Call to order— The meeting was called to order at 7:18 p.m. by President David Lipsky.

     Present at the meeting were officers David Lipsky (president), Steve Sleigh (past president), Eileen Barkas Hoffman (president elect), Peter Feuille (secretary-treasurer), Adrienne Eaton (editor in chief and Newly elected Board member), Bill Canak (NCAC chair) and Steven Rynecki (Counsel). Members present included:, Sara Adler, Paul Almeida, Peter Berg, Jack Fiorito, Morris Kleiner, Lisa Lynch, Tony Oliver, Gordon Pavy, and Nancy Peace. Also attending were newly elected 2007 board members Ralph Craviso and Julie Martinez-Ortega; committee chairs Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Marlene Heyser, Paula Voos, and Charles Whalen, guest Rachel Hendrickson, and national office staff Anna Mehl, Lisa Sprinkle, and Paula Wells. Board members not able to attend included: Jerry Calhoun, Amy Dean, Jill Kriesky, Robert Taylor and Donna Wilson-Renner.

     Award Recognition and Announcements—President Lipsky congratulated newly elected board members Ralph Craviso, Julie Martinez-Ortega, Adrienne Eaton, and Jackie Drucker (not in attendance) and welcomed them as guests to the board meeting. He then presented certificates to departing Board Member Peter Berg and thanked him and other departing Board members Amy Dean and Robert Taylor for their service to the organization. President-elect Eileen Hoffman then presented Lipsky with a thank you gift and certificate for his service. David expressed his grateful appreciation to the entire board for their work and support during his tenure.

     Approval of minutes—A motion was heard to approve the minutes of the Chicago, IL board meeting held August 15, 2006. It was seconded and approved.

Committee and Officer Reports

     Finance and Membership—Secretary-Treasurer Peter Feuille presented a brief summary of the financial status of the association and the 2007 budget for approval. Finance and Membership Committee chair Paula Voos explained that part of deficit is explained by the completion of the Sloan Grant Industry Councils project, and that since we cannot cut our costs significantly to programs or staff, LERA needs to reach out and be successful in getting new grants and other gifts to help with our operational deficit. Voos reported that with the grant ending, LERA needs to work with the Industry Councils to be self supporting and increase the number of organizational members. A motion to approve the 2007 budget was brought forward from the Committee by Paula Voos, seconded Paul Almeida, and unanimously approved.

     The Finance and Membership Committee wanted to emphasize reaching new students to increase student membership. They recommended dues increases in 2008 to help with the declining revenue. These include increases of $20 (from $110 to $130) for regular; $10 for emeritus (from $60 to $70); $50 for Contributing memberships (from $200 to $250). Student and family memberships are to stay the same. The motion to approve the dues increases was seconded and unanimously approved.

     Paula Voos charged new members and all board members to make sure their employers are organizational members and to ask their colleagues to be members of LERA. The Board members agreed to each contact 20 people personally and invite them to become members of LERA.

     Strategic Planning Process Summary—Following the August meeting, President David Lipsky requested that Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Nancy Peace serve as facilitators to summarize the purpose statement, vision, and goals and to facilitate a "next-steps" process.

     They prepared an online survey for the Board and SP Committee, one that mandated making hard choices about the one or two main topics to focus on for each of the five goals. The five main goals were:

Community

Forums

Networks

Membership

Development and Governance

The main topics of focus for those goals were:

Creating technology enabled platforms

Meeting development for annual and spring meetings

Programming innovations with local chapters—bring chapter ideas into national

Focus on academic memberships

Institutionalizing financing.

     Joel and Nancy agreed to prepare and circulate a document to the Board for their review, comments, and feedback, and to sketch out an action and implementation plan so that a number of items could be brought forward for the Executive Board to make decision on at the June 2007 Board meeting. The output from the August 2006 and January 2007 discussion will also be introduced to the membership in the March LERA Newsletter and posted on the web for general membership review and comments.

        Development Committee—Chair David Lipsky provided an update on activities to date. A total of $883,344 has been raised since January 2004 or about $300,000 per year for the past 3 years. He reported that for the last two years we have held an annual fund drive in the fall and brought in over $15,000 each year in non-restricted income. He suggested increasing the pace a little bit to stay on track to meet our goal. The next stages of our work will be to involve reaching out to constituencies (current board, former board, organizational members, universities, etc.) Lipsky also reported that Pete Feuille and Paula Wells will check into who can best manage a private endowment fund for LERA.

     Two motions were brought forward. The first was to empower the Development Committee to proceed to create an endowment fund for the LERA in the event a major contribution for such is received. The Motion from the committee was seconded and approved.

     The second motion from the Committee was to make the LERA Development Committee a permanent standing committee for LERA. This motion was amended to specify that David Lipsky continue to serve as Chair for the next three years. The amended motion was seconded and approved.

     Editorial Committee—Adrienne Eaton, Editor in Chief, reported that we had not received a 2009 Research Volume proposal as yet, but that the committee was going to invite some proposals, especially one that might have an international focus. Paula Voos suggested holding a conference call for the Editorial Committee each November to discuss proposals or ideas.

     Industry Council Coordinating Committee—Chair Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld highlighted points of his executive summary (submitted as an attachment):

The number of current and new members indicating interest in Industry Councils has increased.

At FMCS, LERA sponsored 5 Industry Council sessions with substantive agendas and good turn out. NLMC was a good place to showcase LERA.

There is a large gap between the number of members reporting interest versus the number of people who actually attend IC meetings at the Annual Meeting.

A narrow and precise focus for each Council seems to enhance engagement.

     He will continue to organize councils, as there is interest and will continue to work with existing councils to help them focus their message and have impact.

     Interest Sections Coordinating Committee—Paula Wells submitted a brief report from the meeting which was chaired by Hoyt Wheeler since Jill Kriesky was out of the country. There are 8 current interest sections, each with bylaws and a process to rotate leadership, as required in their charters approved by the Board several years ago. These sections furnish Perspectives on Work editorial advisory board representatives and refereed papers readers, hold their own meetings and programs at the annual meeting, submit proposals to the formal program of each annual meeting, publish websites, e-newsletters, calls, and more. Several of the sections reported dissatisfaction with their proposals not being accepted on the formal program. In the future, they discussed holding conference calls between sections to discuss proposals for 2008 meetings and will be rotating section meeting times at the annual meeting between the pre-conference day and the meeting's first day luncheon slots. At their request, Paula Wells agreed to look into the availability of Proceedings space to publish a few of the papers presented in section programs, if space allowed.

     National Chapter Advisory Committee—Chair Bill Canak reported that the committee reviewed new chapters, discussed how to deal with delinquent chapters, and developed a plan for the next 6 months. He discussed how important chapters are to the National and how better communication with chapters is important now, especially in the strategic planning process.

     2007 National Policy Forum—Eileen Hoffman, chair of the program committee and co-chairs Rachel Hendrickson and Marlene Heyser presented a draft of the upcoming program and a budget. The theme is Searching for the New American Dream. They explained they wanted this program to encourage audience participation, not just talking heads. Paula Wells pointed out that Board and Committee chairs invited to the next board meeting, held in conjunction with this program in Washington, D.C., will have their ticket for the Washington DC dinner paid for by LERA.

     60^th Annual Meeting—Chair Eileen Hoffman introduced Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld as academic co-chair and Bonnie Castrey as practitioner co-chair. This program in New Orleans needs to provide more opportunities to the graduate students to participate. Suggestions included: adding a doctoral student as a presenter or discussant in the symposiums, or that we hold a poster session just for the PhD students with a longer lead time on getting their abstracts in—November. It was pointed out that as long as their name is on the program, many can get their schools to finance a portion of their travel and meeting costs.

     Nominating Committee Report—Chair Jody Hoffer Gittell presented the slate of nominees for Board approval and brought the motion from the committee that the slate be accepted. The 2008 President Elect candidate was Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, dean at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The committee's motion was seconded and unanimously approved.

New Business

     60^th Anniversary Celebration—President David Lipsky asked, "What, if anything, should we do to celebrate? Several ideas emerged from the staff and members of the Board. It was discussed that an ad hoc committee might be needed to address the 60^th Anniversary celebration. President Eileen Hoffman stated she would look into that as one of her first items of business.

     Work Day in New Orleans—Sara Adler proposed that we recognize the fact that we are in a destroyed city and that LERA might consider organizing a work day, like a Habitat for Humanity day on the day before the pre-conference. Paula Wells reminded the Board that the pre-conference day was January 3, so the work day would need to be Wednesday January 2, 2008. Sara agreed to look into and coordinate.

Other Business

     Online Voting for LERA elections—Lisa Sprinkle of the national office suggested the board consider online election voting utilizing a system called VoteNet; it would cost about the same as using and mailing printed ballots, but it would save a lot of staff time in compiling. A number of questions were raised about the possibility of LERA email inviting members to vote being treated as spam, bad email addresses, and the low participation level of such online balloting. Because of the intense schedule of the next 6 months, rather than create duplicate systems to test its viability (as it was suggested), it was decided to drop the idea and consider it in the future.

            Meeting Adjournment—President Lipsky thanked the Board and adjourned the meeting at 10:32 p.m.