Those present: Johannah Burdin, Betty McCue-Herlihy, Tamara Hunt, David Megquier, Michele Melanson, Rebecca Salsbury.

Reviewed minutes from 4/30 meeting. Made minor corrections, accepted minutes. Betty will revise & send to Dave. Dave will post to MEEOA-L.

Treasurer's report - Tamara Hunt
Report for 2/1/99 through 5/25/99
Balance: $1829.22 in Savings, $2554.77 in Checking
Recent activity limited to travel reimbursements for board members' travel to meetings, advertising for NEAEOPP Conference Program, and food expenses for the recent NEOA Board Meeting.
MEEOA will submit a bill to NEOA for Policy Seminar reimbursement. Dave & Tamara will work together to take care of this.

NEOA Liaison Report - Dave reporting for Linda Walz
Dinner at NEOA May board meeting that was hosted by MEEOA went over very, very well. It was greatly appreciated by everyone present. Especially wonderful were those from Maine who prepared & sent meal items, and those who attended the dinner & prepared & served the meal.

• NEOA committed funds, during their budgeting process, to fund a dinner for The Council's May 2000 meeting which will be held in Ogunquit @ the Cliff House.
• NEOA conference 2000 will be in Rhode Island, either Newport or Providence. Date will be approx. 1st or 2nd week in April.
• NEOA needs dates of each state association's annual meeting/conference.
• NEOA would like contributions for regional baskets that are used in silent auction at the national COE conference, to be held in September in San Antonio, TX. Linda as state liaison, will coordinate this for us in Maine. Some ideas we discussed are:
  • LLBean gift certificate
  • Native American-made basket - Rebecca will email Nancy Schwartz (NEOA basket coordinator) about this & look into a basket we could donate
  • Any item(s) which would represent Franco-American culture?
• Kristi Pierce challenged the region & asked us to challenge our state members to make individual contributions to The Council. Important to make contributions because The Council is the only group which has funds to support advocacy work for the TRIO community. Institutional membership is one area of The Council's revenue that supports advocacy work, but personal contributions are also very important. MEEOA encourages individuals to contribute by sending a contribution to: the Council for Opportunity in Education, P.O. Box 90193, Washington, DC 20090-0193. Credit card or direct withdrawal authorization is also an option. Dave has copies of the contribution form if anyone needs one.
• State liaisons should identify attendance for National TRIO Day in central Connecticut, which will be held February 25 - 26, 2000.
• State liaisons should forward any topics for the NEOA newsletter to Bob McCabe.

Conference 2000 report - Rebecca Salsbury & Michele Melanson

• Atlantic Oakes submitted a proposal, which looks nearly identical to last year.
• Rebecca has spoken only briefly with Karen Keim about this & needs a little more information regarding costs of last year's conference (especially meeting space costs).
• Tentative date (being reserved by Atlantic Oakes) is 1/5 - 1/7/2000 (before UMS institutions start school again)
• We would like to finalize the contract and pay a deposit to Atlantic Oakes before UB summer sessions begin. Michele & Rebecca will take care of this.
• Next steps will include: sending a teaser out to each program director to try to get TRIO folks to reserve the date early! Also, call for proposals & ideas for programming conference activities/ sessions. Collecting/ soliciting ideas & items for silent auction, especially bigger ticket items. Some ideas for auction: Maine Center for the Arts tickets, UMaine v. UNH Hockey tickets, UMaine women's basketball tickets. Betty offered to look into the sports tickets idea.
• August/September timeline includes: (a) begin to put together the program; (b) construct first draft of a conference mailing, which would include registration materials, program sketch (what topics, presenters), auction items. This mailing should be out by early October. Need to coordinate w/ Johannah & Tamara to handle membership & registration fees, etc.

Next Board Meetings
Friday is the best day of the week. Meetings will be held in Chadbourne Hall, UM. Sept 17, Oct 8, Nov 19, Dec 17
Special pre-conference meeting: Jan 4th (5pm @ conference site Atlantic Oakes)

MEEOA Web site
Leif Feige, our WebMaster, has resigned his position w/Talent Search. Rebecca will take up this part. Discussed briefly what to put on the web site:

• Bring what's there up to date
• Add brief description/info to the main page (What is TRIO, MEEOA)
• Outstanding Maine TRIO students - Johannah will help RS get pieces
  Examples:
  Orono UB - Foxcroft Academy valedictorian & salutatorian are both UB students!
  USM UB - a UB student won one of Oprah's scholarships!
• Conference stuff
• Alumni - web based form to sign in

MEEOA LISTSERV - Rebecca has spoken briefly with Jerry Ellis about taking over the MEEOA-L. One idea has been to design a sign-up & sign-off web form to allow people some ease of use.

PowerPoint presentation - RS needs help soliciting info from programs! We need info about what makes each program unique!

Staff Development -
Some MEEOA funds have been set aside for projects in this area. After the state caucus in Ogunquit, we felt that membership had a better idea of what we were thinking with respect to this initiative, but there have been no takers yet. Dave's thinking that if/when some regional staff development begins to happen, MEEOA could partner with them to common goals. Rebecca noted that at the regional level, we had discussed a Train the Trainer model of technology training & this may work very well in a partnership mode between NEOA and the state associations.

Also, it would be a neat idea to take a topic or two from the conference program & develop it on a separate day - perhaps in the fall (late October?) as a one day or half-day program. MEEOA could support such an activity. It might provide a spark for others to think about organizing something for MEFOA to support.

We also discussed the possibility of having a Technology workshop at the January conference. This is logistically challenging, though. However, we could see whether the College of the Atlantic could help us with facilities (or perhaps Emerson Jr. High in Bar Harbor). This could be done as a pre-conference workshop, too. Everyone agreed there would be interest.

Discussed an idea which has come up before: seeking funds to purchase a small bank of computers to be used for staff development and / or loans to programs for student/staff use. New thought: rather than buying laptops, purchase iMac computers - very portable, reasonably priced, easily maintained, etc. In order to pursue this, we may need to incorporate the organization (MEEOA).

Items for future agenda:

• Incorporating MEEOA
• Seeking outside funding source, writing proposal, etc.

Meeting adjourned.

Submitted by Rebecca Salsbury.