Tag: 2023

MAPOR SPOTLIGHT of the MONTH:  The MAPOR spotlight of the month goes out to Benjamin for taking over the website and getting all our updates through for the EC page!

MAPOR Mission Statement

We provide high-quality educational and conference programs to encourage scholarly exchanges across disciplines and geographies, broaden member access to mentors and resources, and bolster opportunities for leadership and innovations. We join forces with AAPOR, academic institutions, and government and industry employers to develop a thriving community that supports all MAPOR members, including students, scholars, and professionals in every stage of their career.

MAPOR Vision Statement

MAPOR is a leading voice in public opinion, survey, and social science scholarship, methods, and practice among regional professional associations. We are an inclusive and supportive community that enables our diverse members to achieve their educational, professional development, and networking goals. 

MAPOR Documents & Procedures 

1. Vision and Mission Statements: https://www.mapor.org/about/mapor-mission-vision/
2. Bylaws: https://www.mapor.org/bylaws-as-amended-august-10-2018/
3. Robert’s Rules of Order: https://www.boardeffect.com/blog/roberts-rules-of-order-cheat-sheet/

Attendees: Justine, Kevin, Patrick, Benjamin, Jenny, Curtiss, Erin, Rebecca

Agenda:

1. Approval of last meeting’s minutes 

The meeting minutes from February were approved. 

2. AAPOR and MAPOR Code of Conduct–Bylaws Update      (Justine)

Justine will send out a formal email about what we are proposing to change. Council will discuss in the April meeting proposed changes. 

3. 2023 Conference             (Patrick)

EC discussed the appropriate number of people to be on the careers panel. 3-5 persons seems like a reasonable amount. 

Justine – Could the fall webinar tie into the conference programming? 

How can we make MAPOR a place that is useful for people looking for jobs but at the same time be useful for folks who are hiring organizations? How can we make MAPOR the Midwest hub for hiring? 

Networking opportunities at the conference – this can tie into messaging for potential new sponsors –  That MAPOR is an ideal location for them to spotlight their organizations to early-career and students. 

4. Secretary / Treasurer’s Report   (Lindsey)                

Checking as of today: $21,001.20

Savings as of today: $47,213.39

We have 379 members to date with 296 general members and 83 student members. We should get a new list from AAPOR again in the next week or so, but the number of new members usually gets very small at this point.

Both the federal and state taxes are done. 

I have reached out to Cvent to see if we will need to purchase additional registrants to move webinar registration and non-conference and non-AAPOR membership into Cvent, and if so the pricing options. Even if we do, I suspect it will still be cheaper than continuing with our current set up of two credit card vendors but will keep everyone updated.

5. Communications & Website                     (Benjamin)
   1. Newsletter
   2. Website updates

The website is now updated! 

Kevin has access to the MAPOR Google account. Kevin will provide the password information to Benjamin so we have this stored after EC transitions.

Benjamin sent out a schedule for deadlines for upcoming newsletters. He would like drafts of materials to be sent within the next two weeks. 

6. Survey Subcommittee       (Justine)

Justine is reviewing materials and will send a calendar invite out soon for people to take part in making this happen.     

7. Awards, Grants, and Support Committee (Paul & Curtiss)

Committee continues to modify language for Fellowship program. Trying to get a wider ranging messaging for why people should apply. Draft sent to Justine, we should be able to distribute soon. 

Committee is planning to reach out to Fellows to learn who might be interested in participating this year. 

8. Sponsorship (Kevin)
   1. Reaching out to new possible sponsors?  A section in the newsletter? 

No updates at this time. 

9. Online Learning Committee           (Rebecca)
   1. April/spring webinar

Speakers for the upcoming webinars have been confirmed. Committee is working to get headshots and bios and content ready to get into the upcoming newsletter. 

April 14^th is the first session. “Web surveys 2.01 – Beyond the Basics.” 

Next webinar will conflict with EC meeting. Justine will consider moving the meeting. 

10. Other business

Rebecca suggested adding the Chair of the Online learning Committee as an elected position. We will discuss this further in thinking about changes to the Bylaws. 

Council members

President – Justine Bulgar-Medina

Vice President / President-Elect – Leah Dean

Past President – Kevin Ulrich

Conference Chair – Patrick Hsieh

Associate Conference Chair – Jenny Marlar

Secretary-Treasurer – Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Sponsorship Coordinator –Kevin Ulrich

Student Liaison – Curtiss Engstrom

Communications & Website Chair – Benjamin Schapiro

Members at Large – Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, Jerry Timbrook, Paul DiPerna, Shalise Ayromloo

Proposed Committees

Conference Committee – Patrick, Jenny, Shalise 

Membership Survey Committee–Justine, Leah, Lindsey, Curtiss, Benjamin

Online Learning Committee – Rebecca Powell (Chair),  Erin Heiden, Jerry Timbrook

Awards, Grants, and Support Committee – Paul DiPerna, Curtiss Engstrom

Secretary-Treasurer Support – Lindsey Witt-Swanson, Justine Bulgar-Medina

Communications Support – Benjamin Schapiro, Curtiss Engstrom, Leah Dean

GO MAPOR GO!

February 27, 2023

12:30 – 2:00 CST / 1:30 pm – 3:00pm EST

Link: MAPOR SPOTLIGHT of the MONTH:  The MAPOR spotlight of the month goes out to all the teamwork and tag-teaming we’ve been working on, especially Lindsey, Patrick, Benjamin, Rebecca, Erin, & Jerry to get webinars posted, websites reworked for hosting, emails updates, AAPOR meetings attended–thank you to everyone!

MAPOR Documents & Procedures 

1. Vision and Mission Statements: https://www.mapor.org/about/mapor-mission-vision/
2. Bylaws: https://www.mapor.org/bylaws-as-amended-august-10-2018/
3. Robert’s Rules of Order: https://www.boardeffect.com/blog/roberts-rules-of-order-cheat-sheet/

Agenda:

Attendees: Lindsey, Ben, Leah, Curtiss, Erin, Jenny, Patrick, Justine, Kevin, Paul, Rebecca, and Jerry

1. Approval of last meeting’s minutes 

Approved

2. New meeting time!  The votes are in–lunch on Friday was well received.  Between email and votes, 8 of us weighed in with a preference and the general consensus is the second Friday of the month wins.  We’ll start in March (given February was another moved meeting due to a Federal holiday). 

3. AAPOR and MAPOR Code of Conduct  (Justine/Lindsey/All)
   1. Recent AAPOR meeting made it known that we can’t simply adopt their code of conduct, so we’ll need to review and borrow/adopt language (while inserting “MAPOR”) as it fits our organization.  Basically, we can’t just say “we subscribe to the rules of AAPOR” as our formal approach.
   2. We need to ensure our adoption is consistent with our bylaws, and doesn’t require sharing to/from AAPOR on any actions we take.

We will have to change our bylaws because our bylaws specifically reference AAPOR bylaws. We will need a membership vote to change our bylaws. AAPOR can answer our questions but are otherwise disconnected. We need to make this change as soon as possible. We will need to develop a process so that if anyone is ever removed from MAPOR members we have a process for making sure they do not pay for MAPOR membership through AAPOR and refunding their money if they do.  Kevin suggested reviewing the bylaws to see if there is anything else we want to change while we are going to the work of a bylaw vote. Rebecca mentioned the need for a stop gap so we have something in place before the spring webinar goes live. 

MAPOR officers are covered under AAPOR liability insurance, but not MAPOR itself. AAPOR will let the chapters know what price range we should expect. We need to get our own liability insurance as an organization.

4. 2023 Conference             (Patrick)
   1. Conference support committee 
   2. Check with hotel about 2023 contract plans
   3. Support needed to think about speaker invites, new sponsors under the ‘bridge across the industry’ approach? 

“Of Intersections and Opportunities: Exploring the Potentials of Public Opinion (and Survey) Research” is the proposed conference title. Feedback included dropping the parentheses/survey piece, adding “Communications Research” and adding something career specific to the title if the conference will strongly look at career trajectories. 

Patrick is considering Dan Merkle (ABC) and Gina Walejko at Google for Keynote. Patrick would like speakers who have a survey methodology background but work at organizations that have not traditionally conducted surveys. Justine proposed having a speaker that is early or mid-career to better resonate with MAPOR’s student population. Gina is his first choice for the pedagogy hour. Jenny will share some names with Patrick. Patrick wants a panel for Pedagogy hour. Paul suggested Elliott Morris with YouGov. 

Patrick proposed using a short course slot for a networking event. There was concern about changing the conference schedule. Patrick will move forward with the typical short course schedule, but will look at reworking speed networking. 

5. Secretary / Treasurer’s Report (Lindsey)                
   1. Financial updates
      1. Checking: $21,008.66
      2. Savings: $47,213.03
   2. Membership list updates
      1. General members: 291
      2. Students: 81
      3. Total: 372
   3. Tentative tasks for 2023
      1. Not for Profit Annual Report filing
      2. Cvent billing – Should we drop our other platforms?

Lindsey will add the new, February members through AAPOR. She’ll pay taxes this week. She hasn’t had a chance to work on getting more routing through Cvent to drop the other credit card platforms. 

6. Communications & Website                     (Benjamin)
   1. Newsletter
   2. Social Media posts
      1. Update/continue conversation about preferred platforms and questions in survey
   3. Website updates–any update?
      1. GoDaddy & WordPress updates
      2. Login info tracking/sharing
      3. Online Learning getting needed access?
   4. Google Groups
      1. Updating membership (add new folks, remove old folks)
      2. Confirming access MAPOR Google Group for group email
      3. Google Drive:

Ben will get the newsletter going so we can promote the spring newsletter, give a heads up on the bylaws vote, and preview the conference. 

We can ask members on which social media platforms they see our content as part of the membership survey and then adjust our social media approach. 

Ben shared concerns about the website. The set up isn’t ideal and a long-term concern. 

Ben needs head shots from a couple council members to update the EC website. Justine asked to prioritize posting about the spring webinar and getting the online learning committee access to email. 

Some people are not getting MAPOR Google Groups emails.

7. Survey Subcommittee             (Justine)
   1. Timeline & Staffing

Justine will think about when to send this out so it doesn’t get overshadowed by the bylaws vote or vice versa. Then, everyone will have at least a couple weeks to request questions. 

8. Awards, Grants, and Support Committee (Paul & Curtiss)
   1. Planning initial meeting? 

They have the structure and invitation ready to hopefully include in the newsletter. They are playing with the idea of giving a support grant for fellows to do the fellowship program. Kevin shared that fellows haven’t expressed financial concerns as their reason for not being able to take part in the program. Instead, the committee will focus more on learning the student’s research interests. They will also look at including information about past student participants in the newsletter and MAPOR, AAPOR, and JPSM listservs so students see the program as something for them. 

9. Sponsorship
   1. Kevin sent out thank yous to Gold earlier, all in process? (Kevin)

Kevin will thank the silver sponsors and let them know that they will be mentioned on the spring newsletter.

10. Online Learning Committee           (Rebecca)
    1. Goals for 2023
    2. Requested resources/access update 
    3. Sharing out recordings–modified Zoom recording?  Box?  Google Drive?

The spring webinar will start April 14^th and be up to three weeks long. It may include three technical areas possibly including data falsification, collecting paradata, and Excel to SQL. They need suggestions for the data falsification webinar, but they have ideas on the other two. There was discussion about having a Qualtrics employee show how to collect paradata through Qualtrics, but others shared how we may be able to reframe it to make it work. 

They want the fall webinar to be student focused with an overview of the field, putting together a resume, and similar topics. We discussed wanting these webinars to be useful to students at different places in their program.

11. Other business
    1. In-person or virtual mixers in 2023?

We discussed removing this item from the agenda moving forward. No one is dying to organize a party. 😊

Council members

President – Justine Bulgar-Medina

Vice President / President-Elect – Leah Dean

Past President – Kevin Ulrich

Conference Chair – Patrick Hsieh

Associate Conference Chair – Jenny Marlar

Secretary-Treasurer – Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Sponsorship Coordinator –Kevin Ulrich

Student Liaison – Curtiss Engstrom

Communications & Website Chair – Benjamin Schapiro

Members at Large – Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, Jerry Timbrook, Paul DiPerna, Shalise Ayromloo

Proposed Committees

Conference Committee – Patrick, Jenny, Shalise 

Membership Survey Committee–Justine, Leah, Lindsey, Curtiss, Benjamin

Online Learning Committee – Rebecca Powell (Chair),  Erin Heiden, Jerry Timbrook

Awards, Grants, and Support Committee – Paul DiPerna, Curtiss Engstrom

Secretary-Treasurer Support – Lindsey Witt-Swanson, Justine Bulgar-Medina

Communications Support – Benjamin Schapiro, Curtiss Engstrom, Leah Dean

Note: The group will vote on changing the meeting schedule (starting in March, since January/February were both holidays and moved already). 

MAPOR moment of the month recognizes the OLC for their work on the recent series and upcoming planning to expand the reach of MAPOR events.  It’s been very well received!

2. Conference Member Survey Planning (Justine/Leah/Patrick)

The small team will meet in the next month to move this forward on the survey generally, Patrick and Leah to let us know what they need.

3. 2023 Conference             (Patrick)
4. Conference support committee 
5. Check with hotel about 2023 contract plans
6. Skipping virtual components moving forward 

No updates from conference on contract needs, but Patrick will confirm logistics in coming months with hotel and ensure everything is all set (Leah did sign the next 3-year contract last year).

Leah & Patrick to meet and map out a planning timeline for the coming year.

Patrick may reach out for support on speakers and presenters from the council.  The current  idea is to focus the conference on broadening the connection between sectors of survey research (marketing, consulting, academic). 

One opportunity and challenge will be many classically trained or practicing methodologists have left our traditional spaces and employers for industry jobs such as Meta or Google.  They aren’t attending the conferences like MAPOR any more, so we’ll need to capture them.

Patrick to use ad-hoc conference support group (Jenny, Paul, etc.) to help connect with key folks and plan.

4. Secretary / Treasurer’s Report (Lindsey)                
5. Financial updates

As of 2/24/23

Checking: $21,008.66

Savings: $47,213.03

1. Membership list updates
   1. With the initial AAPOR list and list from the conference, we have 372 members (291 General, 81 students).
2. Tentative tasks for 2023

Not for Profit Annual Report filing

Cvent billing – Should we drop our other platforms?

5. Communications & Website                     (Benjamin)
6. Newsletter
7. Social Media posts
8. Website updates

Benjamin, Patrick and Justine to meet to discuss.  Benjamin will be taking on the leadership of both roles, and we’ll have a supporting team.

We’ll also be working to ensure that all access and passwords are centralized and part of the annual council transition plan so that they don’t fall to one person repeatedly, or are held by one person (in the event they’re unavailable).  

We’ve started a google doc with all the accounts we hold and password info/password owners.  This will fall to website and communications to pass on to successors.  

We need to decide on whether we will use Facebook and/or Twitter moving forward to connect with our membership.  Let’s make this a point of discussion next month.  Benjamin notes that we’re not particularly productive on social media, so pivoting is unlikely to have a key impact.  We can ask folks what they want to see on the survey.

We will have a spring newsletter in March or so, Benjamin to put it together and make the call for submissions in late January/early February.

6. Member Survey Subcommittee
7. Timeline & Staffing (Justine)

We have a small subcommittee that will work on this over the next month or two for March launch.

7. Awards, Grants, and Support Committee (Paul & Curtiss)
8. Planning initial meeting? 

Nothing yet, will be meeting and working on this.

8. Sponsorship
9. Kevin sent out thank yous (Kevin)

Kevin has them out to Gold and will be sending to the rest in the coming month.  

This spring we’ll also work on targeting new potential sponsors.  This is a good opportunity to overlap with the goals this year and theme of the conference of expanding our networks and reach.

9. Online Learning Committee           (Rebecca)
10. Goals for 2023
11. Requested resources/access update 
12. Sharing out recordings–modified Zoom recording?  Box?  Google Drive?

OLC has been hard at work getting the January webinar up and running.  Upcoming webinars and series are in the works, and looking to offer hands-on training (e.g., software like Excel🡪SQL), where the complicated topics are made accessible for folks.  Other topics may include cover letters, presentations at conferences, etc.  There is also a clear targeting of students, although an attempt to focus on all MAPOR populations.  

OLC would like access to an email address (Patrick and Benjamin will work on this) and more control over comms generally, so there’s less go-betweens with other folks and the process is more streamlined.  OLC could also use a space to easily share edited (Zoom recordings often start before the actual session with content needing to be removed) with attendees, espeically when we’re doing extended sessions/registering folks across a series.

OLC and Patrick will communicate around topics so that OLC doesn’t step on the toes of conference planning.

10. Other business
11. In-person or virtual mixers in 2023? — TBD

Google account clean up: if you add things to the drive from your own Google account, it takes up your space.  If you do it via MAPOR, it goes against MAPOR space only.  This is key, especially with large files like recordings!   We might want to look into another storage/file option as well.  Even folks who are long off council have significant memory being used in their own accounts.

Council members

President – Justine Bulgar-Medina

Vice President / President-Elect – Leah Dean

Past President – Kevin Ulrich

Conference Chair – Patrick Hsieh

Associate Conference Chair – Jenny Marlar

Secretary-Treasurer – Lindsey Witt-Swanson

Sponsorship Coordinator –Kevin Ulrich

Student Liaison – Curtiss Engstrom

Communications & Website Chair – Benjamin Schapiro

Members at Large – Erin Heiden, Rebecca Powell, Jerry Timbrook, Paul DiPerna, Shalise Ayromloo

Proposed Committees

Conference Committee – Patrick, Jenny, Shalise 

Membership Survey Committee–Justine, Leah, Lindsey, Curtiss, Benjamin

Online Learning Committee – Rebecca Powell (Chair),  Erin Heiden, Jerry Timbrook

Awards, Grants, and Support Committee – Paul DiPerna, Curtiss Engstrom

Secretary-Treasurer Support – Lindsey Witt-Swanson, Justine Bulgar-Medina

Communications Support – Benjamin Schapiro, Curtiss Engstrom, Leah Dean