Minutes of business meeting at University of California, Berkeley, March 25, 2016

ACAL President Lee Bickmore opened the meeting, which by the end had 43 people present.

Nominations for an Executive Committee member to replace Mary Paster were entertained. Mary’s term expired at this ACAL, and she was thanked for her two years of service. Jonathan Choti was nominated and elected by acclamation. In conformity with ACAL’s Bylaws, he will serve three years, with a term expiring in 2019.  Next year, we will elect not only an Executive Committee member to replace Laura Downing, but Akin Akinlabi (Vice President) will move up to the President’s role, replacing Lee Bickmore, and we will elect a new VP/President-Elect.

Sharon Rose, Treasurer, gave a report on ACAL association finances:

Financial Report Sept. 1, 2014 – August 30, 2015

REVENUE
Memberships   (cash, check, money order)                 $1630
Memberships via PayPal                                                        4190
Donations                                                                                      250
Total Revenue                                                                         $6070

Note: 7 lifetime memberships ($400 x 7 = $2800)

EXPENSES
Conference at U. of Oregon                                        $1000.00
Bank Charges                                                                             5.00
PayPal Charges                                                                     173.79
Total Expenses                                                                 $1178.79

Revenue less expenses:                                               $4891.21

Lee Bickmore presented the idea of a new category of membership: Lifetime ACAL membership for African-centered people of $200, rather than the general $400. This category was accepted.

Mike Cahill, Secretary, gave a brief update on the ACAL association web site. We want to keep adding member-access only features to make it more attractive to ACAL members. There is progress in adding a page with other members’ information (name, email, linguistic interests, language interests), accessible only to members. So far it has a very basic layout. Sometime in the next few weeks, current ACAL members will get an email asking them to create a password to gain access to this. People were asked to send suggestions for any other enhancements to the site, or to other possible benefits to members.

The status of publication of ACAL proceedings by Language Science Press (LSP) was presented. The University of Kansas (ACAL45, 2014) is getting quite close to publication, and University of Oregon (ACAL46, 2015) is in process. This is complicated by the LSP’s requirement for LaTeX format for submissions, with a possible input being a Word document that conforms to their template with specific paragraph and character styles. For ACAL’s first submission (Kansas), LSP is providing some help, but with Oregon and on, they expect us to do all the formatting. It is likely that we will recruit some grad students who are LaTeX savvy, and who can commit at least 2 years, to do the formatting, and ACAL may make a donation to the relevant host university to provide for the cost.

Samson Lotve, student from Indiana University, talked about the next ACAL in 2017 being held at Indiana. A plea for possible future venues beyond that was made, and Johnathan Choti brought up Michigan State for 2018. Since it was mentioned last year also (see 2015 minutes), he has already started some organization. Since the University of Illinois has traditionally hosted every ten years, we will consider their current suitability  to host ACAL50. Rose-Marie Déchaine from the University of British Columbia indicated their eagerness to host ACAL in the future.

The meeting closed with no further business.

Mike Cahill, ACAL Secretary