questions they send out to a sample of meeting participants and non-participants.

5. Student Awards: It was announced that over 50 students submitted papers for the student awards. Of these, 19 were presented with travel awards, and three of those 19 were further recognized -- one with the Van Ryzen Award recognizing an outstanding paper, and two Student Awards.

6. 1998 ENAR Spring Meeting in Pittsburgh: Joel Greenhouse, President-Elect, welcomed all to attend the 1998 Spring Meeting in Pittsburgh. He informed all that Rick Chapell, Program Chair for that meeting, was looking for more input on the program and suggestions of speakers and topics. Ros Stone, Local Arrangements Chair for the Pittsburgh meeting, is also in the planning process and is eager to receive feedback on potential social functions.

7. 1999 ENAR Spring Meeting: The site for this meeting has not yet been chosen, but the Executive Committee will do so within the next month. Sites such as Myrtle Beach , Athens GA, and Atlanta were mentioned. Price, of course, is a major factor. It was suggested that if we select a site which would require relatively high room rates (e.g., $150.00 per night), we should set up a service to match up people with roommates.

8. 1997 JSM: Recognition was given to Anne Cross, who did a great job setting up the ENAR program for the 1997 Joint Statistical Meetings to be held in Anaheim, CA in August.

9. 1998 JSM: Marie Davidian is the ENAR Program Chair for the 1998 Joint Statistical Meetings, to be held in Dallas, TX. She welcomes all input and suggestions for the program. It was also noted that deadlines are early, so suggestions can be sent now.

10. International Biometric Society: Lynne Billard announced that Sue Wilson of Australia is the new Vice President of the IBS and Ray Carroll has been named the Editor-Elect of Biometrics. The IBS has a new logo, and is hoping that the regions will use this logo as a base for their individual logos. The regional logos must be approved by the International Office. The budget has now been balanced, and one of the cost-savings efforts which will be noticeable to members is that the IBS Bulletin will now be published three times a year rather than four.

11. COPSS: It was announced that Vickie Hertzberg is now the secretary of COPSS.

12. National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS): Lynne Billard reported on NISS, reminding us that the ASA, ENAR, WNAR, and the Research Triangle are "co-owners" of NISS. Their mandate is to foster cross-disciplinary research and they are doing many things "in the background" which will benefit our profession in the long run. They have broken ground on their new building, but are currently in the process of trying to secure better base support through NSF. They have the support of COPSS in this effort and members of COPSS helped by reviewing their grant proposal.

13. Regional Advisory Board (RAB): Tim Gregoire reported on the 2.5 hour meeting of RAB on Monday.

    It was decided that the Case Studies Competition would be offered again next year (its third year). The response has not been as good as we would like to have seen, and this year we will try to advertise it more broadly to get more individuals to compete.

    The deadline for submissions to the Student Travel Award Competition will be moved up from November 15th to November 1st this year. It was necessary to do this since once the awards are announced, the students have to determine whether or not they will be able to come to the meetings early enough to meet the deadline for printing the program. As has been done in the past, the winners of the Student Travel Awards will be printed in boldface in the program. RAB proposed that the travel awards be increased from $300 to $500 (reimbursed actual expenses), which was approved by RECOM, under the condition that the treasury can support such an increase once the fiscal information on this (Memphis) meeting is available.

    Pending legal advice, we will move forward on providing an electronic directory of our members. There was strong sentiment that we should move forward with electronic registration for meetings, which we will do. However, it was noted that we must first deal with all the pertinent issues regarding transfer of confidential fiscal information over the WWW. Tim also asked that if anyone present had "Web savvy" or knew of others who did, that the ENAR Webmaster (Tim Gregoire) was in need of help to get these tasks accomplished. Linda Young and George Williams offered to bring it up at the ASA Council of Sections to see if any help could be found there. One suggestion from RAB regarding ENAR outreach would be to offer short courses at the meetings of other professional societies, and/or offer more courses at our meetings directed to particular audiences.

14. Management Review Process: Judy Goldberg announced that we have decided to implement a more formal management review process, allowing us to obtain the information needed when evaluating our relationship with Drohan and in renegotiating our contract with them.

15. Development (Fund Raising) Efforts: Judy Goldberg, George Williams, and Segun George will look into the issue of how to effectively raise funds to help support the local meetings. There is naturally both a national and local component to this effort and we need to decide how best to proceed in the future.

16. The Structure of ENAR: The Executive Committee will be looking at our current structure and brainstorming on whether any changes to that structure would help us run our organization better.