PHILOSOPHY of EDUCATION SOCIETY
2005 Business Meeting Minutes
Philosophy of Education
General Business Meeting
March 20, 2005
5:15pm – 6:30pm
Call to Order – Bob Floden
About 45-50 members in attendance.
Approval of minutes of 2004 Business Meeting
Denis Phillips moved, Barbara Stengel seconded, minutes approved.
Announcements
- Executive Board and COPA Election Results
The Election Committee included Barbara Stengel (Chair), Gert Biesta, Deanne Bogdan, David Hansen, Natasha Levinson, Al Neiman and Suzanne Rice.
The Committee selected Alexander (Sasha) Sidorkin as the new Executive Secretary/Director. Rene Arcilla and Deborah Kerdeman were nominated for the open position on the Executive Board. John Covaleskie and Iris Yob were the nominees for COPA. Executive Secretary Kathy Hytten conducted the election by mail. Deborah Kerdeman was elected to the Executive Board and John Covaleskie was elected to COPA.
New Fellows Approved
- Craig Cunningham
- Denise Egea-Kuehne
- Michele Moses
- Alexander Sidorkin
President’s Report – Bob Floden
- This wasn’t always a good year in general (mostly because of the labor dispute struggles at the hotel) but some good things happened. We are delighted to have Sasha Sidorkin as new Executive Secretary and thank Kathy Hytten for a job well done. The hotel situation caused much anxiety among the leadership. Special thanks to all who contributed to the society this year, and to the Resolutions Committee (Cris Mayo, Michelle Moses and Scott Fletcher).
Executive Secretary’s Report – Kathy Hytten
- Membership
At the start of the 2004 meeting ( 3/25/04), 443 members had paid 03-04 dues. At the start of this meeting, 397 members have paid for 04-05 – and we expect more will pay at the conference. The membership numbers may be slightly lower this year because of the earlier conference date. This led to a shorter turn around time between the February update and this meeting. I expect to have a handful of forms in the mail when I return from the meeting. We have 57 new members so far this year, which is higher than at this time last year. 20 new members registered for the conference this year.
Financial Status
At this moment, our finances are secure. Our conference expenses last year in Toronto were significantly lower than the previous year, so we came in about $4000 under budget. We currently have about $38,000 on our operating account (this includes all the proceeds from the conference fees – and the cost of the conference will come out of this). Our Kneller account has remained stable at just over $77,000. At this time last year that account had just over $74,000. Our Legacy account has grown slightly, to just over $20,000.
I have still yet to add Legacy Fund contributions directly into that account. We initially took $15,000 out of our operating account to begin that fund. We have since received $10,264 in contributions. This includes $4404 since our last meeting. It appears that we can now begin to directly deposit donations into that fund as our operating account is healthy.
Blackwell
We have completed the transition to Blackwell to publish Educational Theory. This has been beneficial to our members – especially the ability to access several other journals on line in addition to Educational Theory. The one big way this has affected them, however, is that if they do not pay dues on time, they do not receive the journal. I have to prepare a special report to get back issues sent as people pay throughout the year (when we published out of Illinois, we would send regular members copies of the journal even if their dues were not paid up, assuming they would pay sometime during the year). I am still trying to stream-line this process to make it easier for the Executive Secretary to ensure everyone stays up to day. Blackwell has been easy to work with in this respect.
Call for Reports from Committee Chairs, as Needed
Educational Theory/Yearbook – Nick Burbules
- Nick handed out copies of the annual report, although the numbers are a bit distorted because we have not yet gotten money from Blackwell. Submission and subscriber numbers for Educational Theory have both increased, especially dues to library access. Highlights this year include:
- On-line access to other philosophy of education journals
- 10 year archive of back issues of Educational Theory now up and running on the Blackwell site
- Preliminary work with EPAT and JPE to set up an international network of philosophers of education
- As far as the Yearbook goes, Diana Dummitt retired this year, and PES is considering a range of options for how to proceed (these are outlined in the minutes of the Executive Board Meeting). The most significant change is that there will be no post conference rewriting of papers. We are also considering an online process for the Yearbook production. Thanks to Tim McDonough for his work getting the electronic copies of the Yearbook up-to-date on the PES website.
Hospitality Committee – Denis & Val Phillips, Eamonn Callan, Michael Katz
- We hope you had a great time here. We welcome you back anytime, except not in the next 4 or 5 years. Thanks to Val for all her work.
Program Committee – Ken Howe
- 100 papers were submitted, 27 accepted. 13 alternative session proposals were submitted, 6 were accepted. In addition, 2 alternative sessions were created. Thanks to the program committee for all their hard work.
COPA – Barbara Applebaum
- COPA organized of a panel discussion on the state of philosophy of education in North America for this years meeting. They talked about having this topic as an annual session.
COSW – Barb Thayer-Bacon
- COSW organized a session at this meeting with an open call and a theme that had been developed last year: how feminist theory has changed philosophy and philosophy of education. They received 5 submissions and accepted 4. They hope to pull them together for a symposium for Educational Theory. There was a good turnout for the symposium session. The turnout for the luncheon was low, largely due to several other things being on the program at the same time.
Membership Committee – Randall Curren
- Randy thanked everyone on the committee. There is some confusion about the functions of the membership committee. They used to handle fellow applications. In the last couple years they have tried to focus on expanding membership – especially through improving the quality of materials. This has been done on the web. Plans are in the works to create a flyer to inform prospective members of benefits (along with application for membership on the other side of the form).
Jobs for Philosophers – Scott Fletcher
- They held a roundtable session at the meeting this year to discuss job related issues
Old Business
- Legacy Fund – Support for Graduate Students – we used the money this year to cover the registration fees of graduate students presenting concurrent or general session papers. We are still considering the best options for supporting graduate students.
New Business
- Change in Constitution – Executive Secretary to Executive Director. One thing we tried to do in recruiting a new person to this role is to change the title to director. We sent this information in February Update, notifying the membership of this proposed change. To change the bylaws, a vote was taken at the meeting approving this change. The Constitution change requires a membership vote by mail. This will go out to members in the July Update so that we can officially change the title to Executive Director. The membership expressed support for allowing previous Secretaries to also use the title Director.
- Procedures for Conference Site Selection – In light of tensions surrounding the labor dispute with the San Francisco hotel, and the choice of a resort for the 2006 meeting, some members were interested in the society developing principles and procedures for making decisions about where to hold annual meetings. There was consensus that we should avoid hotels undergoing labor disputes, but a question of whether this means we should also only go to union represented hotels. The membership charged the executive board with considering ethical and political issues related to conference planning, and to consider more long term planning for conference sites. They want the committee to come up with something to propose via email and to discuss at next year’s business meeting.
- Increase in Conference Registration Fee – The executive board proposed an increase from $80 - $100 for the conference registration fee (the rate for graduate students would remain the same). There was some discussion of this, and of expanding the graduate student category to including unemployed and underemployed members as well.
Resolutions
These were presented by Cris Mayo and Michelle Moses. Scott Fletcher was also a member of the committee.
Passing of the Gavel - from Bob Floden to Sharon Bailin
Announcement of President-Elect
Election Committee Chair Barb Stengel thanked Iris Yob and Rene Arcilla for running for open positions on COPA and the Executive Board, thanked the Election Committee, and then announced Susan Laird as the President Elect.
Announcement of Site, Program Chair, and Program Committee for 2006 Conference
- Sharon said a few things about the site in Puerto Vallarta. An important rationale was to be more outward looking in our focus. There is a group of Mexican philosophers of education that Sharon has been working with who just started an organization, and we are trying to work with them to expand our scope. It is an experiment to try something new and to reach out to a broader audience. Daniel Vokey will be the Program Chair. The Program Committee will include: Victoria Costa, David Ericson, Wendy Kohli, Tone Kvernbekk, Natasha Levinson, Walter Okshevsky, Rob Reich, Claudia Ruitenberg, Naoko Saito, and Paul Standish. Kal Alston will serve as the Hospitality Chair.
Meeting adjourned at 6:30pm. Nick Burbules motioned to adjourn, Kal Alston seconded.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathy Hytten
Executive Secretary
CONTACT: PES Executive Cris Mayo
217-333-3673; cmayo@illinois.edu