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Minutes
ASES Solar Thermal Division
Annual Business Meeting
July 10, 2006
The meeting was called to order at 5:55 pm by Barry Butler
A list of those in attendance is attached.
1) Review of Division Status
Barry began by introducing the Division Officers for 2005-2006. They are
Barry Butler Chair
Tom Henkel, Vice Chair
Joe O’Gallagher, Secretary
Michael Gurin, Treasurer
He reported that the Division activity has been increasing over last year. In addition to providing reviewers for the conference submittals, there have been two newsletters issued during the past year. Also at this conference there are three Forums and at least four technical sessions organized around solar thermal topics.
He then asked for suggestions as to what other activities the Division might undertake that would benefit the division members. A number of suggestions were made, including the following.
- Organization of local public forums to educated the public on the role of solar thermal
- Addressing concerns about competition among solar vendors under the new market conditions such as misleading advertising and other misinformation that could affect public perception of solar thermal. This could be done in the Division Newsletter
- Developing power point presentations that could be downloaded from the Division Web pages for public consumption. A link to these could be provided in the electronic division newsletter.
- Suggesting that members donate old topical magazines to hospitals for reading by the general public.
- Coordinating local activities with other environmentally concerned organizations.
2) By-Laws and Election Issues
Joe O’Gallagher reviewed the important issue of streamlining all the ASES divisions’ by-laws so as to make them compatible with one another. He pointed out that existing by-laws, such as they are, are often incomplete, or lost and/or archaic. It is desired to have new by-laws that make the organizational structure and election calendars of all of the divisions fairly similar to one another. It is not necessary that these be identical if there are good reasons for a particular division to be different but there has been prepared a template that should serve as a guide for each division in adopting a new set of by-laws.
Joe then reviewed the major changes that were being proposed, comparing the old by-laws with the proposed new ones as follows.
Old Bylaws
- Chair, Vice Chair ‘elected’ by those attending the division meeting. No nomination process.
- Chair, Vice Chair served one year terms
- Vice Chair was also “chair elect” and automatically became Chair
- Each division had its own set of processes
New By-laws
- Chair and Vice Chair are each elected independently by the Division membership through an electronic ballot in the fall.
- Terms last two years and begin January 1 of the year following the fall election.
- Board for each division is comprised of its officers (Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary/Teasurer, Past-Chair and Newsletter Editor-appted by Chair)
- Division By-laws more uniform
It is proposed that, if the new set of by-laws is adopted, our Division will keep the current slate of officers through the fall of 2007. A nominating committee will identify a slate of candidates to be voted on by the membership by that time. Furthermore, that division board will be responsible for “filling in the blanks” in the recommended template by-laws and editing them so that they become a satisfactory set of by-laws for the Solar Thermal Division.
There followed a brief discussion of the proposed changes. It was suggested that there be some mechanism to handle the possible problem of “non-performance” by an elected set of officers. Given some periods of dormancy in the past, this is not a completely outlandish possibility. It was agreed to call this problem to the attention of the ASES Board of Directors and ask that the Society find a way to deal with such issues should they arise in any division.
It was moved and seconded that the “template” by-laws be adopted to replace whatever old by-laws the Division may have had. This motion was then approved unanimously.
3) Technical Review of Conference papers
Barry called for volunteers to serve as reviewers for next year’s technical program. He asked that interested persons sign-up on the sheet being passed around
4) Forums for future Conferences
Barry asked for suggestions for possible “forums” to be incorporated into the program of future conferences with particular emphasis on next year’s meeting in Cleveland. One topic proposed was crop drying and other agricultural applications. It was also emphasized that forums on any topic attempt to include case studies of real installations with “lessons-learned”. It was suggested that a procedure be established to receive input through an interactive web-site.
5) New Business
Given that it was getting late and there was no response to a call for new business, the meeting was adjorned at about 7:00pm.
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