Minutes
IMSA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Cabinet Meeting
April 23, 2018, 8:00pm
Google Hangout Session
MINUTES
In attendance: Brian Cudiamat, Matt Isoda, Stephen Paige, Carlo Ordoñez, Leyonna Barba, Mark Czynski, Christina Fabian, Theresa Geiger, Karin Han, Aditya Karan, Jasmine Kwasa, Zouyan Lu, Allison Rodriguez, Sarah Song, Cathe Stieg
I. Call to Order – 8:03 PM
Reports
II. Secretary’s Reports/Remarks (Ordoñez) – Approval of Minutes from 6 February 2018.
Motion to approve by Zouyan, seconded by Mark. 7 ayes, no nays, no abstentions
III. President’s Report/Remarks (Cudiamat) – No report
IV. Vice President’s Report/Remarks (Isoda) – No report
V. Treasurer’s Report/Remarks (Paige) –
a. Continuation of last report. We have put a deposit down ($1000) for Reunion Weekend. We have finalized and signed a contract with Maggiano’s. The deposit will be refunded later as we this should be a cash-neutral venture. We will use the IMSA Fund PayPal account to sell tickets for reunion.
b. In addition to Tami being head of Office of Public Affairs (OPA), she is the Interim Executive Director of Development. They are on board with getting IAA becoming a non-profit, so we will move forward with that, and we will check that the full membership is behind this idea.
VI. Liaison Report (Stieg) – FYI, this year we will (due to liability and logistics issues) not be able to have child care available. In the past 2 years, it has been IMSA students who have done this, and they do not have training. Additionally, the numbers aren’t really there to offer it this year. We are happy to have children, but they will need to be supervised/accompanied by a parent. (The history of child care before is previously unknown.) IAA will send out that information to alumni.
VII. Rebranding IMSA (Tami Armstrong) –
a. Introduction/motivation: This information is to follow up with the e-mail that has gone out to alumni. After Tami joined a year ago, she looked at data pertaining to applications going back since 2008. We are down from about 763 to 500 this last application period. The admission team is surveying applicants. In particular, they look at those who started applications but did not complete them. Part of the takeaway is that there is a lot of competition with other schools (public with AP/weighted GPAs, other STEM schools), and they are looking to clarify and differentiate what IMSA has to offer. Part of this has to do with IMSA’s identity, and some of this comes from the logo. SB 2939 is also up for deliberation tomorrow (Tuesday 24 April 2018). While the logo doesn’t recruit students for us, alignment of the IMSA experience with an outward facing logo will be a step forward.
b. Concerns/comments from IAA officers:
i. Christina: If SB 2939 is approved, when does it go into effect? It depends on what happens with legislature rewriting and such. For example, one of the past recommendations was setting a hard cap on out-of-state students. Tami: If things move quickly, then the next step has to deal with construction to deal with additional students. We’re looking at an aggressive deadline of something within a few years (minimum 18 months). Big impetus for this is due to the fact that we have been held at the same level of funding since FY 2014, and we are not able to take care of capital projects (boiler replacement, for example). Tami will send Stephen the timing so we can see it in a document.
ii. Stephen: Is the plan to go from a 3-4 year school is concurrent with accepting international students? Tami will have to find out tomorrow.
iii. Allison: If one of the concerns is that we fill that IMSA doesn’t have strong name/brand recognition outside Aurora-Naperville area, is there significant interest from those outside the area to know that we have interest? Tami says we do have interest outside of Illinois, but we don’t have numbers on that. IMSA’s focus is to serve the students of Illinois, and this is what we want to put forth.
c. Logo: Tami will be looking for input into the logo that reflects global STEM leadership. There are close to 150 alumni who have responded to be part of the initial review of those concepts. There have been a lot of face-to-face groups on campus that have done this review, but she is coming to us to look at different ways to get feedback from alumni, given the large amount of people who have volunteered. We could possibly look at a Google form for some individual feedback, perhaps we can get smaller groups to get feedback. Stephen – At the end of the survey, ask if people would be interested in a longer- term (feedback cycle). Last day to participate was today, but if we contact Cathe today, we can get people on the list.
Committees
VIII. IMSA Alumni Facebook (Geiger) – We want to move forward with asking verification questions for those who attended IMSA. We had no clear resolution, but we need to revisit that. We don’t have access to a student database anymore, so Cathe is the only one who can verify. If anything, we go ahead and add the questions that we have to begin with. Everybody should look more at the notes which Neal Groothuis put forth with what we want to have happen with this group.
IX. Reunion Weekend (Paige) – As stated above, we have our deposit down for Maggiano’s, we’ve set aside 5 places, contracts are signed, and things are moving forward. The class of 1993 is very active in getting everything moving forward. Things should be running smoothly from here on out, and we are hoping to get to selling tickets by May 1. This will be the last year where we should be using the IMSA PayPal account. Look for a one-hour block for Q&A with Dr. Torres and Tami/Cathe during the reunion weekend.
X. Bylaws – No report.
Other Business
XI. Old Business – No old business
XII. New Business – Carlo or Cathe should talk to Bud to see if we can get switched over early to GSuite so we can have Hangouts.
XIII. Announcements – No announcments.
XIV. Adjournment – Motion to adjourn by Matt, seconded by Allison. All ayes, no nays, no abstentions.