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MINUTES OF THE
UTAH ENGINEERS COUNCIL
September 3, 2003 - 12:00 Noon
Van Boerum & Frank
330 South 300 East, Salt Lake City, Utah
Members Present:
Jeff Watkins, Chair ASHRAE
Linda Bachmeier, Vice-Chair SWE
Carl Cook, 1st Past Chair ASCE
Sarah Winkler, 2nd Past Chair SEAU
Michael Norrie SAME
Dale Bennett UCLS
Bob Davis ACEC-Utah
Ken Randle AIAA
Carl Eriksson SEAU
Jay Nelson ITE
Susan Merrill Executive Secretary
Members Absent:
Wendy Grosvenor, Treasurer ASHRAE
Kiran Bhayani AAEE
Rick Campagna ASCE
Christ Roberts ASME
Melinda Tolle ASQ
Paul Oestreich IEEE
Jody Good IES
Ron Roser SAMPE
Dan Church USPE
1. WELCOME
Jeff Watkins, UEC Chair, called the meeting to order at 12:10 p.m.
2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES - May 7, 2003
Motion: Ken Randle moved to approve the minutes. Carl Cook seconded the motion. The minutes were unanimously approved.
3. FINANCIAL REPORT - WENDY GROSVENOR
Wendy was not able to attend this meeting, but submitted a budget proposal to be discussed at the meeting.
The following changes were proposed to the budget:
INCOME 2003-2004 budget amounts
2.2 Business Card Ads (#2) should be $1,950.00
2.3 Journal Ads (add as a new item) $3,450
3.2 Banquet tickets should be $8,640.00
3.4 Business Card Ads (#1) should be $1,950
The new income budget total should be $26,850
EXPENSES 2003-2004 budget amounts
2.1 Journal should be $8,400.00
3.2 Banquet Rental should be $1,200.00 (includes A/V equipment, flowers)
3.4 Banquet Display should be $0 (moved to banquet rental
3.5 Banquet Printing should be $800
Budget Explanation, Expenses, item 3.7 Banquet Venue should read “Quoted price of new venue”.
There was a concern about our income being over $25,000 because then we have to file a form with the IRS. We decided to deal with that if and when it becomes necessary.
Sarah would like to increase the business card price to $150.00 There was some discussion about business card ads and how it might be good to give those people a price break who usually buy a business card ad, but donated to the general fund last year instead because there was no Journal and, therefore, didn’t receive much for their money. Others felt that $25 wasn’t a big deal and since we are trying to increase our funds for the Journal, it would be best to not offer the discount.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved to approve the financial report with the above proposed changes. Sarah Winkler seconded the motion. The financial report was unanimously approved with the above proposed changes.
Susan will make sure Wendy receives the changes in the budget.
4. ROSTER QUESTIONNAIRE STATUS - SUSAN MERRILL
Susan has received updated information from the following societies: USPE, ASHRAE, ACEC, and IEEE. All other societies still need to submit their information to Susan as soon as possible so she can prepare the roster and the dues billing. Roster questionnaires were passed out again.
5. COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS - JEFF WATKINS
A. Scholarship Committee: Wendy Grosvenor is the chair of that committee and will be looking for volunteers when we get closer to it.
B. Publication Committee: Sarah Winkler is the chair. She needs volunteers to help read the articles that have been submitted and to look over the draft of the Journal. Those who have committed to help are Carl Cook, Bob Davis, and Linda Bachmeier. We need to start now to gather ideas for articles. Sarah needs a contact person from each organization to follow-up on articles. Bob Davis mentioned that ACEC is looking to do a Journal that would not compete with UEC’s. They would also consider combining their efforts with UEC so there is not an overlap. Bob passed around an ACEC Journal that was published by the Denver ACEC group. Linda mentioned that a big part of the Journal expense is the set-up fee. If we combine efforts, then there is only one set-up fee and that would save a lot of money. We would have to make sure that it is a UEC Journal/ACEC Journal and that the UEC members have ample representation. Bob Davis mentioned that they would be aiming for February 2004 to correspond with E-Week. If it were structured properly, it could be beneficial to all involved. Sarah will talk to Trudy Collins at ACEC about it.
C. Fund-raising Committee: Ken Randle is interested in helping, but does not want to be the chairman. Linda mentioned that Paul Oestreich may be willing to do that again this year. She spoke with him this morning and he indicated that he might be involved with fund-raising again. We need to verify that with him.
D. Legislative Committee: Wendy Grosvenor indicated that she would like to still be involved with this in a previous meeting. She would be the chair. Dale Bennett volunteered to help with this, also. Dale Bennett mentioned the concern the engineering community has that people can say they are a senior engineer when they are not a licensed engineer and some of them do not even have a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
It was mentioned that an article on the new continuing education requirements in the Journal would probably be helpful. Engineers do get credit for participating in engineering societies. Mike Norrie mentioned that SAME is trying to get someone to come up to Hill Air Force Base to talk about the requirements. Mike will give that information to Susan to get out to the membership if anyone is interested in attending. If anyone has any meeting information they would like distributed, please give it to Susan.
Ken mentioned that some people in AIAA suggested that UEC could sponsor a course in how to become licensed. It was mentioned that there are already some societies that provide P.E. Review courses. In the past ASCE and ASME have conducted these courses, and there may be others. They are available. It might be a good article to talk about the requirements to become a P.E. and which societies offer courses. Susan can put any course information in the calendar.
E. Membership Committee: Jay Nelson will be the chair. His responsibilities would be to
contact the societies that are not attending the meetings, find out why, and invite them to come to future meetings. He also needs to seek out other societies who might be interested in being involved with the Utah Engineers Council.
F. Awards: Carl Cook is the chair. He needs the names and pictures of the awards nominees by November 15, 2003. The packet deadline will be January 9, 2004. Carl handed out a new nomination form. Information can go beyond the one-page form. Because the photographs go in the Journal, it would be nice if they were of good quality. It is not a requirement, but it looks a lot better than a quick digital shot. It was asked if we are going to do fresh faces again this year. Fresh Faces recognizes up and coming young engineers with less than five years of experience.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved that we do the “Fresh Faces in Engineering” award again this year. Michael Norrie seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.
6. PUBLICATION COMMITTEE - SARAH WINKLER
Sarah will not limit length of articles right now, but reserves the right to edit them to a smaller size, if necessary. She would like to see articles on the new continuing education requirements and how to become a licensed engineer. Other than those, she is looking for interesting, exciting articles from each society on what that society is doing as a group and especially what they are doing as “Utah Engineers.” The deadline for the articles is December 3, 2003. She needs to have a contact name (whoever is truly responsible for generating that article) by our next meeting which is October 1, 2003. Ken mentioned that AIAA might submit an article about a replica of the Wright Brothers plane which was flown and is now at Dayton, Ohio.
A. Journal Assessment: the proposed increase was in the budget and the budget was approved, so the Journal assessment will be increased from $2,000 to $3,000.
7. E-WEEK - LINDA BACHMEIER
This year’s chairs for national E-Week are Fleur as the industry sponsor and IEEE as the organizational sponsor. The new artwork for E-Week 2004 is not available on the web site yet.
Linda passed out a list of items with which she will need help. She needs help with banquet ticket distribution and the seating charts. She needs a university coordinator who will contact the universities and let them know when the banquet is. Each of the universities gets five tickets. Each university typically comes and brings display boards. We need to make sure ACEC knows of the banquet date and the increased seating capacity. Mike Brehm and Dale Bennett are working on getting a banquet sponsor. Mike Norrie will be the MESA teacher award coordinator because he is on the advisory council for MESA.
We have the option of buying parking passes for the Gateway at $1 each. It will cost $3-$4 otherwise. We could include the validations in the ticket price.
Ken Randle would like to have a speaker at the banquet again - someone who would talk for just 20 minutes. AIAA would be willing to help find a speaker. If we do have a speaker, it would have to be someone really interesting and they would have to stick to the time allotted them. It was also mentioned that some people feel that the UEC banquet has turned into an ACEC banquet. It was pointed out that the same opportunity to present awards is open to all member organizations. If other societies have awards they would like to have presented at the banquet, they need to let us know. If there are other concerns about the banquet as well, we are open to suggestions.
It was decided that we needed to have a banquet program subcommittee to look at additional awards that other societies might want to present and other issues. Carl Cook will chair this subcommittee. Lori Van Boerum with ACEC should also be part of the committee. Others are welcome to assist as well.
Dale Bennett said he will talk with Mike Brehm this week about the banquet sponsor situation. They are trying to contact Boyer Company and some others.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved that we raise the banquet ticket price to $35. Sarah Winkler seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.
The ticket price for students will be $17.50. There was discussion at the Executive Committee meeting about having a senior, retired engineer price because these people are on fixed incomes. Engineers would have to be retired and senior in order to get the discount.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved to have the $17.50 be the student rate as well as the senior, retired engineer rate for banquet tickets. Ken Randle seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.
8. OTHER BUSINESS
The College of Engineering at the U of U is undergoing their accreditation with ABET on October 27 and 28. It is a review of the undergraduate program that takes place every six years. They would like UEC to send a representative for the two days.
UEC’s current web site is one which has been maintained by Jim Szatkowski for the past several years. Jim moved out of state a few years ago, but has still been graciously maintaining the web site for us. Susan set up a web site on a personal web page because it’s free, but it is very limited and unreliable to link an easier name to it. UEC could purchase its own web site for $10 to $15 per month, which would include the domain name, the web site, and the software to build it. All of the UEC names are taken, but we could have utahengineerscouncil.org. If we go this route, it would look professional and the address would be easy to remember. We can have links and anything we want on the web site.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved to approve the purchase of a web site for UEC. Sarah Winkler seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.
Susan Merrill will be the webmaster for the web site.
9. ADJOURNMENT
Motion: Mike Norrie moved to adjourn.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:45 p.m. |