Minutes and Recommendations from the Future Directions Committee Meeting

Radisson Suites Resort, Clearwater, Florida

17/18 May 2002

John Charles(FDC Chair) called the meeting to order at 7:13PM on May 17 at the Radisson Suite Resort, Sand Key, Clearwater. Steve Estes(FDC) took the minutes. Beverly Mitchell (FDC), Jan Rintala (NAPEHE Vice President-Elect) and Marilyn Buck (NAPEHE President-Elect) were present.

The agenda was distributed, and agenda items were discussed and modified. The committee toured the facility, and agreed that the hotel layout will work very well for the 2004 conference.

The agenda was discussed in the context of the charge of the committee. The FDC Code was distributed, and the committee discussed the charge.

Steve read the minutes from the FDC meeting held in September of 2001.

It was noted that while many of the motions of the FDC are not adopted by the Board or the membership, it was agreed that the ideas from previous FDCs have shaped the conversations of the organization in a positive way.

It was agreed that the summary minutes from the Past Presidents' breakfast be considered at our Saturday meeting as appropriate.

Discussion ensued regarding who attends the conference. Young faculty may feel pressure to go to the discipline focused conferences, and NAPEHE's mission of being interdisciplinary may scare these people away.

• It was pointed out that those who write in the humanites - interdisciplinary literature - like NAPEHE.
• Suggestion made that maybe we should solicit the people who are publishing in Quest to come to the national conference.
• Perhaps we could offer a conference with one or the other subdisciplines to meet with NAPEHE to discuss the usual conference theme.
• Perhaps we should acknowledge that we are more of a leadership group than a subdisciplinary group. If so, then going after subdisciplines may not be a good strategy.
• Pointed out that the conference attendance historically is composed of administrators and pedagogy. Reasons for these demographics were discussed: history, interest, lack of a national pedagogy conference, other.

This suggestion came from the question: Who are we trying to serve? Who is our constituency? One answer is the membership, but the above suggestion came out of that question.

FDC would be the committee that could put forward suggestions that would become NAPEHE positions. Also, issues that were generated out of our conferences. And, perhaps it is not that we promote a position - it may be NAPEHE's role to get the issue out on the table.

How we get the issue out on the table is subject to debate: Quest, The Chronicle, the website, the e-mail directory, other publications that come to NAPEHE leaders for opinions, conference proceedings, other?

Discussion of the role of liaisons and affiliates: need a discussion of the role of the affiliates and liaisons.

• Discussion ensued about what we all get out of these relationships. It doesn't make sense to have a relationship unless both groups are getting something out of it.
• Question: do we both still get something out of the relationship? If we do not, then perhaps we don't need the relationship.
• Suggestion made that NAPEHE re-examine our relationships with our affiliates. It may be that given the new technologies that we no longer need to officially recognize the affiliates in the way that we used to.
• Perhaps a presidential appointee or committee should make recommendations to the Board of Directors regarding the liaisons and affiliate positions. The FDC recommends H.B. Poindexter.
• Income for the association: difficult discussion. We had a long discussion about how we could raise money - no new ideas. We agreed that we don't like tacky ideas to raise money. We made $9,000 on the last conference, so we suspect we put money back into the Oppenheimer account.
• How much do we need? And who needs it? What for? We should ask these questions.
• It was noted that institutions have donated a lot to NAPEHE: mailing, printing. It is almost that one has to be a chair or dean to run the conference now.
• We may want to study or track the doc students, young scholars, and the new members who got free membership - how has that stuff worked for generating new members?
• Survey the membership and find out what they want from NAPEHE.
• Survey the non-renewing members and find out what they are not renewing.
• Survey the Quest authors and find out why they are not members of NAPEHE.
• Suggest page charges for people publishing in Quest who are not members.

Saturday morning

John called the meeting to order at 8:30. Topic was the 2004 conference theme.

Consensus that we leave the discussion of the name change of NAPEHE to the special issue of The Chronicle, and to the January national conference.

Conference theme suggestions: It was agreed to give Jan the following list of suggestions, and that she would contact possible speakers. She requested that she stay in touch with the members of the committee for feedback.

• Social responsibility - educating our students for social responsibility.
• The nature of the 21st century student. Discussion went all over, from the attitudes and behaviors of students entering universities, to their skills. The question is how the culture of entering students affect what we do in physical education in higher education. Possible speakers: Dinesh D'Souza, Peter Sack, Hirsh (Cultural Literacy), Donna Shalala, Roderick Paige, or someone from their offices.
• The above theme also includes the training of PhD students, who enter departments with ideas that they will focus on research, and then perhaps teaching. Service is clearly at the bottom of their list, and we "educate" new faculty to live this way when we tell them that they must publish or be denied tenure and promotion.
• Forces affecting higher education: technology, entering students and their demographics, the research culture, the current budget crisis. NAPEHE's discussions would revolve around how this change will look in departments of physical education. Speaker: Lee Shulman, Donna Shalala
• Role of higher education in promoting physical activity: basis for a blueprint. Speaker: someone from CDC or Surgeon General's Office. This theme could include subtopics that relate to the theme, some of which are the above conference themes. For instance, how does promoting physical activity in higher education promote social responsibility?

Recommendation was made that we develop an "experts directory" similar to the one done in NASSS. This directory would be distributed to the national media. When questions come up that deal with NAPEHE issue, perhaps our leaders would be contacted.

• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Change
• Secondary School Principles magazine
• Journals for higher education administrators
• Our website - perhaps a list of white papers or position statements
• List of education editors at national magazines.

Recommendation regarding Diversity Fund

• Diversity fund. There is now some money in it. How should we disburse the funds?
• Consensus that Chuck Corbin should be consulted in the final decision.
• Consensus that the Social Justice/Cultural Diversity Committee should meet with Chuck regarding suggestions.
• The S.J./C.D. could come up with some ideas, and should run them by the Board, the Foundations Committee, and Chuck Corbin.
• Publishing a "fast back" on S.J./C.D. issues.
• Pay for a speaker that could come to a NAPEHE session.
• Use fund to send one of the committee members to a conference/workshop so that info could be brought back to NAPEHE
• Use fund as seed money for a publication

Advocacy: The FDC agrees that the organization should advocate positions specific to the NAPEHE mission. This advocacy could take the form of

1. publishing positions that NAPEHE agrees to. Example includes endorsing existing positions, such as the AAHPERD Physically Educated Person. Another example would be a NAPEHE generated position on relevant issues authored by NAPEHE leaders. This position would be endorsed by the BoD, perhaps the membership, and "published" on the web in a manner similar to government publications (PDF file, other).
2. Another example would be to fund S.J./C.D. position. The cultural diversity fund could be used to support scholarship in this area that would be endorsed by NAPEHE, and which would then be published as an electronic "fastback."
3. These "fastbacks" would be free to membership, and could be purchased at some point in the future just as we did with OPERA. Steve suggested that NAPEHE could fund scholarship as seed money, and then publish it.
4. NAPEHE needs to get these positions posted on the search engines where and when appropriate. We may wish to pay for this service so that the engines could tap into our website.
5. NAPEHE could present issues - not just positions - in appropriate forums such as those listed above. Examples would be Title IX and coed physical education.

Recommendations: Have an administrator pre-conference. …it was recommended that administrators attend the preconference as part of the regular registration fee. It was suggested that if it is possible that we include a time slot on Wednesday afternoon and/or Thursday morning for an administrators workshop. We should contact CUAC prior to their meeting in Whistler to have them discuss the invitation. If they are interested then we can pursue the issue. If not, then we can drop it. It was the FDC consensus that we will not organize the session for CUAC, that CUAC should do this.

It was recommended that NAPEHE should specifically invite Quest authors to participate in the conference. Also Chronicle authors when appropriate. These authors are interested in NAPEHE issues, and would enjoy the conference.

Recommend that NAPEHE charge page fees for Quest authors who are not members of NAPEHE. Authors could be given the choice of joining NAPEHE or paying the page fees. At $10/page (going rate) it would be less expensive to join the organization. We would also encourage authors to attend the national conference.

Sense of the FDC was that greater flexibility in site selection was better, and so it was recommended that NAPEHE consider dividing the country in two halves instead of thirds as we do presently. Texas could be either half. This could overcome some of the limitations that have existed in the past site selection process, where it was noted that women always were allotted the lowest attending section (central) when conference sites were considered. It was also noted that we don't have to be on the coast. It was also discussed that the conference go to a more central location every fifth year.

We had no recommendation on the World Summit. But this discussion led us back to the role of liaisons and affiliates. FDC recommends that we streamline the positions on the Board that are affiliated and liaised. Specifically:

· The FDC moves that NAPEHE eliminate all liaisons from the Board of Directors. AAHPERD, AAHPERD Research Consortium, and the National Coalition for the Promotion of Physical Activity would liaise with the Public Affairs Committee in a manner consistent with IIA in the Public Affairs Committee Operating Code. AAKPE, which has its conference papers published in Quest once per year, would liaise with the Publications Committee regarding any issues relating to the Academy Papers.

· The FDC moves that all affiliates liaise with the Public Affairs Committee in a manner consistent with IIA in the Public Affairs Committee Operating Code. It was noted that affiliated organizations usually report the status of their conference only, and this information could be reported at the BoD meeting as part of the Public Affairs Committee report.

· The FDC recommends that NAPEHE investigate the original affiliation agreements to determine the nature of the affiliations. If it turns out that there is no agreement, then the affiliation does not exist and there is not a problem.

Steve was directed to pull out the action items as a separate report.

John adjourned the meeting at 5:00 PM with thanks to the committee for working hard over the two days in a very productive manner.