History of Science Society Business Meeting

History of Science Society Business Meeting 6 November 2016, 8:00-9:00 am Atlanta

Minutes

Officers attending: Janet Browne (President), Bernie Lightman (Vice President), Floris Cohen (Editor), Adam Apt (Treasurer), Marsha Richmond (Secretary), Luis Campos (Secretary-elect), Gwen Kay (Treasurer-elect), and Jay Malone (Executive Director)

Meeting called to order at 7:45 am.

President’s Welcome (Janet Browne)

Janet thanked everyone for coming. These meetings are important and she values members’ attendance and input on business matters before the Society.

Secretary’s Report (Marsha Richmond)

Approval of the Business Meeting Minutes from November 2015. (Copies available in paper and online at www.hssonline.org/Meeting/.)

 Motion to approve the minutes, as amended. Seconded and approved.

Executive Director’s Report (Jay Malone)

Jay’s report is online, but he highlighted a few points.

He asked how many members attended a PSA session? (Four raised their hands.) How many attended a SLSA session? (Three raised their hands.) The Council is considering whether we should continue meeting with PSA every other year and how frequently to co-locate with other societies. While there is clear value in meeting with other sister societies, there are also some disadvantages. The logistics of organizing the meeting are getting increasingly difficult for the Executive Office (and hence expensive for the Society), and we wish to know the value members see in sharing our meetings with other societies.

Discussion: Jay was asked about the attendance for the meeting. Jay noted that there were about 626, plus or minus, who attended the Atlanta meeting, which is a smaller number than recent in San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. Place is important, and we will have to keep this in mind as we move ahead to locate future meetings.

He mentioned a couple of other points. One of the goals of holding the meeting in Atlanta, one of the most diverse cities in the country, was to aid our goal of increasing diversity and social engagement in the Society. Many people spent a lot of time and energy trying to coordinate holding an event in a historic church, but we only had 15 people attend, all white. So holding an engagement event in a neutral place is not enough; we need to really dig in and try to establish relationships. Moving ahead we need to regard this as a lesson and draw heavily on our membership to help cultivate relationships. Just issuing an invitation and having a private space is not enough. Finally, Jay mentioned that our hosting more sustainable meetings is becoming increasingly important to him. He has been working with sustainability officers at different campuses and colleagues at ACLS to develop templates for measuring the carbon footprint and resources use at meetings. For example, in Atlanta we have avoided using bottled water. Thinking about the environmental impacts of our meetings is important.

Editor’s Report (H. Floris Cohen)

Floris noted that the Editorial Office is running smoothly, thanks to the efforts of the staff members, many of whom are present. After suffering some delays, they are back on schedule in publishing Isis. We are now beginning to exploit the extra page allotment our recent renewed contact with UCP includes. This effectively gives us 72 additional pages annually. He continues to use a balance between different the chronological periods that Bernie used to maintain, and this is easy when we have on average three articles in Isis, one on the 20th century, one on the 19th, and one from earlier periods. Currently we have an inexplicable shortage of 20th century pieces, and he will highlight this to encourage more manuscripts from this time period.

The Society Bibliographer Stephen Weldon mentioned that owing to staffing problems, the newest Cumulative Bibliography will be late this year and will be distributed with the June rather than January issue. While all the data is collected, it still needs to be tagged before it can be printed. However, the historic CB is now available online [see IsisCBExplore: https://data.isiscb.org/]. The printed text of the Isis CB, which includes data from 1913 to 1975 in seven volumes, has been scanned and is now accessible. Eventually this data will be migrated into one site that can be searched for research purposes and eventually will be integrated into the current database.

Discussion: Michael Barany asked whether Stephen has any information about the website usage, and if it is well accessed, how necessary is a print version? Stephen responded that apart from usage, the print version is helpful to him to go back through and make corrections. He does, however, plan to survey members soon to see how many are using the print copy. Audra Wolfe asked about the expense of printing and mailing a paper copy of the CB. Stephen said the printing costs are real, but the mailing cost is minimal given that it is sent with Isis.

Treasurer’s Report (Adam Apt)

Adam said every year he has had concerns about the draw on the HSS endowment, aiming to keep it below 4%. This year, however, it appears that for the FY2017 budget we will have a 6% draw. This is due to extra expenses we have recently incurred, for example, our hiring a meeting manager to free up hours so that the Executive Office staff can implement elements of our Strategic Plan. Also, the Editorial Office encountered some copy-editing expenses beyond what we expected, and the expenses of last year’s meeting were higher than what we anticipated. So there were reasons why we went beyond our predicted budget, and the details are in the Treasurer’s Report. The Executive Committee is aware of the need to keep our expenses at a minimum. It now appears, however, that the draw will not be as large as initially feared. Of course, we can never predict about the future activity of the market, but so far growth is solid, which will help grow the endowment.

Discussion: Angela Creager asked about the status of the proposal to move our endowment to a different financial manager in order to reduce our investment fees. Adam replied that he took this question to the Finance Committee yesterday. The sense was that this would first of all be time consuming work and second that our current manager, U.S. Trust (Merrill Lynch), has an accounting system that will allow us to track our individual endowments. This is an advantage to us, and so it may be worth the added expense to continue with them. He plans on following this up with a conversation with Jay and see what he would like to do. The Finance Committee will consider this matter again, either in the interim or when it meets under Gwen’s guidance next year.

Michael Barany noted that we are a small Society and hence the accounting is probably not too difficult so moving to Vanguard may realize a savings. He also asks why we are invested in bonds at all given that we do not need the amount of security that individuals do who are saving for retirement. Adam said tracking our different endowment funds does guarantee us stability.

Marc Rothberg asked about whether we have considered raising our membership dues. Adam responded that our new contract with Chicago is favorable, largely because the institutional sales of Isis have been strong, so that the generous payments from UCP have kept individual subscription prices at the same rate.

Michael Barany recorded his objection to some of our accounting practices that he mentioned at previous business meetings. Adam responded that this is fair, but that we now have a new auditor and a new bookkeeper who reports to Adam monthly. This enables him to look for anything out of the ordinary as a measure of financial control. Our bottom line concerns him, and so he has moved to preparing a quarterly reconciliation that enables us to monitor our expenses on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

Committee Reports (Synopsis by Jay Malone)

(Electronic copies of the various committee reports are available on the HSS website: www.hssonline.org/Meeting/ and the “Business Meeting” link.

 Committee on Honors and Prizes:

CoHP is considering requests to establish two new prizes: the Pauly Prize for the History of Science in America, and the Ron Rainger Prize for new scholars publishing in areas of the Earth and Environment. This is very exciting for the Society. We are drafting a policy for accepting these prizes that will carry forward to guide deliberations in the future.

 Committee on Meetings and Program:

Jay recognized Brian Ogilvie and thanked him for putting together a wonderful program for Atlanta. Rachel Ankeny has served as chair of CoMP since 2008, and we thank her for all her hard work. Karen-Beth Scholthof has agreed to take over as chair in 2017. CoMP asked us to explore co-located meetings with 4S and SHOT. Sites are already chosen for the next few years. Jay has been thinking about 2021, but this will not work for 4S, since they will be meeting in Toronto, where we’ll be in 2017. SHOT aims to meet where there are graduate programs (such as Starkville, MS—Mississippi State University) and this limits opportunities for us given the sites often lack sufficiently large hotels. They would be interested in Boston, but this will be difficult for us because of the costs of rooms above $200, which our members do not like. Janet will be meeting with John Krige, president of SHOT, soon and they will try to work something out.

Jay asked how many members would attend a meeting in Starkville, Mississippi? A large show of hands.  Committee on Education and Engagement: Greg Macklem, HSS Coordinator, reported for the chair, who was unable to be present at the meeting. CoEE met yesterday and the committee came up with a short-term action plan that will better allow the committee to respond to the charges in the Strategic Plan. We plan to reach out to other groups also involved in educational matters, to prepare an environmental scan to see what resources (human and institutional) we can draw on, etc. In the next month we will be completing that, and then we will reach out to them to try to find things that will provide us the most effective progress. Part of his role in the Executive Office will soon be transferred to the meeting planning, and this will free him up to be able to devote more of his time to Society educational initiatives. Lloyd Ackert added that the committee really appreciating having Greg’s and Jay’s guidance. Also, CoEE has a quite large Facebook group of HSS members who are interested in education and engagement, and we will be trying to involve them in the committee’s plan to help get things done.  Committee on Membership: This is a new committee chaired by Erika Milam. They met for the first time at this meeting and are looking at ways to make our meetings more accessible to lower income individuals and other groups. If anyone has an interest in serving on this committee, please contact Jay.

 Committee on Advocacy: This is also new committee recommended in the Strategic Plan. Chaired by Marc Rothenberg, it is focusing on federal agencies that have a science component, such as the Department of Defense, the largest employer of historians within the federal government, and assessing what historians are there. If it is a historian of science, they will reach out to them.

 Committee on Technology and Communications. Stephen Weldon chairs this newly-established committee. They are working on a statement regarding digital scholarship as well as considering protocols about professional behavior in the online environment. This effort ties in loosely with the HSS Respectful Behavior Policy we are currently developing. Jay also thanked Stephen for organizing the THAT camp, which will be held today.

 Respectful Behavior Subcommittee: Jay thanked Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, chair of the subcommittee, and two members Mary Mitchell, and Marsha Richmond, who were present. The committee has been charged with drafting an implementation mechanism for the Respectful Behavior Policy we adopted last year, which is near to completion. Once it is finalized, the protocols will be passed by our lawyer before going to Council. We aim to have the reporting and deliberation mechanism in place before our next meeting.

Strategic Plan update: Jay noted that we have been considering whether to move forward with a fundraising campaign or not. We are currently drafting a case statement for why individuals might wish to support the Society. Part of the Strategic Plan calls for the development of an Isis companion piece, and Jessica Baron has been working on this initiative. The intention is to introduce more individuals to the history of science. We have identified the name Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, for the digital publication. The idea is that we would take pieces published in Isis and Osiris and work to re-draft them to appeal to an educated general audience. It would also provide potential supporters a better understanding of the importance of the history of science and the context it offers for decision-making, and help them realize that the Society’s efforts are worthy of their support.

Discussion:

Sally asked whether we are considering having individuals produce videos on what they get out of history of science. Her university is doing that with students, and this has been especially popular. Like these, we could post videos of someone being asked, “Why do you like HSS?” or “What do you get out of HSS,” and these little vignettes might be really attractive. The media is out there now, and the next generation is using it a lot, and it’s also very compelling to have personal stories with personal faces attached to them.

Jay commented that the National Humanities Association also encourages these types of things. We have been considering this, but we would want works endorsed by the HSS to be professionally done, and this is costly and involves logistical problems. We’ve learned that you can’t just videotape—you can’t record a distinguished lecture and slap it up on website and expect people to watch it. It needs to have careful editing and processed. Relatedly, he noted that in the past we have relied on members to take photographs, but this was not very successful, so this year he hired a professional photographer for a relatively small sum. Lynn suggested asking members who took pictures at the meeting to send them to Jessica for the Newsletter.

Mary mentioned that SHOT had a competition recently for graduate students to encapsulate their dissertations in very short films, and the winners produced some very nice videos. Perhaps there would be a way to leverage those members with existing expertise to help us produce interesting videos. Angela echoed Mary’s comments, stating that many of our members already have sophisticated skills and could produce solid video presentations.

Audra also recommended crowd sourcing to tap those members who have expertise in various media productions. Also, given that we are considering undertaking a fundraising campaign, we need to acquire member buy-in, and crowd sourcing is a good way to do this.

Mary described an initiative of the History of Anthropology Newsletter asking members to submit photographs and brief descriptions of curious items they find in the archives. This section, “Clio’s Fancy,” has received a lot of media attention. The history of science has similarly strange artifacts, and just the inherently fanciful nature of these might attract people’s interest. This would also elicit a sense of fun that we often see at our meetings but doesn’t always make into our academic publications. Lloyd Ackert mentioned Darwin’s note on whether to marry or not, and also noted that CoEE has discussed using Youtube videos on history of science topics. Daniel Liu suggested we ask people to send in their favorite slide.

New Business 1. Approval of modifications of the Articles of Incorporation.

Jay explained that this proposal relates to changes in the Washington, DC non-profit incorporation law, which has required us to modify our Bylaws as well as Articles of Incorporation.

 Motion to approve made by Angela and seconded by Sally. Approved unanimously.

Lynn thanked the committee that worked on this. Janet noted that it was really good that we have finished this work.

In closing, Janet thanked those who attended; the outgoing officers, treasurer Adam Apt and secretary Marsha Richmond and the incoming officers, Gwen Kay and Luis Campos; Jay, Greg, and all the staff of the Executive Office, and the many individuals who freely volunteer their time to serve the Society in so many ways.

The meeting adjourned at 8:49 am.

Minutes duly recorded by Marsha Richmond, Secretary, and Luis Campos, Secretary-Elect.

Members Attending:1Jocelyn Cash* Jole Shackelford Tom Broman Brian Ogilvie Betty Smocovitis Marc Rothberg* Lloyd Ackert* Desiree Capel Daniel Liu* Susan Jones Stephen Weldon Jamie Elwick* Peggy Kidwell Gwen Kay Michael Barany Angela Creager Lynn Nyhart Audra Wolfe Toby Appel Sally Gregory Kohlstedt Mary Mitchell 1Denotes those interested in volunteering for HSS committees.