General Membership Minutes

SIAM: General Membership Meeting
Sunday March 17, 2013 8:30-9:30 am
Rosedown Room

Welcome

Reports

Election results (Heidi Koenig)
 3 new members were elected to the SIAM board. Their terms begin at this
meeting.
 The new members are:
 Masami Nishishiba is an assistant professor in the Division of Public
Administration at Portland State University and is Associate Director at the
Center for Public Service there. She served as a member on the 2012-2013
Stone award committee, and has a lot to offer in a leadership position.
 Elizabeth Fredericksen is a professor in the Department of Public Policy and
Administration at Boise State University in Idaho. She also serves as the
Director of Graduate Studies for the MPA program. Her research has
encompassed the studies of networks and work deals with issues of
governance and the role of the non-profit and private sectors in providing
publicly funded services. She has also work with a wide variety of
organizations on issues of strategic planning and organizational
improvement.
 John Kincaid is the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government
and Public Service and Director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State
and Local Government at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. He has
served on the Executive Committee before and brings his leadership
experience to the section at a particularly opportune time.

SLGR report (Michael Scicchitano)
 Journal is doing well.
 SLGR is doing great. Great work by Ed Benton to keep the journal running
smoothly. SAGE has given great support.
 SLGR is permanently moving to four (4) issues.
o This means there is a need to increase the number of submissions. SIAM
members can aid in this.
 SLGR board is now International.
o This will help to raise international recognition and hopefully increase
submissions.
 PODCASTS are now available. Beverly Bunch works on this project. Please
notify her for your ideas on this front. Please check them out at:
http://slg.sagepub.com/site/misc/Index/Podcasts.xhtml
 Overall, SLGR subscriptions have grown – both national and international.
 Overall, the editorial staff is working hard on increasing “downloads” of journal
articles. SIAM members can aid in these efforts. This work is paying off.
Downloads of articles have increased.
 Along these lines, be sure to sign up for email alerts and have you and your
students download articles and cite SLGR articles to help with citation index.
 SAGE and Staff are working to promote in the social media world. A “social
media coordinator” was discussed as a position for SLGR.
 Next goal is to move to Citation Index. Staff and SAGE are working on increasing
citations so journal can be listed on SSI.
 Overall, editors, SIAM members and Sage staff are working on increased
visibility.

Treasurer’s Report (Susan Paddock)
 First, Brad Rosenthal was a great treasurer – he will be missed.
 Susan’s bottom line on the budget – we need money. SIAM has just over $1000
in the bank.
 SIAM has not received its rebates from ASPA. This money would be helpful.
 The IRS situation is now complete. Nonprofit status has been reestablished.
Thanks Brad, Susan and David!
 One topic of discussion was creating accounts to allow for members to donate to
SIAM. SIAM members could simply write checks, or SIAM could create a PayPal
account to allow members and others to donate to scholarships or donate to/for
the Stone awards. This idea will be pursued further by the executive committee.

Membership Report (Ed Benton)
 Membership reports from ASPA are now different than before. This makes it hard
to interpret the membership data for SIAM.
 Membership is down across ASPA and ASPA sections – this is true for SIAM. Ed
estimates that SIAM has approximately 268 members (+/-).
 Members, mostly practitioners, are not renewing.
 Ed indicates that as ASPA membership goes, so goes SIAM membership.
 Ed will eventually send out a formal membership report once he receives the
membership numbers from ASPA.
 The SIAM members had a discussion about this membership decline. Many
ideas and thoughts were expressed. The discussion centered about these core
issues:
o Should SIAM rethink its mission? Or rethink its “image”? Should SIAM
consider changing its acronym?
o SIAM cannot compete with ICMA for practitioner members. So, should
SIAM and SLGR become more research focused?
o How can SIAM engage more students?

Newsletter and Website Report (Jered Carr)
 No report was presented.
 Both Newsletter and Website are up and running.
 If you have items for either, please contact Jered Carr

Awards
Student paper award (Chris Stream)
 Kyujin Jung, from the Department of Public Administration at the University of
North Texas received the Jr. Stone PhD Award
Stone award (Eric Zeemering)
 Scholar and practitioner awards were awarded. The committee had strong
nominees.
 James Stafford was honored with the Stone Practitioner Award
 Dr. Kurt Thurmaier was honored with the Stone Scholar Award
Chair’s Report of SIAM Activities and Discussion
 Chair’s report was combined in the discussion of the other agenda items.
.
Old Business

Deil Wright Award/Endowment
 The endowment has been established.
 A more formal plan in is the works.

New Business

ASPA 75th anniversary at the 2014 meeting and our contribution
 There was a discussion regarding SIAM’s role in the anniversary.
 Several ideas were discussed.
 David Hamilton will establish a committee.

Getting members more involved
 There was a discussion of doing a Strategic Plan in order to get more members
involved. Heidi Koenig was assigned to be the chair of this committee.
Adjournment