2010 Board Meeting minutes

SEMA Executive Board Meeting

Friday, November 19, 2010

Minutes, submitted by Thomas J. Farrell, Secretary-Treasurer

1.  President Trish Ward called the meeting to order at 12:07 PM.

2.  Lynn Ramey reported on last year's conference.  A generous donation of $200 from the Vanderbilt French and Italian Department covered the operating deficit from the conference.

3.  Tom Farrell presented the Treasurer's Report, somewhat reformatted from previous years in order to highlight anticipated expenses (see attached).  

4.  Gloria Betcher led discussion of the SEMA web site (http://sema.eserver.org/).  It will be desirable to allow people to join the Association and pay dues from that site.  We need a better way of clarifying the role of the log-in, viz. the fact that all published material is available to all users without a log-in.  Gloria is attempting to load old conference material on the website: Jo Koster was suggested as a source.

5.  Dana-Linn Whiteside (present) and Matt Gabriele (in absentia) were congratulated on the success of the ongoing conference.  Steve Guthrie invited the association to Agnes Scott for 2011 with a theme of "Voices of (the) People."  The sites of future conferences were discussed: Southern Mississippi is eager to host us at Gulfport in 2012; expressions of interest have also been heard from Flagler College (St. Augustine), MARCO at the University of Tennessee, and William and Mary.

6.  Dan O' Sullivan reported on Medieval Perspectives: Gila Aloni has been appointed as Book Review editor; Carl Franks and Mike McGlynn are working as Assistant Editors.  Dan is in the process of implementing the agreement for online publication with EBSCO.  Dan asked for ideas about collecting early volumes of the journal for online publication.  He has established a new House Style for future volumes.

7.  The elections to be held on Saturday were previewed.  VP Ramey has collected or provided biographical statements about the candidates.

8.  There was one nomination of for the teaching award: Nathan Howard (UT-Martin, History).  First Book nominee: Mike Crafton (Clayton State University—Provost; West Georgia University—English).  Both nominations were approved.  The board discussed the possibility that structural barriers were discouraging nominees for the Scholarship Award.

9.  The meeting was adjourned at 12:55.