Chair of the Board Geoff Chase welcomes participants.  Participants introduce themselves.

A little about the AASHE Board.  The AASHE Board meets virtually throughout the year, usually about every 6 weeks or so.  Also meet in person a few times a year.  Had a strategic planning retreat in August and will be meeting tomorrow. 

Now, I'd like to call on some of our Board members to give some report-outs...
 

Membership Report-out (Dedee Delongpre Johnson, Wake Forest University, Board of Director)

800 Campus Members.  250 Non-campus members (non-profit, business, govt).  Overall renewal rate is 84% and 89% for campuses.  Moving to an online membership application form.  Will soon be asking our member contacts to provide additional contacts at their institutions so we can better reach more people with our services.  Planning a 4% dues increase this year.  This is our first systematic dues increase since we began in 2006.  We will also be doing a comprehensive membership survey soon to get your feedback on programs and events.

Resource Center Report-out (Dedee Delongpre Johnson, Wake Forest University, Board of Director)

Just launched AASHE Bulletin database for members - a searchable interface for the last 2+ years of Bulletin articles.   In September, launched case study database with dozens of comprehensively documented case studies.

Climate Report-out (Adam Steinman, Woodard & Curran, AASHE Board Member)

Continue supporting ACUPCC.  Will also continue to develop tools that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both for PCC and our non-PCC signatory members.  The Board's Climate Committee is going to pick a few things to focus on.

Curriculum Report-out  (Geoff Chase, SDSU, Chair of the Board)

Shortly before ED Paul Rowland came on board, AASHE and Second Nature discuss next steps in moving forward on curriculum issues and AASHE then organized a Curriculum Summit at San Diego State.  That Summit tackled issues like where the greatest leverage points were and what we could best do to support the effort.  One things that came out of the Summit was A Call to Action on education for sustainability.  That has gotten quite a bit of attention.

That Summit was followed-up by a Curriculum Conference at Wake Forest University.  Out of that, a call for case studies of curriculum transformation has been put out.  They will be put into a published volume.  Looking for everything from professional school curriculum to tenure track and professorial advancement. 

AASHE has also contracted with the Center for Teaching and Learning at SDSU.  They are looking to develop a content management system to support curriculum sharing.  They also are working to establish regional centers for sustainability curriculum development.

STARS Report-out  (Dave Newport, UC Boulder, Board Member)

STARS went officially live in January.  There are 227 Charter participants and now we are over 250 participants.  Goal is 500 by the end of next year.  We are doing really, really well.  Congratulations to Pacific Lutheran for bringing in the first submission.  And to Royal Roads for the second.  We expect quite a few more in the next few months.

There are two governance structures for STARS.  A Steering Committee that wrangles with program issues and Technical Advisors who are experts in the field that wrangle with technical revisions.  There will be some slight administrative revisions going out this year, but not a significant update to STARS for at least a year.

There will be a STARS Town Hall meeting later this morning.  Issues we are wrangling with right now will be put out for feedback - for example, the issue of verification.  How should verification occur?  Should it be required?  Who certifies the verifiers?  How do we cover the additional cost?  Theres also is the idea of STARS trainings to certify STARS professionals.  Then there is the question of how all this data will be sliced and diced.  STARS is not a ranking - but once the data goes public others will pick winners.  There are things we can do to put the data out in an appropriate context - such as grouping schools based on Carnegie Classification.

Financial Report-Out (Steve Guenther, Board Finance Chair could not attend.) 

Bill Throop, Green Mountain College, AASHE Board Member: 
We are completing a strong year.  We've met our targets.  We are moving through the budget process.  The level of detail we have about the spending and planning has improved dramatically.  We will be rolling the conference into the budget this year.  That affects things like how much we keep in reserve.  We are changing systems a little bit that will make AASHE stronger in the future. 

Paul Rowland, AASHE Executive Director:  
Just want to say something about hte financing around the conference.  The conference itself (registration) is a money loser if you don't bring in the sponsors and the Expo.  With the sponsors and Expo it makes a little money - not a lot.  We have been building 2011 as a balanced budget based on a forecast of the revenue that will come out of this conference.  So there is some forecasting there. 

Geoff Chase:  

We are really gratified by the attendance here.  We surpassed 2,000 attendees.  We had 500 students at the Summit on Sunday.  The work that AASHE and the staff has done is remarkable.

AASHE has grown dramatically fast.  That offers challenges and opportunities.  Particularly because there is just so much to do in higher education.  One thing I want to say though is that it isn't going to take one organization, it is going to take every organization working together.  USGBC, for example.  Other higher ed associations.

AASHE has become a robust and financially sound organization.  We aren't struggling financially.  We are up to 23 staff members at AASHE.  I can remember days not that long ago when there were 2 or 3.

Now we want to open the floor for comments, questions, feedback...

Question & Answer

Q:  Curious about the possibility of regional or state chapters of AASHE?

A:  Rowland: The board and staff have been discussing it.  The questions we have are what services we can provide to regional organizations that are cost effective.  The regional organizations are so diverse too.  Some have extensive annual conferences.  Some just have a monthly phone call.  (Btw - we are also looking at international membership)  To our regional organization partners we are asking the question "what would you like us to do for you?" Long term, if you look at other

Q:  Have you considered a model like Bioneers?  Where there is a central hub for the conference but regional gathering spots where you can meet with your regional peers and participate remotely.  We are trying to cut our travel emissions.

A:  Chase:  This is something the Board and Staff think about a lot.  Rowland:  We just negotiated our contract with the Pittsburgh Convention Center so that we will be permitted to do live streaming - which is excluded in many contracts including this year's.  We are also looking into regional conferences and virtual conferences.  Newport: The reality is that AASHE has been supporting regional conferences for quite some time.  The Smart & Sustainable Conference.  The Mountain Region Conference.  There is plenty of demand for both those and a national conference.

Q:  Comment on the conference format.  Hearing from a lot of people that the number of parrallel sessions is too many.  Have you considered lengthening the conference and organizing the sessions into tracks.  Also, the curriculum convocation was great but too short.  So, we need more of the same!

A:  That is definitely something the Board will be considering when we meet and debrief tomorrow.

Comment:  Would like to consider more full-day professional development trainings before and outside of the conference.

Comment:  Besides the length of the conference, the length of the days are a concern.  We had people here for 15 hours yesterday.

Comment:  Another model to consider is doing a large national conference one year and the next year do regional meetgins.  Alternatingly. 

Comment:  What was AASHE's role in deciding to hold the ACUPCC meeting here immediately after AASHE. 

A: Rowland: We were approached by Second Nature because it seemed there would be an opportunity for a number of people to attend both in one trip.  That will certainly be revisited as we debrief - so feedback is welcome.

Comment:  There were several sessions I was excited about that had too many attendees for me to be able to stand in.  Don't know what the solution is, but something to consider.  It's a good problem to have.

Comment:  We could have pre-registration for individual sessions to get a feel for what people are going to go to so that you can schedule rooms appropriately. 

Comment:  I don't know about that proposal because I didn't even have time to review the program until I was on the plan.  I don't know about requiring people to pre-register then.

Comment:  One thing the USGBC does is schedule sessions in order of 101, 201, 301 so that you can get deeper into subjects as the conference goes on.

Chase:  I'm sure the staff is already considering many of these things.  We are way ahead though with 2011 than ever before.

Rowland:  This was our first year doing an annual conference and myself and Danielle Gaines (Event Manager) first year doing this.  We are taking note of a lot of lessons learned we will do next year.  We hope to have our Call for Papers out in February so that we can nail down the program much further in advance. 

Comment:  Another way of doing sessions tracks would be to do it by sector.

Johnson:  Another way to slice it is by proficiency level: beginner, intermediate and advanced.

Q:  Why do members have to pay a fee to participate in STARS?  Shouldn't it be supported by membership dues?

A:  Rowland:  That decision wasn't made without extensive discussion.  We have members that aren't STARS members and membership dues have underwritten STARS and STARS will have a lot of value to members through the public manual, etc.  However, there are also STARS tools and implementation support that we have developed specifically for those that are enrolled in STARS and that is what the STARS fee is for.  Newport:  Important to say that there is a*discount*for AASHE members who participate in STARS.

Comment:  I know the definition of sustainability in STARS has been a hot-button issue.  It seems like we need a white paper from STARS or something so that I don't have to come up with it on my own when my Provost says when I start STARS "what do you mean by sustainability?"  This comes up particularly when talking about curriculum elements of STARS.

A:  Chase:  The Board is looking very far ahead.  2015.  This question of what is sustainability has come up.  It is something the board is talking about. 

Comment:  We're having a similar issue with the definition of "zero-waste."  Has AASHE looked at defining that?

A:  Newport: there is a workshop on just that later today.

Q:  I'm wondering how Board members are selected?  Have you thought about letting members vote?

A:  Chase:  There are 17 Board members of which 2 are students.  Board members are on staggered and limited terms.  The Board solicits nominations when a space is open on the Board and we are generally flooded with nominations.  The Board Nomination Committee then selects from that pool.  Johnson:  Since we are such a young organization, we have original board members that are just now rotating off.  So, there will be a lot more opportunities opening up.