MEEOA Board Meeting March 3, 2006
Minutes Chadbourne Hall UMaine
Board members in attendance: Faith Erhardt, Steve Visco, Sara Henry, Linda Ives and Mary Fraser via teleconference.

Meeting called to order at 10:31am

Minutes from the February meeting accepted

Fact Sheets –

The SSS fact sheet is near completion, questions were raised about how to report the graduation rate for the programs. Since each SSS program has different objectives, it is difficult to have a consistent and accurate statistic for graduation rate. Mary suggested that the success/persistence measure is different for the community college SSS programs where graduation and/or transfer to a baccalaureate program are included in the statistics.

Treasurer’s Report – Sara Henry

NEOA membership recently paid out $350. Little other activity.

Current balances – Savings = $6865.05

Checking = $7807.99

Treasurer’s report accepted

Policy Seminar

Carried forward from the last meeting, can we afford to send 3 alums to policy seminar? MEEOA picks up approximately $2500 over the reimbursement from NEOA for policy seminar. In 2004, total costs = $4500, in 2005, total costs = $5400. Per Dave Megquier at the October business meeting, NEOA will increase reimbursement for policy seminar to $3000 or $1000 per participant. Given that expected increase, the lack of flight expense for Pam Powell, and the current balances in MEEOA accounts, it was agreed that three participants will be manageable.

Faith raised a question about a cocktail party fundraiser that requires participants to pay $50 on entrance. Board members attending make this donation out of pocket. After discussion, it was suggested that the board invite alums to participate, if they can’t make the donation from their own funds, MEEOA will contribute the funds for them to attend.

Danette has registered everyone for policy seminar, only flight and transportation details to be finalized. Steve is waiting for a response from Pam Powell about her schedule.

The board will ask Danette to prepare a notification to the membership on policy seminar including brief descriptions of participants and their itinerary while in D.C.

The schedule must also be entered into a COE database, Steve has forwarded that information and deadline to Danette.

Steve and Danette will review details of the schedule next week via phone or email.

October Conference

Sara will send the new logo to Tammy and Velma for use in the Save The Date card to be sent to the membership.

Brochure

Linda asked if the tag line can be shrunk down on the front of the brochure. Once that is done, the brochure will be ready for print. Sara will investigate printing options so that some brochures will be available to take to policy seminar and NEOA. Linda recommended Gossamer Press based on work they did for UB at a reasonable cost.

Achiever Yearbook

Almost ready for press, Faith is working on proofreading and formatting the text of biographies and waiting on the SSS program statistics that will come from the fact sheet work Jerry is doing. Target date to get it to press is March 10.

Faith suggested a change in format to the yearbook for next year. A similar project put out by Montana TRiO programs uses a format where data for each program is on the facing pages with photos and biographies of achievers from the program.

Other possible changes in the format include limiting the submissions from each program to 2 achievers and having first person statements from each achiever that can then be used to extract direct quotes for advocacy pieces.

State Meeting topics for NEOA Conference

-Treasurer’s report

-Report from Policy Seminar

-October conference preview

-Seek board candidates for October elections

-The Past-President will be formally named as the state liaison to NEOA

-New brochure will be unveiled, available for distribution

-Achiever Yearbook will be available

-Possible changes to Yearbook for next year discussed

-Discussion of having program memberships instead of individual memberships for MEEOA. (Sara will have preliminary numbers on what program costs will need to be to meet income needs for MEEOA)

-Hall of Flags –(April 13th) Darelyn is working on the schedule, Anne St. Pierre offered help coordinating

Meeting adjourned at 11:06