SIGMAA on RUME
Annual Business Meeting Minutes

Tuesday January 8th, 2008

• Attendees
  • 22 attendees, which is a quorum for By-Laws changes, because 22 exceeds two-thirds of 29 (attendance at the last official January business meeting in '06).
• Outgoing Coordinator's Report (Chris Rasmussen)
  • 10th Annual conference, Feb 2007 in San Diego.
    • Record of 140 attendees.
  • 11th Annual conference, Feb 28-Mar 2nd, 2008 in San Diego.
    • Record breaking number of submissions.
    • Mandatory papers due two weeks after.
    • Short or long version (long eligible for prize)
  • MAA Notes
    • Reviewers very high marks.
    • To be published in February
  • Mathfest 2007
    • Instead of contributed papers (quality problems)
    • Marilyn Carlson led a minicourse on Research to Practice.
    • Successful.
    • She will do it again in Mathfest 2008.
  • Election Report
    • Keith Weber (Program Chair) and Eric Hsu (Secretary) won elections. They begin their new terms. Many thanks to all the candidates.
    • Thanks to David Meel, outgoing Program Chair.
• Bylaws/Charter changes (Annie Selden)
  • Changes to Charter
    • mainly in response to electronic voting, as well as some small updates
    • (such as a Joint Meetings reception, which we weren't doing)
    • We aren't coordinated with CRUME, since it was dissolved.
    • We clarified when the Coordinator positions changed.
    • Electronic changes to the charter.
      • Comment: Changes to charter don't get voted at same business meeting, so that charter changes.
      • They need to be circulated electronically in advance.
      • We discussed 50 vs 2/3 of last meeting.
      • We will investigate whether MAA will let us vote on charter changes in October with officers.
  • Changes to By-Laws
    • Mainly in response to electronic voting, as well as some small updates.
    • These can be voted upon now if there is a quorum (which there is not). However, the membership chose not to vote until after the charter changes and after another round of editing.
• New Coordinator Welcome
  • Chris Rasmussen becomes Past Coordinator, Karen Marrongelle becomes Coordinator.
  • Chris got a beer mug of appreciation.
• Treasurer's Report (Kirk Weller)
  • The report is only through the third quarter of the year. We are slowly depleting our cushion. We will take a hit of about $3,000 this year because of the honoraria paid to the JMM speakers and JMM-related travel expenses for officers. Last year we took a hit at the RUME conference because registration fees did not match the expenses.
• RCME Update
  • Chris, Pat Thompson, and Karen M. met David Broussoud, the incoming president, about making RCME a journal. It is far from a done deal and will be an up-hill battle, but the meeting was somewhat encouraging. One suggestion was to make it an electronic journal, offered as an option for membership. This would mean that the subscription money would off-set the cost of the copy editing for RCME.
  • Audience questions wondering if there are royalties from the MAA Notes volume. No one knew.
  • Chris reported that Exxon/Mobil are not funding on-going things anymore, only seed money. Chris and Pat Thompson are going to try to get start-up money for the new journal from NSF. This will help with negotiations with the MAA since it won't cost them much to start up the journal.
• SIGMAA on TAHSM Collaboration
  • Karen M. described meeting with head of TAHSM (teaching advanced high school mathematics). He is planning a conference about articulation issues between high school and college. He has asked SIGMAA on RUME to help plan the conference, produce papers, and participate. He would like as outcome identification of where we should be directing our resources for research and work on these issues. People may be invited to participate. Annie mentioned someone (Derek Holton) from New Zealand who is involved in these issues and should be contacted.
• New Business
  • Committee status?
    • General discussion about status of old committees. These committees only exist under a particular coordinator so Karen could reconstitute things if she wants.
  • Web site updates
    • RUME controls rume.org and little else. Request for changes to rume.org pages should go to Shandy Hauk and Eric Hsu.