Ron Wasserstein, Section Chair, called the meeting to order at 5:34 pm, Wednesday, August 11, 2004 at the Toronto Convention Center 703. Those in attendance were:

1. Introductions

   Ron introduced the Section Officers.

2. Election Results

   Ron announced the election results: Chair-Elect 2005 (chair in 2006): Chris Franklin, Publications Officer 2005-2007: Sterling Hilton, Members of Executive committee (2005-2007): Ginger Holmes Rowell, Julie Legler

3. Reports

   • Beth Chance, Secretary/Treasurer, asked for corrections to the minutes and reported that the section's expenditures and revenues were very similar with a balance around $7000. She highlighted expenditures in support of the TEAMS and SRTL conferences, outside speakers in topic contributed sessions, Project NExT fellows, and the new section mentoring program.
   • Dex Whittinghill, 2004 Program Chair, reported that there were 3 invited sessions (our allotment) and that the section co-sponsored another 3 sessions. There were 7 topic contributed sessions and 2 others co-sponsored, and 5 contributed paper sessions. He thanked all of the organizers and session volunteers and encouraged more contributed papers. He said things were going reasonably well and reminded everyone of the 3 sessions on Thursday morning.
   • Karen McGaughey, 2005 Program Chair, thanked Ron for the opportunity and gave an overview of the invited sessions for 2005 (Theme - Using Our Discipline to Enhance Human Welfare): Service Learning in Undergraduate and Graduate Education, Career Advice and Statistics Education including the Waller Award winners, and Using Japanese Lesson Study, organized by Tom Short, Allan Rossman, and Beth Chance, respectively. IASE has submitted a proposal for an invited session for us to co-sponsor. Another session on Measurement Issues, organized by Jerry Reiter, will be entered into the competition. Karen also announced that the size of the JSM program will increase by about 30%, increasing the number of invited sessions allocated in the competition from 7 to 26. While this means probably all invited session proposals for Minneapolis will be accepted, it will also lead to more scheduling conflicts. Karen also solicited ideas for topic contributed sessions. Registration and submission of abstracts opens December 1. She also said that the 9 roundtable luncheons went well with at least 4 sell outs.
   • Robin Lock, chair-elect, named Paul Roback from St. Olaf as the 2006 Program Chair. Paul said that it is not too early for people to send him ideas for sessions and roundtables (roback@stolaf.edu).
   • Council of Sections Representative, Katherine Halvorsen, had several announcements and requests for input:
     • A Graduate Education and Research staff member is to be hired by ASA.
     • New ASA president Fritz will be focused on membership. There will be a new brochure focusing on section activities (probably compiled by Ron), letters to new section members from the chair welcoming them, email to section members prior to JSM highlighting what will happen during the meetings that is related to statistics education, and discussion in the annual report of interactions between sections, chapters, and committees (so let the chair know of such events). ASA has set up an email listserv for the section. The executive committee is the group that will send out the email so send items to one of them to be forwarded to the whole list.
     • Some issues for feedback:
       • ASA wants to change the CDRom Proceedings to just be part of the registration fees (additional $10). There is no financial risk to section and no financial benefit. Questions asked included whether institutional members already get it free? Would it be paying twice? A distinction was made between the copy sent to library and personal copies.
       • ASA is considering moving technical sessions from Thursday to Sunday morning (since attendance is so much lower on Thursday), adding beginning and ending plenary sessions, and moving the Tuesday social evening. The Executive Committee thought moving Thursday to Sunday would not be a problem but suggested keeping the awards party on Tuesday. One concern was that if we lose Thursday then business meetings might be crammed into a shorter period of time. One question was how to not create "Thursday" at a different time as people would often leave at noon on Wednesday. Suggestions were given for other ways of keeping people around (e.g., backloading the program, a section event for local teachers, or short courses Thursday afternoon). People suggested that the plenary sessions could allow for more focused attendance, but that Sunday morning was nice to allow visitors to get their bearings. Feedback can be obtained from the people who did stick around for Thursday. People seemed less enthusiastic about moving the social from Tuesday to Wednesday in increasing Thursday morning attendance.
       • Not much input was provided with regard to allowing special interest groups to apply for a second 3-year period. Some felt the group should be able to apply to be a section within 3 years, others suggested that the group should not be forced to become a section to have a forum/contributed session.
   • Ron mentioned that members of the executive committee had dinner with members of the executive committee of the teaching statistics in health sciences section who are enthusiastic about trying to do more with us. Suggestions included joint memberships with a reduced fee of $12 vs. $10, joint sessions at JSM, and possibly scheduling business meetings in similar locations to allow having a combined mixer.
   • Flyers were available for the first USCOTS to be held May 19-21 at OSU. A good set of speakers is already lined up. Contact Deb Rumsey if you have questions.
   • Steve Zayac announced that the school district that named a school after Joe Ward has put together a video on his life that can now be viewed.
   • Joy Jordan described the new section mentoring program for people within their first 5 years. Individuals are matched with someone in the section from a different college or university for an (official) 2 year relationship. She was pleased to announce that 6 initial pairings had breakfast together Tuesday morning, and she thanked the mentors: George Cobb, Dick DeVeaux, Ann Cannon, Norean Sharpe, Jeff Witmer, and Allan Rossman. She asked for help in finding individuals within their first 5 years who could benefit (joy.jordan@lawrence.edu).
   • Allison Clark, assistant director of college and university services of the AP program, wants to build connections to the college and university audience. She distributed and discussed charts with information about the growth of the AP program, comparison of male and female performances, and credit and placement policies at different colleges and universities. She also mentioned using an internal database for all 34 AP exams to track the policies and identify institutions that need more information as they shape their policies. People should contact her if they find ways to help departments shape policy or if they want more information on recent student performance. She also urged university faculty to consider becoming AP readers (the College Board wants a mix of college/university faculty members and high school AP teachers, with around 60% college/university participation and 40% high school). Brad Hartlaub, Chief Reader for the AP Statistics Exam, added a personal plea for people to work hard at recruiting university and college readers, including experienced graduate students. People can apply anytime during the year (and are maintained in the database even if they can't come one year). Over 70,000 exams are projected for next year. People expressed timing issues and the desire to be able to grade both AP Calculus and AP Statistics. Suggestions were made to recruit AMATYC members, especially with statistics a focus of the AMATYC meeting this year.
   • Chair's report: Ron thanked the section and encouraged people to get involved in the section.

4. Stat Ed Fellows

   Chris Franklin and Tom Short were congratulated (as well as the other section members: I. Elaine Allen, Thomas R. Belin, Michael P. Cohen, Mark E. Payton). Three Founders Awards Winners (Dallas Johnson, Bill Schucany, and Ray Waller) also have ties to the section. Robin Lock was congratulated on receiving the Mu Sigma Rho award and the Section on Sports Statistics Award.

5. Best Contributed Paper Award

   Ron presented George Cobb with the 2004 Best Contributed Paper Award for his presentation on a Discrete Monte Carlo Markov Chain undergraduate course.

6. Waller Award (and others)

   Joan Garfield and John Holcomb presented Ginger Holmes Rowell of Middle Tennessee State University with the third Waller Education Award, established by Ray and Carolyn Waller for innovation in the instruction of introductory statistics. Ginger said receiving the award was really quite humbling and reflected on the people and events that helped her, as a mathematician, think like a statistician and encouraged her to use words instead of formulas to convey concepts. She expressed appreciation for her department chairs for giving her opportunities to be innovative, workshops like STATS, and leaders of organizations like the section. Ron expressed gratitude to Ray and Carolyn for their generosity and putting the section in charge of administering the award and mentioned that a permanent policy was put into place this year for the selection committee.

7. New Business

   • André Lubecke commented that as program chair she looked at past invited sessions and topics and also when they were offered and for at least the last 2 years this section has had sessions on both Sunday afternoon and Thursday morning, and before that, lots of first and last day, if not both, and some sections have never had an invited session on one end or another. Last year the last session was jam packed but she asked if we are concerned as a section? Dex said he brought it up at the February meeting where the contributed paper sessions are organized and that we were not the only section to raise the issue to Elaine Powell. He has not yet heard anything and will pursue this issue but asked if our officers should also push this, perhaps to the task force looking at meetings? Nat Schenker is head of that task force which is looking at such issues.
   • John McKenzie asked why the Waller award was in the program but was not one of the awards given Tuesday evening, which seem to be predominantly research oriented, including one from a committee of a section. Ron said he would talk to Fritz. Allan provided some background information on the political nature of the Tuesday evening presentations. He suggested asking the committee on meetings to reconsider, as a way to recognize both the awardee and the awarder. It was noted that the MAA has a couple of major awards for teaching (new and veteran teachers) and how this helps promote teaching as important.
   • Chris Lacke asked if we would consider recognizing outstanding graduate teaching assistants, perhaps getting schools to nominate their best and have them recognized at this meeting. This could help bring these future PhD's into the stat ed fold.

8. Thanks

   Ron thanked the executive committee members whose service is ending (Joan Garfield - past chair, Brian Jersky and Jackie Miller - executive committee, Roger Johnson - publications officer, Dex Whittinghill - program chair), Brian Jersky for editing the newsletter, Jackie Dietz for serving as web page editor, and Jerry Moreno for setting up the education booth (which will be back next year with the easy online sign up form). Jerry said the booth is a delightful experience and opportunity to talk to people and to catch up with colleagues.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Beth Chance
Secretary/Treasurer

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