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Directory
2000
Reports of Committees and Officers Constitution
and By-laws Committee Report
The membership committee has acted on all applications forwarded
by the management company and all three classifications of candidate
have been nominated for their respective classifications of membership.
The list has been complied by the management office and they should
submit an official copy for the minutes. Other than that, we have
nothing to report. I would again like to make a plea for Council
to try to locate funds for a table top booth to take to a number
of meetings where our members can "man the booth" and provide answers
to questions and brochures about what we do. If we could get a booth
at some of the main meetings, I feel we would be able to increase
membership sufficiently to at least cover the cost of exhibiting.
During 1999, the Placement Service has continued to function
as an interface between potential employers and those seeking jobs.
Employers and those with postdoctoral positions have been instructed
to post advertisements and./or announcements on the Teratology Society
Web Site or in the Teratology Society Newsletter.
George
Daston We're making progress on a number of areas that we identified in our strategic plan as being important. We've been particularly successful this year in fundraising; the administration of the Society's business is in good hands and on an even keel; our access to professional meeting planning has put us in a position to make our annual meetings more accessible and more profitable for the Society; we are in active negotiations with the publisher of Teratology to improve the quality and marketing of the journal, and to make the journal a revenue source for the Society; and we are continuing to resolve our identity crisis by settling on a new logo. I will expand on each of these issues below. Fundraising: The two most immediate needs that were identified in our strategic plan were to improve the quality of our business office and to create a more substantial financial base for the Society. I feel good about the progress we''ve made on both. We have continued to empower people besides the President to raise funds, and it works. We are the recipients of two separate R13 grants to fund student travel and the satellite meeting. (Many thanks to Ida Smoak, Bob Kavlock, Phil Mirkes for their hard work on our end, and to Jerry Heindel and Allan Lock on NIH's end for their continuing support of the Teratology Society.) John Rogers once again successfully applied to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for support, this time for the satellite meeting. Enrollment in the President's Circle is up: Merck, Bayer, Covance and Glaxo Wellcome have all joined this year to push our total number of PC members to 18. We have 11 Sustaining Members, adding ClinTrials BioResearch, Wyeth-Ayerst and Pharmacia & Upjohn. We lost only one Sustaining Member, Exxon Mobil. Corporate memberships provide us with $35,250 in revenue. It should be noted that there are signficant expenses associated with these corporate memberships, a matter that we will talk about at Council I. We've also done extremely well with corporate contributions to support the annual meeting. We have contributions in one form or another from 13 corporations, three NIH institutes, EPA, Society of Toxicology, our regional teratology societies, March of Dimes and individual contributors (most of the latter for the Larry Wetzel Memorial). As of this date we have received $44,325 in direct support for the annual meeting and promises for another $5500. Travel support is being provided for the speakers in one symposium and for Clarke Fraser, saving the Society an additional $5000. Support for the satellite meeting totals $25,000. The grand total comes to $79,825, well above what we had accounted for in the annual meeting budget. Although some of the money will be used for expenses that we hadn't budgeted (student mixer supported by Pfizer, banquet entertainment supported by WIL, Dr. Fraser's travel supported by Primedica), we are still doing much better than expected. Management: This is old news, but good news. I continue to get very good feedback from the membership about the quality of our business office. Tonia Masson and her staff deserve praise. John Rogers and I continue to keep an eye on administrative costs, which continue to stay within budget. We are clearly getting a lot more for our money, both in administrative services and in meeting administration. Our contract with AIM will be up for renewal. We will discuss this as a separate agenda item; it will be my recommendation to renew the contract. Annual Meeting Planning: We've made progress towards the goals laid out by the strategic planning group in annual meeting planning, although it's harder to see because of the long lead time required to set up a meeting site. With our choice of sites for the 2001 and 2002 meetings we are in a position to plan annual meetings that have a lower registration fee and offer the potential for lower cost housing nearby the headquarters hotel. Beginning in 2001 our food & beverage obligations to the meeting hotels will be limited. This will provide us with the opportunity to cut the meeting registration fee substantially while increasing the percentage of revenue that goes to the Society. It's also worth noting what a terrific job Clarissa Wilson has done for us in identifying meeting sites and driving hard bargains. We are getting more from hotels and spending less. Even with the less than favorable contracts we've had this year and last, Clarissa has managed to wring out concessions from the hotels. While we're on the subject of annual meetings, I'm happy to report to you that we have filled our room block at the Breakers and will be able to fulfill our contract to the hotel. Tonia and Clarissa will have the latest figures when we get to the meetings, but as of the cut-off date for room reservations at the group rate our registrants had reserved 1949 of the 1961 room-nights set aside. While there is still the possibility for slippage from cancellations after May 18, there are also a number of people who are waiting for rooms because the hotel is completely sold out for at least some of the nights of our meeting. There is good reason for optimism. It's worth noting that 1950 room-nights, give or take a few, is equivalent to our performance in 1995-98 (1999 was an off year because of the special circumstances at Keystone). I expect the meeting registration numbers to be about the same as during those years. It appears that we are holding our ground but not growing. Increasing the meeting attendance will be a key challenge in the coming years. A number of our academic colleagues have told me that the high registration fee has been one of the key factors in their decision to attend the meeting irregularly and to not bring many students. We are in a position to reduce meeting costs next year. I encourage us to do as much as we can, and to heavily publicize this fact to our members in order to boost attendance. Journal Negotiations: Most of us continue to feel that the scientific quality of the Society's journal is, along with the annual meeting, the most critical factor influencing the growth and health of the Teratology Society. A healthy journal will provide our members with a meaningful, high-impact place to publish their work and will establish a sense of connection from non-members who are currently doing teratology research. There is general agreement that the publisher has not put the kind of effort into the journal that we feel is necessary to achieve our expectations for it. Furthermore, there is general agreement that the current contract between the Society and Wiley is unfavorable to us. Nancy Olsen, the new executive editor for the journal at Wiley, offered us the opportunity to renegotiate the contract. We've asked Wiley for a number of changes, including a request that they share revenue from institutional subscriptions with us. I've kept you up to date on the course of the negotiations (which are glacial in pace). Wiley has addressed each of our requests but there is still a considerable distance between their current offer and our minimum requirements. However, we have the luxury of time, both to negotiate with Wiley and to consider other options for publishing our journal after the contract with Wiley expires at the end of 2004. Our negotiating team will meet with Nancy Olsen at the annual meeting. We will also meet with Lulu Stader, a representative from Elsevier who will be exhibiting at the meeting to talk informally about Elsevier's interest in serving the Teratology Society. Teratology Logo: Another important conclusion of the strategic planning group was that the Society needed to do more to clearly present its identity and purpose. After much discussion over many years among the membership, we decided that a change to the logo might be the best way to achieve this goal in a way that would not be as polarizing as a name change. Tony Scialli led an effort last year to solicit ideas for new logos from the membership and from a professional designer. Several different variations on two themes were presented at last year's annual meeting for written comment; one from BYU grad student James Ricks, one from professional designer James Burns. No clear favorite emerged, and the written comments indicated that there were significant positive and negative attributes to each. There were also comments that indicated that the old logo was preferred over either of the new entries. I passed along the feedback, good and bad, to the designers of the logos and asked them to make whatever changes they felt would address the feedback the best. They submitted modified designs. These were posted on the website along with the current logo and a modification of it containing the words "Birth Defects Research" (thanks to Bob Veneziale for making the change). I asked the membership to give an opinion, expressed as a value from 1-5, on each. I received responses from about 140 members. The mean score was highest for the modifed current logo, followed by the current logo, the pregnant woman, and the cartoon embryo. However, there wasn't a lot of separation. I then looked at the distribution of responses. The pregnant woman and cartoon embryo were very polarizing: most of the scores for these were 1s and 2s or 4s and 5s, with very few neutrals (3s). On the other hand, the modal score for the current logo was 4, with virtually no 1s or 5s. The current logo with "Birth Defects Research" also had a mode of 4, but with more 5s and fewer 3s. The number of "dislikes" (1s and 2s) was about the same as for the current logo. I conclude that the current logo with "Birth Defects Research" is an improvement, without the potential for divisiveness that the other choices carry. Many people also submitted written comments. I was impressed with the number of comments favoring the text part of the pregnant woman logo. Accordingly, my recommendation is that we adopt the current logo with "Birth Defects Research", along with the text from the pregnant logo. This may require a slight modification of the former (e.g., adding "birth defects" to the text, removing the words from the ring). Other
Items: FASEB Placement Service: FASEB has an extremely active placement service which we, as a member society, have access to. With the approval of our Placement Committee we have provided a link from our website to the FASEB Placement Service.
1. Consensus Statements
2.
Public Affairs Symposium 3.
Evaluation of Controversial Papers appearing in the Medical Literature 4. Jan Freidman testified for the Public Affairs Committee at the FDA Public Hearing on Dietary Supplements in Pregnancy which was held in Washington, D.C. on 30 March 2000. Dr. Friedman pointed out in his testimony that nutritional supplements cannot be assumed to be safe for the embryo/fetus and that nutritional supplements should not be labeled for use in pregnancy unless they have been shown to be safe by standard scientific methods. He recommended that all nutritional supplements should carry a warning that their safety in pregnancy is unknown, unless safety has been established by standard scientific means; that FDA should consider all pregnancy-related conditions to be illnesses; and that FDA should work to amend the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 to assure appropriate protection for the embryo/fetus. 5.Liaison
with US FDA Kenneth
Lyons Jones, M.D.
Please find below the annual report on the Publication Committee
activities: (The committee members are Karen Augustine, Tom Kwasigroch,
Rochelle Tyl, Phil Mirkes and Bernard Schwetz (as an ad hoc member)
The Society is awarding 18 student travel awards of at least
$750 to help students offset cost of attending this years meeting
in Boca Ratan. This will be funded jointly by an NICHS grant, the
Larry Wetzel Memorial fund, Quintiles and Eli Lilly.
John
Rogers Almost all of the financial news is very good, including the 1999 year-end financials, our continued growth in net assets, our current status on the 2000 budget and billable hours from the business office, and attendance and contributions for this years meeting. The last item was covered in the President's report, and I will address the other items here. I will also present a brief fiscal retrospective for the past seven years. FY 1999 Financials. Last year's approved budget for revenues and expenses was $338,820. Actual year-end totals were $281,647 for revenues and $243,398 for expenses. Excess of revenue over expenses totals $38,249, making 1999 the best year in recent history in terms of net gains. This success is due in large part to very hard work by Tony Scialli, the rest of Council and the business office in keeping expenditures down. It is worthwhile to look at the 1999 numbers in a bit more detail in comparison to 1998. In 1998, revenues were $326,304 vs. $281,647 in 1999. The biggest contriubtor to this difference was the annual meeting, with registration income of $131,750 in 1998 vs. $84,796 in 1999. Contribuions were up in 1999, at $46,017 vs. $35,908 in 1998. Member dues were similar in 1998 and 1999. On the expenditure side, notable savings were on the annual meeting ($63,461 for food/rooms/bev in 1998 vs. $35,529 in 1999; $27,429 for speakers in ‘98 vs. 9,290 in ‘99), G&A for the newsletter ($20,662 in ‘98 vs. $6,650 in ‘99), printing ($16,165 in ‘98 vs. $6,188 in ‘99), and other steno/clerical costs ($52,269 in ‘98 vs. 40,549 in ‘99). Overall, I think we became more financially efficient and streamlined in 1998. We are continuing to work to reduce costs, and this will be particularly important while we work to increase our membership and attendance at our annual meeting. FY99 Year-end Balance Sheet. As of December 31, 1999, our first Union Checking account balance was $131,337, and our CD accounts totaled $137,436. We also had accounts receivable of $6,986. Total assets were $276, 064 and total liabilities were $31,955, compared to $263,467 and $57,607, respectively, in ‘99. Subtracting liabilities from assets each year gives the $38,249 increase in our bottom line added in ‘99. Budget Status for FY2000. Through April 30, expenses for FY2000 totaled $48,249, or about 14% of our annual budget. Billable hours for AIM totaled 862 hrs and $28,433. These numbers are within our budget, and there are no significant unexpected expenditures to date. Of course, the majority of our revenues and expenses are for the annual meeting, the results of which are not currently known. Our checking account balance on 4/30 was $210,394, and investments totaled $137,436. Our $117,000 22-month CD at First Union is currently earning 5.8%. We had intended to move these funds to Legg-Mason, but the CD rolled over in the fall and now does not mature until 8/31/2001. First Union claims to have not received a change of address for the business office, and we are currently attempting to gain release form this committment without penalty. While the rate on the CD was competitive when it rolled over, current rates are 1-2% better. Our other CD at Provident Bank is for $22,658 and matures on 8/25/2000. This Cd will be moved to Legg-Mason at maturity assuming we get the best available rate from them at that time.
1. Invest more funds in Certificates of Deposit. During 1998 and 1999, the minimum balance reached in our checking account was $107,319, and the maximum was $279,795. Our major expenditures are predictable and usually highest in late summer-early fall (see attached table and graph). It seems to me we could safely put $25,000 into an additional CD, and that is my recommendation. Additional short-term (3-month) CD investments might be made after our major expenses are paid in the fall. 2. Evaluate merits of moving checking account to Legg-Mason vs. leaving at First Union with nightly sweeps. The current interest we make on our checking account is virtually wiped out by service charges (we netted $227 in interest in two years). Legg-Mason recommends their premier account, which pays about 4% and charges $89/year. We currently pay over $100/month in bank charges for our checking account, and get about 1% interest. Tonia and I are comparing services between the two accounts to see what we are paying for at First Union. They do provide lock box service for us, and we don't know if that is available at Legg-Mason. There is a Legg-Mason branch convenient to the business office, so that is not a problem. Both Legg-Mason and First Union offer "sweeps" of checking account funds into money market accounts. We are not currently doing this at First Union. Whether we switch to Legg-Mason or not, we certainly should start doing this immediately. Audit: We have a new auditor, and Tonia will discuss this at the council meeting, and hopefully will have an audit by then. This company uses a bit different format than what we are used to. Fiscal Retrospective: Tonia has prepared a retrospective for G&A, Annual Meeting and Consolidated revenues and expenses, and those are attached. I have prepared graphs of these data, which are also attached. Probably the most striking is the graph for net assets, which shows that we have been doing well for the past 3 years, and that in 1999 we finally got back to where we were before the Puerto Rico meeting. Note also that in 1999 we held both G&A and AM expenses down, something that we will need to continue to do.
June 22, 2000 The principle responsibility of the Vice-President is to organize the scientific program of the annual meeting. This was accomplished with the assistance of an organizing committee composed of Tina Chambers, Ida Smoak, Paul Foster, Sid Hunter, LaMont Bryant, and Phil Mirkes. Meeting planning also required significant interactions with the Continuing Education Committee thru chair JoLynda Jones, with the Student Affairs Committee thru chair Kit Keller, and with the chairs of the organizing committees for NBTS (Merle Paule), OTIS (Kathy Johhson), and BTS (Phil Bushnell). I am happy to report that NBTS will be co-meeting with us through at least 2003, and OTIS appears to a relatively permanent partner. Special efforts were made to coordinate exchange of programs between the societies and to increase the amount of synergy between the groups. We still have further to go in this regard, but the channels of communication are wide open. The major objectives in planning the 2000 meeting were to have a scientifically rigorous and challenging program while minimizing costs to participants and generating revenue for the Society. I believe we have been successful on these objectives, but we need to strive even harder to have the meeting be a larger generator of net revenues. Registration costs were held equal to previous years, although the cost of food services from the Breakers will be larger than in past meetings. This, combined with slightly lower registrations from that projected last fall, will result in lower profits from the meeting, but there should still be a positive cash flow. Most importantly, it appears that we have fulfilled the room block commitment and are now free of contractual obligations from past meetings. Two unique aspects of the planning this year consisted of submission of grants to NIH to support student travel to the main meeting and for speakers at the Genomics Satellite. With the leadership of Ida Smoak and Phil Mirkes, respectively, we were successful in both instances. In submitting these grants we have learned valuable lessons for future Organizing Committees to consider, including timing of submission, content, and financial management. I will be working with Jan to ensure these lessons are applied to the Montreal meeting. Internet submissions worked well, and Bill Landau should be given credit for making the development of that part of the program a relatively pleasant experience.
Awards. In order to better promote the Wilson Publication Award, I believe we should strive to have the awardee identified before the annual meeting program goes to press. We should also codify more precisely the nomination process for the Best Young Investigator, and have this also available in time for inclusion in the program.
In November I represented the Society at a March of Dimes coordinated meeting whose focus was to get children's health more explicitly recognized in the Healthy People 2010 document. Advice was provided to the President regarding the contract of publication of the Society's journal, and on the contract for the venue for the 2003 meeting. Tom Flynn has agreed to represent the Society at the FASEB organized conference on issues related to proposed new regulations by USDA on pain and suffering in experimental animals. The meeting is in Washington in early August. I have been asked by Heinz Nau, incoming ETS President, to attend the ETS Council meeting before the meeting in Ferrara, Italy to discuss how the Teratology Society addressed strategic planning and the steps we are taking as a result of those efforts. I will report to Council on this at our Fall meeting.
Committee
members: The webmaster is Mr. Bill Landau. The Teratology web site is still on a "virtual server" maintained by Mr. Landau. The virtual server resides physically on a server located on the premises of Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc. in Fayetteville, NC. Mr. Landau has handled all server issues to-date. The domain name of teratology.org is owned by the Society, but Mr. Landau is the administrative contact with Network Solutions (internet name registrar). Email addresses are also maintained on Mr. Landau's virtual server. There are 4 email addresses provided for business office use: tshq, tmasson, clarissa, and annk@teratology.org. The major accomplishments of the committee are as follows:
For the period between 01-Apr-1999 and 01-May-2000 there was an increase in the average visits per day from 84.7 (reported last year) to 115.4. A more detailed report is posted on the web site under Member Information, Newest Items. As before the indexing and key words associated with the web site have positioned the site well in terms of search engines. We are within the first 10 sites retrieved for terms such as "birth defects" and "teratology" with most common search engines. Three committee members have access to all files that compose the web site through a password-protected FTP protocol to the server. Symantec Visual Page (ver. 2.0) is the main software used to make edits and create new pages. Essentially all page updates and additions are done by the committee, therefore additional webmaster costs are avoided. The cost of hosting the web site is $50 per month; Mr. Landau sends an invoice to the business office quarterly. There were no additional costs this year. The WebBoard was established to replace the Discussion Forum. The WebBoard is maintained by Information Ventures, Inc. (IVI), Philadelphia, PA. The contact at IVI is Chaim Dworkin (chaim@infoventures.com, 215-569-2300). There is currently no cost to us for using the WebBoard. As reported last year the WebBoard is under-utilized by the membership, as shown by the few numbers of replies to a given question. This is puzzling since the email notification option can be set to send users any new posts. Since this time last year a total of 38 outside emails from the Send Us Comments page were handled by the Web Site Committee. This is a decrease from last year. A folder containing all communications is available for council to review. The vast majority of these questions were handled by referring the party to other web sites. Council is asked to review the attached draft policy for handling Send Us Comments questions. Issues Requiring Council Input
Respectfully submitted 25-May-2000 L. David Wise, chair
Teratology Society Policy - DRAFT Handling questions and comments submitted from the web site. There are generally 3 classes of questions/comments that have been sent to the web site committee from the "Send Us Comments" page of the web site. These are listed below along with the method the society representative should use to respond.
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