March 6, 2009 Minutes

Michigan Interscholastic Press Association
Board Meeting Minutes
Friday, March 6, 2009
Submitted by Kim Kozian, secretary

1. 1.  President Jeremy Van Hof called the meeting to order at 6:50 pm.
2. Roll Call
   Members present: Cheryl Pell, executive director; Jeremy Van Hof, president; Lynn Strause, first vice-president &     yearbook chair; C.E. Sikkenga, second vice president; Rod Satterthwaite, past president; Kim Kozian, secretary; Brian     Wilson, treasurer; Tim Morley, trustee; Sue Spalding, trustee; Pam Bunka, trustee; Gloria Olman, legislative chair; Diane     Herder, media chair; Jeff Nardone, hall of fame chair
   Members absent: Julie Price, newspaper chair; Jenny Birmelin, middle school chair; Betsy Pollard Rau, workshop director
3. 3. Agenda: Gloria moved to approve the agenda for the meeting with the following additions: A.) JEA Mentor under Old Business and J.) Elections under New Business. Jeff supported.
4. 4. Minutes from the December 6 meeting were approved with a motion by Gloria, and seconded by Lynn.
5. 5. Treasurer’s report – referencing two handouts
   •    Checking account balance is $17, 961.82 as of 2/28/09
   •    Money management account balance is $7,836.27
   •    Plus still about $2,000 more to deposit from the contests
   •    Jeremy asked about the CD (see December minutes) but Cheryl did not put money into a CD yet. Jeremy said he’ll look into it.
   •    Cheryl said the CPA is costing MIPA a lot of money; she’s working with him to bring costs down, if possible.
6. 6. Director’s report
   • Aaron Olson, MSU student/web designer: Aaron made a presentation to the board, a prototype demo of the newly designed MIPA web site. He asked for advice, feedback and anything else we would like to add to it. The site will eventually add interactive pieces, like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more so that both advisers and students will have the ability to upload and control content. It will be fully searchable, will contain a “forms” category (though can’t have electronic type forms yet), perhaps an RSS feed and we asked for a student link. Aaron will premiere the new site at the spring conference.
   • Donations: MIPA donated to SPLC and received a thank you; sent $100 to Poynter for the brick program and received a thank you; also sent $100 to “Maggie Miller Kindhearted Scholarship Fund” in memory of Stan Soffin’s wife.
   • Notable: Cheryl showed a story about Everett H.S. featured in the paper, as well as a not-so-good wire service story about yearbook sales.
7. 7.  Summer Workshop Report/Think Tank re-hash
   The “Black, White and Read” brochure is being edited currently. The workshop will offer four yearbook classes – big     changes to the yearbook curriculum. Staffs will get a lot of time in the evenings to meet and work on theme material.     Workshop will offer a graphic artist to work on cover ideas and the like; some discussion on this idea. Will there be     enough time? Who is going to do this? What if the ideas are too expensive? Financially we need about 30 more students     to attend this summer.  Chad is planning to incorporate a lot of media into the week’s events: Facebook, Twitter, viral     stuff.
8. 8. Old Business
   a.  JEA Mentors: Brian handed out information. JEA wants retirees to act as mentors for new teachers. They would be     trained and help advisers in the state. Right now, about 5-10 states are involved in the program. However, board     members questioned the validity of paying $5,000 toward this project when it would be better to apply money toward a     scholarship or something else related to students. Some confusion on how much MIPA would have to pay. Brian will     check on this.
9. 9.  New Business
   a.    Aaron Olson:  see director’s report above.
   b.    InDesign Workshop: attendance was down; may have to look at other offerings in the future.
   c.    SPJ Distinguished Teaching in Journalism Award: Gloria is going to nominate Jane Briggs Bunting and     needs letters. Cheryl will write one representing MIPA; Jeff wrote one as well; Gloria has also asked Joe     Grimm, Herschel Fink and MSU staff members.
   d.     Up North Conference: They do want MIPA to come back because it is difficult financially for schools to come         down for the one-day workshops in E. Lansing. Hosting this program helped summer workshop attendance.         Discussion on possible dates so Cheryl said she would email the board about this. She may ask MPA to help         with the cost, because it’s expensive (though they won’t pay for food).
   e.      Constitution Day: Repeat in 2009? At the September meeting, we decided on every other year.
   f.     J-IDEAS donation: They ran out of money from Knight so now they are looking for donations. The board said         not at this time.
   g.     Yearbook Spartan judges book changes: An adviser had some questions about the check box format (“if I am         getting all these boxes checked, why isn’t my score higher in this area?”). Lynn changed it to a bulleted list and         made minor changes to further explain certain categories.
   h.      Judging Day update: 3,260 entries ready to go, and more judges this year!
   i.     Elections: Open positions include second vp, one trustee, treasurer and secretary. Pam will run the elections.
   j.      Next meeting: May 16, 2009, 9:30 am at Comm Arts
10. Adjournment: the meeting ended at 8:40 pm with a motion by Jeff, and a second from Sue and Rod simultaneously.
11. Upcoming events
    Spring Conference – April 28
    Next meeting – May 16, 2009