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Return to CURC Minutes
CURC Steering
Committee
March 11, 2002
Conference Call Minutes
Present: Julie Cahillane, Rob Gogan, Keefe Harrison, Butch Michitson,
Pete Pasterz, Victoria Silva
Not Present: Pat Chase, Pam Flattich, Roger Guzowski, Ed Newman, Erica
Spiegel, Krista Henkels, Kate Krebs
1. Work Plan and Budget
Thanks
to everyone for pulling our work plan together so quickly. NRC had
not formally asked for a work plan from councils due
to the 9/11, conference
shift impacts on staff time and an anticipated lack of funds available
for this year. Despite this, since CURC has work to do, we
have a plan and have
submitted it to NRC. There are still discrepancies over what CURC funds
are available to be carried forward this year. NRC Board
determined the NRCs
outside auditors will look into this with staff and CURC to resolve
the issue. NRC has reinstated the $1000 council funding for this
year. NRC Board has
approved the budget for this year, including CURCs work plan proposals
and our membership revenue sharing proposal.
Side Bar: Carolina RO voted recently to disaffiliate with NRC. Mass
Recycle had to disaffiliate recently due to severe budget problems. Sign
of the times and RO financial troubles vs. NRC RO costs. This will make
it more difficult to recruit CURC members as those in these states not
affiliated with NRC will have to join NRC as an independent (as opposed
to through their State membership) in order to join CURC.
a. Membership
Recruitment
efforts
On-going
commitment to membership recruitment. The update of CURCs member
database will be finalized at the
end of this week.
Member
info packet
Karyn Kaplan & Christine Risher von Kolnitz
are working on pulling together items for a new member packet based on
their ideas for this packet.
Newsletter
Karyn & Christine
are also working on their ideas for future newsletters. Thanks Keefe
for getting out the first CURC newsletter
- looks great!
CURC Only
List
Julie will
create a CURC e-mail distribution list. All information to be distributed
to this list will have to be sent by
Julie. Keefe will send the updated database to Julie who will send
out an announcement for the list when it is up and running.
New leader
Keefe
will be stepping down from CURC Steering Committee/Membership Chair.
We will need someone to take over this critical role. Keefe plans
to continue to help out as a volunteering member. THANK YOU KEEFE for
all your hard work and impressive progress on membership issues.
b. Book Report
In Seattle
lots of ideas were floated for a cookbook, how-to guide, manual,
etc. CA wants CURC to be a part of their effort to do a
manual. CA is moving forward with their project and hopefully CURC
can move forward
with them (baring legal or other concerns prohibiting us from being involved).
Karyn & Christine have a different idea for a smaller, more basic guide.
Pete convened a conference call of people who were interested in these
projects to discuss ideas and options earlier this month. 3 concepts: Cook
Book (talked
about since 1997); Karyn & Christine's idea of a "How To" Guide;
Carl Hultberg, NYU, is interested in doing some writing and/or editing
for this but thought of it as more of a Journal format. Karyn & Christine
have volunteered to do a web based how-to guide in the next several months.
Erica will provide editing an design work. There was also interest in the
idea of a Journal or Magazine. Determined it would be best to start with
writing some articles for existing magazines and submitting them for print.
If it works and catches on, CURC could look to doing something on our own.
Carl will act as the lead for this - who will write articles, how to market
them and/or get them published. Need to take advantage of what people/members
are will to do and projects they want to take on while still keeping an
eye on not spreading CURC or our projects too thin, duplicating ourselves
or
having too many projects that don't really mesh.
c. Education Programs
Skip this
agenda item. Members who are handling these issues are not on today's
call.
--Austin
Workshop[s]/Track Sessions
--RO partnerships OH? AZ? NM?
*** Deadline extended for Austin call for papers. Should be turned into
Karyn Kaplan. If we want a CURC track again in Austin, we have to submit
CURC papers!!!!
d. Outreach
Web improvements
Budgeted
for web work and hopefully Kurt will continue his in-kind support.
Integrate
Profiles with Benchmarking
Need
to promote/push member input in profiles and
benchmarking sections. Is there a way to integrate
these two to combine the information available? Need to have discussion
about this and what direction we want to go with it. Two main issues:
getting people to submit their information (some schools don't
have the information available, some don't have time to submit
data
even if they
have it) and the difficulty of getting the data entered (not so
difficult now as we only get a couple a year, would be more difficult
if everyone
responded). Another inconsistency is the lack of standards across
the country for what can be counted (inclusion of coal ash, C & D waste,
etc.) causes some people to hesitate on reporting if what they "count" isn't
counted in CURCs benchmarking standards. If we can merge the profiles
with the benchmarking, we may be able to open up this reporting to more
people. Those who don't have numbers can at least give a narrative of
what they are doing.
"Push" Profiles
Should include
information on profiles and benchmarking in the CURC member packet
and encourage new members to fill out information
when they join. Do not want to make this mandatory as it could be a deterrent
to membership.
Partnership Guidelines
Roger will
head up this effort.
2. Elections update
Pete put
together a draft for Elections which Keefe and Butch edited. Pete will
finalize elections information document. Will go
out over the new CURC distribution list. Butch agreed to be the recipient
of nominees and ballots. Need to be able to send out and receive elections
information via fax. Keefe will help with a good portion of these. Pete
will contact Ed to see if he has student labor to help with this.
Not running again: Krista & Keefe for sure.
Note from last months minutes:
Krista, Pam, Erica, Julie, Keefe, & Pat's terms are up - Keefe won't be
able to run again; Erica won't be able to; Krista not running again.
3. April call will probably need to be rescheduled. Pete will send out information
about this.
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