WFIU Community Advisory Board Meeting
The Virgil T. DeVault Alumni Center, Metz Boardroom
January 13, 2014 at 5:00 p.m.
Notes Prepared by James Gray
Attending: Janis Starcs, Janet Stavropoulos, Ellen Sedlack, Peter Jacobi, Charlotte Zietlow, Miah Michaelsen, Alain Barker, Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, Rebecca Cape, Lynn Schwartzberg, Laura Ginger, Will Murphy, Perry Metz, James Gray, Eva Zogorski, John Bailey, Marianne Woodruff
Via Phone: Phil Meyer, David Boden, Lewis Ricci, Mary Hall
Absent: Pam Davidson, Raina Polivka, Walt Niekamp, Marty Donnelly
Janis called the meeting to order at 5:00pm. Peter Jacobi motions to approve the minutes. Janet Stavropoulos seconds it. Minutes approved.
Old Business: CAB Officers
• Miah Michaelsen: I was appointed to a team in December. The team’s mission was to review the bylaws, or guidelines, of WFIU’s Community Advisory Board. Before we move any further, I want to bring up one motion we agreed upon. I move to make Lewis Ricci chairman of the board.
• Lewis Ricci: I told Miah that I would only accept if she was vice-chair.
• Miah Michaelsen: Lewis, that position doesn’t exist yet. To create it, you have to be in the position of chair.
• Alain Barker: I second this.
[Motion Passes. Lewis Ricci is Chair.]
• Lewis Ricci: Thank you. I would like to thank Janis Starcs for his many years of guidance. As for the bylaws, they are actually guidelines. You should have received the previous set of guidelines, and a draft of our proposed guidelines.
Old Business: Bylaws
• Miah Michaelsen: We’ve looked at about 20 advisory board guidelines from around the country. Advisory boards generally do the same things.
• Miah introduces Section 1: Purpose and Function of the Community Advisory Board.
• Lewis Ricci: We are distilling 6 functions to 4.
• Miah introduces Section 2: Membership and Terms.
• Miah Michaelsen: Also, we are limiting the number of members to 30. We stated that members can serve for 3 years with a possibility of being reappointed, but they can only hold a leadership position for 2 years.
• Lewis Ricci: I believe we ended by saying that board members should not serve more than 2 consecutive terms without taking at least 1 year off.
• Carolyn Calloway-Thomas: Where it says members should be contributing…Does these mean financially?
• Miah Michaelsen: Yes. I can change this to “financially contributing.”
• Miah introduces Section 3: Expectations of Members.
• Lewis Ricci: Didn’t we agree to change “informational” to a different word?
• Miah Michaelsen: Yes. “Advisory?”
• Lewis Ricci: This sounds fine.
• Miah reads the paragraph about attendance in section 3.
• Charlotte Zietlow: The draft reads “Any members not able to meet those minimum requirements may be removed from the CAB at the discretion of the Chair.” Who appoints the members?
• Will Murphy: The board will have a bit more bulwark with these guidelines. “Station management,” and not any specific station positions, will appoint members to the board. This was left intentionally non-specific as far as what part of the station management could appoint people to the board.
• Charlotte Zietlow: Could we change the wording to “the Chair with support of the board?”
• Miah Michaelsen: Sounds great!
• Lewis Ricci: We also discussed writing an outline/job description that has expectations not included in this document.
• Miah reads Sections 4: Meeting Proceedings.
• Will Murphy: I would like meeting agendas and minutes to be posted online.
• Charlotte Zietlow: That’s good.
• Miah reads Section 5: Committees.
• Charlotte Zietlow: What is an example of a situation that would call for an executive committee?
• Miah Michaelsen: The situation with the schedule that occurred over the summer could have benefitted from smaller meetings.
• Will Murphy: Another example would be a grant that has a small window of time to get approval from a board.
• Alain Barker: What about transparency? How will this be preserved?
• David Bowden: Could we put something about keeping all-
• Alain Barker: apprised.
• Miah Michaelsen: Great. I will add that a note should be sent out before a meeting of either committee takes place.
• Miah reads the section on the Nominating Committee.
• Alain Barker: Is there a connection between the 3 year member term and the two-year Chair term.
• Lewis Ricci. I like the thought of someone being able to serve in another role for a year before becoming the Chair.
• Miah begins to read Section 6: Appointment of Officers.
• Charlotte Zietlow: I have a question concerning the Recording Secretary. Would FIU staff assist in recording the minutes? Would the Recording Secretary review the minutes?
• Miah Michaelsen: Both options are likely. It would be up to the Recording Secretary to seek note taking assistance from FIU staff.
Phone disconnection for several minutes. Meeting resumes
• Miah resumes reading Section 6.
• Lewis Ricci: I’m back. The line went silent for about 30 seconds, but it is back up now.
• Miah Michaelsen: Great. Any thoughts on Section 6?
• Carolyn Calloway-Thomas: Numerically, I think this is great. I was wondering about categories, like region? Then, I had a conversation, and I came to the conclusion that this may be unreasonable.
• Miah Michaelsen: Right. We can look into this in more detail in another document.
• Charlotte Zietlow: We need a diverse perspective. We need lay people represented.
• Lewis Ricci: I would add that we are looking for people not representatives of institutions or their constituents.
• Alain Barker: Realistically, we all have allegiances.
• Lewis Ricci: The idea it that all members should be members for themselves and for the good of WFIU.
• If there are no further changes, I would like to make a movement to approve this draft with appropriate revisions at the next meeting.
• Lynn Schwartzberg: Should there be a section on decorum?
• Miah Miachaelson: I believe that would fall under the Chair’s purview.
• Ellen Sedlack: Should we put in a mention that FIU staff are ex officio members of the board?
• Alain Barker: I think it should be in the guidelines.
• Janis Starcs: I do as well.
• Miah Michaelsen: This will go into the revisions as well.
• Miah reviews all revisions and agrees to bring the revised copy to April’s meetings for approval.
Old Business: Meeting Schedule
• Will Murphy: For our 2014 schedule, we are looking at shifting the July meeting to June 30th. Generally, we will be meeting at 4:00 pm, but Lewis Ricci is teaching a class at Butler University. We may want to meet at 5:00 pm in April because of this.
• Perry Metz: I want to add a note here. We are working to share as much as possible with the public. It is important that the public have access to what we are doing, and the CPB is reinforcing this with surprise visits to stations. They are checking for compliance. Stations that are not in compliance can receive hefty fines. I encourage you to check out our “About” page, and see all the documentation that is available to the public.
New Business: Orientation Guidebook
• Will Murphy: I am compiling a guidebook with information I believe will be helpful for CAB members, and I have sent quite a bit of it to you already. If you think of anything that might be helpful that is not included, please send me a note.
• Lewis Ricci: I would like to see the CAB job descriptions added to this section.
• Will Murphy: This sounds great.
• Miah Michaelsen: Lewis would you like me to draft it for our next meeting?
• Lewis Ricci: Yeah. That would be great.
New Business: Year in Review
• Will Murphy: There is a document in your packet that reviews the year. A summary was emailed as well. I think it can be helpful to look back on how eventful one year actually is.
• Janet Stavropoulos: I see a not about the members of the news team that left the station. Did any members of the news team go on to promising opportunities?
• Will Murphy: Yes. Many of them have gone on to great things.
Other Business: Listener Events
• Will Murphy: The final piece of business relates to WFIU’s plan for upcoming events. We were contacted by Says You. They want to come in May to do a live performance. Their preference is to do two shows with 600 seats. They say this is better than one show with 1,000 to 1,200 seats.
The possibility of bringing in someone from NPR is also on the table. At first, it took me a couple of months to receive a “no” from NPR. So, they sent me a list of names I could get quickly.
The possibility of bringing in Peter Van de Graaff also exists.
• Alain Barker: Would it be beneficial to bring a guest in with help from a different department?
• Will Murphy: That is how this conversation began. We were working with the journalism speaker series, but we missed the deadline.
• Alain Barker: What about bringing in Fred Child?
• Miah Michaelsen: Or using the theatre as an asset?
• Will Murphy: These are good thoughts. Thank you. I will take your feedback into consideration.
Other Business
• Will Murphy: Any other questions, comments, or concerns?
• Ellen Sedlack: What’s with Annie saying “joined by” in the morning? We know Annie is here. When she says she is being joined by NPR personalities, it sounds pretentious. I don’t like it, and people have told me they don’t like it. Similarly, one time Stan said he was joined in Auschwitz by Eva Kor. Stan joined Eva in Auschwitz.
• Will Murphy: This tactic is used to address a branding concern. It is something Annie, John Bailey, and I learned from Morning Edition Grad School.
• Ellen Sedlack: I think Annie is great, and I thought this sounded like something from on-high.
• Will Murphy: The two national hosts of Morning Edition are great as well, and they are on opposite coasts. We want Morning Edition to be a seamless production. I encourage the board to check out other stations as well.
• Laura Ginger. I don’t like what Annie did.
Carolyn Calloway-Thomas motions to adjourn the meeting. Peter Jacobi seconds the motion.
Adjourned.
Next Meeting is April 7, 2014