Minutes
53rd Annual Business Meeting
Loews Coronado Bay Resort
San Diego, CA
March 16, 2011
The meeting was called to order by President Carl Fox.
Dr. Orcun Goksel (University of British Columbia) was presented with the 2011 WAGS/UMI Innovation in Technology Award by the ProQuest/UMI representative, Marlene Coles. Dr. Goksel then gave a brief overview of his dissertation, “Meshing and Rendering of Patient-Specific Deformation Models with Application to Needle Insertion Stimulation”.
The 2011 WAGS/UMI Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award was presented to Mr. Weiyang Liu (University of Alberta), who also delivered an overview of his thesis, “Instrumentation for Interstitial Photodynamic Therapy of Prostatic Carcinoma”.
The minutes of the 52st Annual Meeting were approved as submitted.
The Treasurer’s report was presented by Linda La Grange. The balance in the WAGS account was $42,095.53. Linda also asked the members in attendance if they would approve of establishing a new thesis award category for art, humanities, and the social sciences. By a show of hands the suggested new category was approved.
Linda La Grange announced the 2011 election results. Ramona Mellott (Northern Arizona University) was chosen to be the President-Elect and Gerardo Gonzalez (California State University San Marcos) was chosen as our new Member-at-Large, replacing Moheb Ghali, whose term ended March, 2011. Gerardo’s term is for two years. Because Ramona Mellot vacated her Member-at-Large position, the election runner-up, Robbyn Wacker (University of Northern Colorado) was asked to serve in the vacated position for a two-year term.
The WAGS 2011-2012 President, Peter Dorhout, announced that he would be holding the 2012 Annual Meeting at the Hilton Hotel on the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins, CO. He mentioned a possible meeting theme and referred to the fact that 150 years ago, in 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant College Act. The suggested theme was how colleges and universities engage people. Further, he suggested that we discuss how such engagement is transforming higher education.
Carl Fox announced a number of new initiatives he thought would be of benefit to the organization.
- Establishing a list serve through the WAGS Gmail account,
- Increasing the number of affiliate members,
- Asking the WAGS members for ideas and suggestions for additional initiatives as well as ideas for next year’s program (hot topics), and
- Continuing the practice initiated this year of having vendors provide brief presentations.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:00 pm.