2017 ATHEN Annual Meeting Minutes

November 17, 2017 (Thursday)

Accessing Higher Ground Conference Westminster Colorado

Minutes by Krista Greear

Brought to order 6:34 pm p.m. By Sean Keegan, Executive Board President

Executive Council Members Attending

  1. Robert Beach, Member at Large
  2. Wink Harner, Member at Large
  3. Krista Greear, Secretary
  4. Dawn Hunziker, Vice-President

Ascertained a quorum of members in attendance.

Treasurer Report

  1. Sean Keegan presented financial report
  2. Previous balance: $14,591.68
  3. Dues (institutional) for 2016 = $3587.50
  4. Dues – Paypal Individual dues = $1600
  5. Total = $19,779.18

Approval of 2016 minutes

  1. Dan Comden motion to approve minutes of 2016
  2. Wink Harner seconded.
  3. Vote: Unanimous. Opposed None.

Updates

Shannon Lavey updated the membership information. 51 institutional members, 73 professional members, 1 student 125 members. 53 people signed up for ATHEN during the conference registration process. Numbers increased from last year. Robert Beach – did the 53 sign ups during conference registration were new verses renewals? Shannon Lavey– both. Will look into that. Scholarship in honor of Teresa Haven. A lot of work done by Robert Beech and Wink Harner and Dawn Hunziker. [STUDENT] won the award. Robert Beach thanked the committee for doing their work. Going to move up the deadline for applications up and reviewed by March. Winners chosen by end of May. Questions around how to let the students know who is an ATHEN member. Will do things differently. Wink Harner encouraged participation from membership. Easy to rate applicants. Sean Keegan – Come see Krista if you are interested at the end of this meeting. She will get name and contact info. Volunteers: Marla Roll, CSU and Rachel Thompson, University of Alabama AHEAD workshop opportunity to dive into issues surrounding institutional web accessibility. While there was interest in participating, no one stepped forward to be the leader of that opportunity. 22+ hours of curriculum. If there is interest in this, let us know. Executive Council is happy to help facilitate in this process and support. Terrill Thompson – suggests that we have done a lot of the work. Gaeir Dietrich and Terrill did 2-day workshop at AHEAD. Then did 1-day workshop at EDUCAUSE then did 2-day curriculum at AHG with a group. Terrill suggest that this can be a democratic process. Dawn Hunziker will help coordinate meetings. Will want Co-Coordinator. Wink Harner suggest that Executive Council emails membership with this opportunity and things that we know. Sheryl Burgstahler – Terrill Rachel Thompson – expressed interest.

Request for Focus in 2018

Video Project

Short videos that focus on short topic. Highlight them on our website. Videos about how students can be using their AT, in addition for videos that are geared towards practioners. Not to go into video production business. Meeting 1x month for 30 mins. Multiple audiences welcomed. Working Group would work towards developing a tool to screen videos. Looking for quality content though. Executive Member would help to lead this.

  1. Lucy Greco – demos for using Screen Readers using different LMSs on campuses. Can work on videos if there was an editor.
  2. Sheryl Burgstahler – can link back to DO-IT Videos.
  3. Dan Comden – expressed interest.
  4. Rachel Thompson, University of Alabama – expressed interest.
  5. Wink Harner – whitepapers? Not a focus at this time.
  6. Paper Sign Ups going around.

Collaboration Groups

  1. Blackboard Collaboration Group (Rachel Thompson) petered out due to staffing changes. Someone went to Amazon.
  2. Microsoft Collaboration Group (Hadi Rangin). Good working relationship. MS Office Team talked a lot about ribbon interaction and possible r. Mac team has been doing better than the Office. Been working for 3 years. Would love to see more active members in both groups. Have to sign NDA and commitment between 2-4 hours work in a month. Will be excluded if not active for two meetings in a row. Progress has been slow. Interested? Contact Hadi Rangin. Don’t have to be an ATHEN member to be part of this group but it would be recommended as we are approaching them as a group. Herman (last name) has been part of team. Herman is the only person on the Mac. Really need support.
  3. Zoom Collaborate Group (Hadi Rangin) – in 7 months they were able to change their application from 0% accessibility to reasonably accessible.
  4. Canvas Collaborate Group (Terrill Thompson) – have over 100 participants. Don’t kick people out after 2 missed meetings. Use Canvas Course to track issues, validate, report issues, report bugs. Meet 1x a month. Folks are welcomed.
  5. Video and email to invite to membership.
  6. Workday (Hadi Rangin) – time to expand collaboration past UW. Given 2,000 hours in Collaboration. Sheryl encouraged collaboration.

Results from Paper Sign Ups

(redacted due to email addresses)

Election Results

  1. Vice-President – Dawn Hunziker wins & 2.5% abstentions
  2. Treasurer – Joe Humbert
  3. Member at Large – Robert Beech

New Business

Proposal to honor Ron Stewart – 1st time attendee scholarship to AHG conference. Would cover hotel, conference and ATHEN membership for the year. About $1000. Required employed at Higher Ed institution. Sponsored by current member.

  1. Yes – 19
  2. No – 0
  3. Abstain – 0

Virtual Conference

Piggy back off of AHG proposals that are due in the Spring. Put on a virtual conference. Like ½ day, start small. Get presenters to craft a virtual conference. Platform is Zoom. Have funding to caption. Zero or minimal cost to ATHEN members. If not member, become a member. Rachel Thompson would be happy to be lead on this.

  • Hadi – expressed concern about networking. Brings people together, may be harder to do virtually. If it’s knowledge based, there are other venues to do this.
  • Norm- is concerned about the potential opportunities and over-burdening the membership.
  • Robert Beech – responded saying that networking can be a thing.
  • Krista – offered that a virtual conference more accessible to those with social disabilities or financial limitations. Zoom has rooms, can do unconference around topics, have a moderator that limits group size to foster networking.
  • Sheryl – can use this as a recruiting tool to get people to AHG.
  • Dan – don’t have it be free. Even $25 bucks would be great.
  • Dawn – is this something that we can work with AHEAD on?
  • Todd Schwanke – clarify what are we trying to do? Drive them to conference? Make sure ATHEN doesn’t get skipped over in this process. How many people come to this conference who don’t know who ATHEN is.
  • Sean – ATHEN driven event. Explain what we do. Support ATHEN.
  • Lucy Greco – give this as an opportunity to test run their presentation for AHEAD.
  • Sheryl – AHG Lite. Venue to replaying popular presentations.

Meeting adjourned @ 7:53 p.m. Heidi Scher motioned to adjourn. Rachel Thompson seconded. Motion carried unanimously.