[INAAPT] INAAPT meeting

[Conlon, Julie A]

Rick, I really appreciate your perceptions.  I agree fully with the location, and this was what I was hoping to gain support with on Sat.  I feel strongly that it would enhance INAAPT to hold the meeting centrally and at the same location each year.  I suugested Purdue as the annual site, not because of its central location, but because most/all other professional groups (biology, earth and atmospheric, chemistry) meet at Purdue and Purdue supports the groups by handling mailings, websites, etc.  To my knowlege, Purdue is the only college/university that has 6 full-time outeach coordinators in the College of Science.  We dedicate ourselves FULL TIME to the needs of K-12 teachers.  

More importantly, last year I gained support to pay entirely for the costs of the meeting, including $100 apiece awards (this year this equated to $300) and all the food--a full supper on Fri, breakfast, lunch.  I have no reason not to think I couldn't raise these funds from Purdue alumni if Purdue hosted the meetings, because the particular individual and the company he owns is supportive of physics education.

The complaints I heard at Saturday's meeting were coming not from those who have actively participated in executing a meeting.  

But, no matter what, we must begin to think out of a box that isn't working well.  One idea the team of outreach coordinators had was to TRY hosting all the professional organizations on one day so teachers from a school might travel together.  Will it work?  We don't know--we haven't tried it.  I do know that if 6 outreach coordinators are all working to invite teachers, it could work.  There may be other innovative ideas.  We need to do some creative problem solving.

Julie


----- Original Message -----
From: inaapt-bounces at inaapt.org <inaapt-bounces at inaapt.org>
To: Steve Spicklemire <steve at spvi.com>; inaapt at inaapt.org <inaapt at inaapt.org>
Sent: Thu Apr 26 12:01:42 2007
Subject: Re: [INAAPT] INAAPT meeting

Let me discuss just the logistics of the meeting.

IF--big IF, we continue to think of the yearly meeting as a 1-day, drive in, 
drive out meeting, then for maximum coverage the meeting should always be in 
Indianapolis.  Indy is no more than 3 hours away from any point in the 
state--well the south-west may be a problem until Mitch builds his highway! 
The other three corners of the state are linked by interstates and the 
central north and south areas are only 100-120 miles away even though the 
roads have so many stoplights that it takes the 3 hours.

To really accommodate this, I would suggest a 10-4 or even 10-5 time frame 
for the meeting.  Starting later to allow people to come in from the corners 
without leaving at 4AM and now, thanks to DST (and Mitch), late April 
meetings would still get people home before dark.

Let me also suggest a change (or perhaps return) to a format that would have 
3 hours of contributed talks--concurrent sessions (but not too many)--a 
lunch break with awards--then either a single high interest topical talk, 
two or three concurrent workshops, or break-up into topical round-table 
discussion groups.  End the day with the business meeting.  The afternoon 
program could rotate through the different forms, or always be the same, 
depending on interest.  (A survey of members might help determine that.)

I would still offer a Friday evening optional session for those who can and 
want to arrive early and stay overnight.

Moving the meeting around the state serves some good purposes, but only if 
we can actually get more people in the region to come.  In the past that was 
not really the case.  We might get 10 regional people and then the 30-40 
regulars no matter where we went -- We've been at Tri-State, Saint Mary's, 
Calumet, Hanover, etc.  Unless we gave someone an award and immediately 
drafted them into the officer ranks, we seldom saw any of the '10' newbies 
again.  So as much as I enjoy going to other campuses (discovered Madison 
Indiana through a meeting at Hanover), I would say that Indianapolis offers 
the best chance of attracting a 50 person crowd.  However, I agree with the 
comment that we need to do some recruiting and some advertising--much on a 
personal basis--to get more High School teachers to come.  The cadre of 
University and College types that have been regulars is getting thinned out 
through retirement (and worse), and so there may be the need for some arm 
twisting with younger AAPT members at those institutions.

Joint meetings can be great, but since we would really be in the position of 
needing to go to Illinois or go to Ohio for such meetings (having gotten 
both states to come here in the past--Purdue and Ball State) and such 
meetings would necessarily be two day affairs, you have travel and lodging 
to worry about.  Will people go that far and spend the money?

Just my thoughts,

Rick

***************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara at saintmarys.edu
******************************
Free Physics Software
PC & Mac
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
******************************* 

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