Minutes of the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Florida Chapter of the ASA
 

The annual chapter meeting was held February 18 and 19, 2000 on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee.  Three invited speakers, three student papers, and seven other contributed papers were presented.  The venue for the meetings was the beautiful Turnbull Conference Center at the Center for Professional Studies. The Friday evening banquet was preceded by a wine-and-cheese reception in the Fireside Lounge.  At the second annual Student Paper Competition, the $150 prize was split among the authors of the co-winning papers, George Yanev (USF) and Shaojun Zhang (FSU).
 

The chapter president, Dr. Sethuraman, called the business meeting to order at 11 A.M., February 19.  Eleven members were in attendance.
 

Dr. Soskin distributed the minutes from last year's meeting at University of Florida.  After the minutes were approved, he
presented the Financial Report that reviewed the end-of-year1999 chapter budget.  He reported a year-end balance of $3248.63, consisting of $1471.69 in the checking and $1776.94 in the savings account.  Membership rose four percent in 1999 to 108 paid members, including 12 student members (up from 9 the previous year).  Even greater use of email communications and information dissemination brought down postage expenses.  Attendees were invited to access
the ever-expanding chapter web page  (http://stat.fsu.edu/flasa/index.html) maintained by Dr. Jararam Sethuraman, chapter president.  The financial report was unanimously approved.
 

Dr. Wilson volunteered the University of North Florida for the site of the 2001 chapter meetings.  Following next year's meetings in Jacksonville, the 2002 meetings are planned for the University of West Florida, with the University of Central Florida as tentative hosts in 2003 and University of Florida in 2004.  The chapter members thanked its officers for their yeoman service during the past year and for putting together another successful meeting.
 

An open discussion ensued about ways to improve the meetings.  It was suggested that the Chapter present an annual award to a distinguished Florida statistician.  After considerable debate,  action on this item was tabled until next year's meeting.  A
suggestion was made to elicit greater undergraduate participation in the meetings.  It was decided to add a current topics in
statistics panel to future meeting to encourage involvement and interest.
 

A number of ideas for enhancing the activities of the chapter were discussed next in a brainstorming session.  Dr. Wilson suggested the chapter make awards at the state science fair.  Another idea was to expand reporting chapter news to the AmStat News.  Communication among chapter members might also be facilitated by an email server on provocative topics in statistics.  Dr. Sethuraman recommended that we have a traveling, outreach program of speakers at major university or metropolitan site around the state.  The ASA funds speakers for purposes such as this.  A final idea was to invite Florida statistics graduates back as guest speakers to reinforce the career opportunities for statistics-related degrees.
 

The Business Meeting adjourned at 11:50 A.M.  See you all in Jacksonville next year.
 

Reported by:

Mark Soskin
Secretary/Treasurer