MEEOA Board Meeting
Friday, March 3, 2000

Present: Johannah Burdin, David Megquier, Michele Melanson, Becky Robinson, Anne St. Pierre, and Rebecca Salsbury.

Reviewed the minutes of Feb board meeting & accepted them as submitted by Penny Gray.

Treasurer's Report

Account balances:
Checking	$3,233.90
Savings:	$2,134.45
TOTAL:		$5,368.35

Transactions include: registrations for Policy Seminar ($225 + $525), lunch for Feb board meeting ($33.36), ad for NEOA conference program ($100).
Reviewed & accepted Treasurer's report as presented. In future, we request a more detailed report which includes transactions. Rebecca will work with Chris to locate the appropriate reports in Quicken.

Liaison Report - Michele Melanson

MEEOA Conference 2001 - Anne St. Pierre, Becky Robinson
Anne needs labels - Rebecca will get these to her.
Looking for a conference theme - one idea they have is finding a "balance between theory & practice." Something along the lines of keeping the momentum going from the last conference. Michele mentioned a book by Donald Schon which addresses the theory-practice issue.
Some speaker ideas include: Nancy Gish and/or Lynn Michael Brown from Colby (coauthored books with Carol Gilligan) on young women's issues; sustainability - avoiding burnout; possible speaker from Franco-American center;
Other ideas include having a one-year CAS update; exploring another aspect of the standards (ie Ethics last year); Financial Aid - finding someone to address unmet need, politics and policy issues as relate to F.A.
Anne & Becky are considering other options for conference venue.

Policy Seminar
Set to happen March 19-21. Registrations & room reservations have been made. Rob Walker & Dian Cooper have their plane tickets. They have schedule, etc. New England's Alumni dinner is scheduled against the fundraiser event because of the limited schedule and because other NEOA folks felt that alumni would not have the funds or interest to go to the fundraiser. We discussed the fact that this presents a missed opportunity because our alums might choose to go to the alumni dinner rather than the fundraiser. Johannah will discuss this further with other New England folks to see if the schedule can be adjusted so alums may attend both events.

Anticipated costs -
$3300 + food & ground transportation in D.C.
$2000 are estimated costs for MEEOA, after NEOA reimbursement

TRIO Achievers Handbook
Becky has received a few student bios from programs around the state. She anticipates a few more will come during next week, and she intends to make a few calls to see about collecting a few more. The other part of the booklet will include projects' numbers of participants, funding levels, etc. Collecting information on academic year vs. summer, part-time staff, etc. This information is being collected by staff at USM's UB. Dave & Becky will begin putting together the booklet next week. Rebecca can help with scanning the photographs of students.

Council's trip to Mexico
Claire Nelson has put forward a student to represent Maine & New England in the Council's study trip to Mexico. Donna Thompson (from Connecticut) will be fundraising for this student, and others from New England. Claire asked whether MEEOA could assist the student and her program by paying for the student's airfare to Dallas, TX, which is not included in the cost of the trip. (Johannah pointed out that there are some other costs are not included in the package as well, such as some meals while in Mexico.)

The board discussed the belief we all share that this trip will be an excellent experience and opportunity for this student. However, the concerns raised were centered around the mission and scope of MEEOA, which is organized in a way such that we primarily address professional development and advocacy issues. To fund this expense, which could be as much as $500, would be inappropriate for this organization. Also discussed was the danger of setting a precedent for funding similar causes. Following the discussion, the following motion was made: that MEEOA not pay the student's airfare to Dallas.

Vote - unanimous. MEEOA will not pay the student's airfare.

MEEOA does support the student's efforts, and the efforts of Claire Nelson and the UMF SSS program. We want to alert the membership to the fundraising efforts of Donna Thompson. Anyone who would like to contribute to funds that will be used to send students on this travel study program should contact Donna directly. Her email address is dmthompson@wesleyan.edu Also, contact Claire at claire@maine.edu about her fundraising efforts, along with the student's, to pick up costs not covered by the trip cost.

Scholarships
Along the same lines, should MEEOA sponsor some kind of scholarship. Discussion centered around the same issues raised in the previous conversation, mostly related to the mission of the organization. Furthermore, MEEOA doesn't have the means to organize this at this time. Instead, it was suggested, we should teach programs about how to do this during workshops, etc. at the conference.

Miscellaneous New Business
Next Board meeting will occur at the NEOA conference, on Sunday April 2, at 10am. We'll need to define the issues to raise during the Maine Caucus. These issues should include: NEOA bylaws, electing Michele as liaison, memberships to NEOA, Maine's fair share contributions to COE.

FYI from Dave: NEOA set aside monies to host a special dinner reception for the COE Board of Directors during the Spring Meeting (May 3-6, 2000) at the Cliff House in Ogunquit. The NEOA Dinner will be on the evening of the 4th or 5th. Joe Costa would be the official host. Dave asks anyone from Maine who would like to attend to please contact him, as he is organizing on-site hospitality for the Board Meeting.

Meeting adjourned 2pm.
Respectfully submitted by Rebecca Salsbury