Attending
Katy Huff Raniere Silva Karin Lagesen Aleksandra Pawlik Greg Wilson Matt Davis Jason Williams
Maneesha Sane
Not attending:
Adina Howe
The main focus for this meeting is the choice of a new Executive Directory. We got several good applicants, and invited four of them to interviews, which were held last week. Based on those, the goal is to figure out if we want to offer the job to any of our applicants.
We first asked all to list their two top candidates. From that, the committee quickly agreed that one of the candidates was likely the best. Some issues were raised regarding that person’s lack of financial experience, however, none of them have too much experience in these things.
We then started discussing what we could offer that person, and how benefits would work. Next was a discussion of how we financially could do the transition between the existing ED and the new one. Regarding people working half time, the conclusion was that people will have to manage their time themselves.
We then started organizing a candidate list. The person discussed earlier was top of the list, we then discussed the other candidates to ensure that all agreed on the order. Two of the other candidates were tied for the second spot. We decided that if our primary candidate would not accept the job, we would discuss these two again before making any other offers.
ACTION: Jason and Greg come up with a proposal that describes what we will offer the candidate and figure out a schedule.
ACTION: Greg propose wording for email to the candidate and the others informing about the process.
Lead: Greg Wilson
Topic: Instructor Training for Imperial College
Motion: That SCF run a two-day instructor course at Imperial College London in September 2015 for up to 15 people for a flat fee of US$10K.
Background: Prof. Gerard Gorman at ICL is a big fan of Software Carpentry - has been through instructor training himself (May 2014, Toronto), and he and his colleagues have incorporated a lot of our teaching practices into one of their core undergraduate courses. They’ve also published a report on the impact of doing that (see http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.05425). He’s not presently able to swing a partnership agreement (university bureaucracy), but has $10K to spend; just as importantly, he’s in a position to keep doing and publishing assessment.
The main issue ruling whether this should be approved is whether the ED actually has time for this. The ED says that this takes two days out of his time. He has now done this so often that little prep time is needed. He also wants to test out the mentoring workthrough proposal that has been proposed by the mentoring committee. There are many instructors in UK that can go into testing this out. He will need to line up mentors for the 12-15 instructors that need to be taught. Another beneficial thing is that all trainees are ICL staff, so we can ‘order’ people to do things. This makes compliance easier for mini-lessons, mentoring and other things. They also have an ongoing collaborates with SSI which makes it easier to integrate them in the ongoing SCF activity in the UK.
Motion: That SCF run a two-day instructor course at Imperial College London in September 2015 for up to 15 people for a flat fee of US$10K.
Seconded, approved.