Western Forest Genetics Association

Annual General Meeting

Galveston, TX, June 22, 2007

 

Minutes

 

 

Call to order at 17:30

 

In attendance:

 

Tom Blush             Lee Charleson             Jeff DeBell                  Valerie Hipkins          

Glenn Howe          Angelia Kegley           Mary Mahalovich        David Reid    

Marc Rust             Brad St. Clair              Paul Stover                  Nicholas Ukrainetz    

Tongli Wang (recording)

 

1. Minutes

  • Motion: to accept the 2006 minutes (Mahalovich/Reid. Carried)

 

2. Financial Report

  • Rust presented the financial statement prepared by Keith Jayawickrama. 
  • Motion: to accept 2006 financial statement (Howe/Blush. Carried)
  • The group discussed the financial status of the SFTIC/WFGA joint meeting.  Rust noted that the meeting may break even, but it is likely that expenses will exceed income resulting in a deficit.
  • Motion:  to authorize the executive committee to send up to $1000 from the checking account to SFTIC to help offset the deficit if it occurs (Howe/St. Clair. Carried).
  • The group discussed moving some of the excess funds in the checking account into other investment options. Jack Woods had suggested depositing some of the money into an ING Direct account.  Rust reported those accounts are currently yielding 4.5% interest. He proposed another option. The Bank of America has a risk-free CD with an 11-month term that would allow us to transfer funds from the CD into our checking account without penalty.   The CD requires a minimum $5,000 deposit, but transfers can draw that amount below $5,000.  The number of transfers allowed is unlimited, but transfers must be at least 6 days apart.  The current yield on these CD’s is 4.4%.  This option keeps all of our funds at Bank of America instead of opening another account at a different institution.
  • Motion:  to move up to $8000 from our checking account to a Bank of America Risk-Free CD (St. Clair/Blush. Carried).
  • Rust reported that in recent years, the Critchfield Scholarship Fund did not have a sufficient balance to pay the Critchfield Award.  Consequently, the award was paid from the checking account.  The Critchfield Scholarship fund now has a sufficient balance to pay for the Critchfield Award.
  • Rust reported that he made a decision not to award the poster award this year because SFTIC will make a similar award and only 5 student posters were submitted.  Rust reported he could find no guidelines for the WFGA poster award and asked members if the award was limited to students.  Members agreed that only student posters were eligible to receive the award.  Rust asked for a sub-committee to draft guidelines for the student poster award for consideration at the next WFGA business meeting.  Mary Frances Mahalovich, Tom Blush, and Marc Rust will serve on the sub-committee. [Note: after the WFGA business meeting, Tom Byram (SFTIC) and Marc Rust (WFGA) agreed that the SFTIC poster award amount of $200 should be split between SFTIC and WFGA since the WFGA poster award was not awarded]

 

3.  Date and Venue for Future WFGA Meetings

  • The group had a long discussion on whether WFGA will hold annual or biennial meetings in the future.  Rust distributed the feedback he had received from WFGA members by email.   Some members favoured biennial and joint meetings with other groups, while others were concerned about reducing the opportunities to exchange information focused on regional interests.  
  • Motion:  to task the incoming WFGA Chair to take an email vote to begin holding the traditional WFGA meeting biennially beginning in 2009 (St. Clair/ Mahalovich. Carried).
  • Motion:  to task the incoming WFGA Chair to take an email vote to begin holding an additional meeting during even numbered years.  This meeting would be held in a central location to promote participation, could be shorter in duration, and could be held in conjunction with other organizations like NWSOMA (Howe/ Blush. Carried).

 

4. Election of New Officers

  • President: Tongli Wang, VP 2006/07, will become president for 2007/08, according to WFGA tradition.
  • Motion: Marilyn Cherry be approved as Secretary/VP for 2007/07, to serve as president for 2008-09(or 10). (Reid/Blush. Carried).
  • Motion: Keith Jayawickrama be approved to be Treasurer for next two-year term (Mahalovich/Stover. Carried).

 

5. Other issues

  • Concern was expressed that the group had not provided sufficient direction to the Executive Committee on whether they should organize a meeting for next year.
  • Motion: to task the incoming president to organize the next meeting as soon as the email votes are carried out (Howe/Paul. Carried).

 

The meeting was adjourned at 18:40 pm.

 

Later in the day the following awards were announced:

 

Critchfield Award

            Daniel Chmura was selected to receive the Critchfield Award for his presentation entitled, “Integration of Crown Morphology and Leaf-Level Physiology as a Tool for Explaining Differences in Aboveground Productivity among Elite Families of Loblolly and Slash Pine.”

 

Poster Award

            The poster award was not awarded in 2007 due to a limited number of student posters and a similar award by SFTIC.  Instead, WFGA will pay half of the $200 SFTIC student poster award.