The Board of Directors met on February 1st. Following is a summary of the brief meeting.
- Financial: INFORMS continues to be very strong financially, ending 2018 with a higher than budgeted surplus. The Board approved authorization of $3.6 million to be set aside from reserves for the funding of new initiatives.
- Membership: As of the end of 2018, INFORMS membership was 11,421.
- Publications: In 2018, INFORMS journals passed the 2 million mark for full-text downloads.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): Subdivision officers are encouraged to use the dashboard to review DEI data. In order for the data to be accurate, members still need to ensure their membership information is complete. Click here to login and update your information.
- Advocacy: The first Policy Summit in 2018 was a success, and there were a number of briefings on Capitol Hill, the White House, and with various federal agencies with the purpose of increasing the visibility of INFORMS. Plans for the second Policy Summit are being developed. Other proposed activities include pop-up events in DC, administration engagement, adopting language into key legislation, and creating opportunities for policymakers to participate in INFORMS conferences and communication channels.
- International activities: The International Activities Committee is focusing on opportunities to increase INFORMS value for overseas members.
- Education: (i) A new Committee on Teaching and Learning (CTL) is organizing and inviting former INFORM-ED members and others to participate. CTL hopes to get a significant influx of volunteers to help with various activities towards more effective teaching and education for the INFORMS community. (ii) The Professional Development (formerly Continuing Education) Committee is actively looking to increase INFORMS' PD offerings. The new CAP Prep course is in its third running and doing well so far; a request for proposals was released to gather topic ideas; planning is underway for the next Essential Skills course; and the team is considering inquiries for another Predictive Analytics course. (iii) Plans are underway for the 2019 Meeting of Analytics Program Directors in Austin, TX in April.
- The next Board meeting will be at the Analytics meeting in Austin, April 13-14, 2019.
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Victoria (Tory) C. P. Chen, Ph.D.
Secretary of INFORMS
secretary@mail.informs.orgProfessor
Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, & Systems Engineering,
Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, & Statistics (COSMOS),
The University of Texas at Arlington,
Campus Box 19017,
Arlington, TX 76019
Email:
vchen@uta.edu------------------------------