Minutes of the board of Directors
24th March 2006, Paris, France

Present: Ligia Ribeiro (Chair), Jean-Francois Desnos, Yves Epelboin, Markku Kuula, Viljan Mahnic, Martin Price, Ivan Vrana. Michael Zastrocky (Gartner) also attended the meeting.
Pierre Ageron (CSIESR, France and EUNIS Council member) was welcomed and joined the meeting for the first item of the agenda.

Apologies: Bas Cordewener, Jens Dørup, Andrew Rothery, Andres Salu.
Before the meeting began the Board warmly thanked Yves Epelboin for the considerable work he had put in to organise the excellent Rectors’ Seminar which had just concluded.

1. ITBOL bid for Socrates funding from EC

In August 2005 a joint proposal from EUNIS, UCISA, CSIESR, EUA, and ZKI entitled “ITBOL – INFORMATION and TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE for the BOLOGNA PROCESS” had been submitted for Socrates funding from the European Commission. Pierre Ageron was thanked for the work he had put in to assemble the submission. After a long delay in Brussels it was learned that the proposal had been rejected, apparently because the complicated and extensive documentation required was incomplete. A new Call For Proposals on Higher Education Reform (Lisbon Strategy and Bologna Process – EAC 01/06) had recently been announced, and it seemed the ITBOL Project would again qualify for funding. The closing date for submissions was 20 April 2006, which would require a very tight schedule to prepare a new bid. The Board agreed to submit a slightly updated proposal with the same partners, provided they agreed, and asked the Executive Secretary to co-ordinate the submission. It would be essential to get the documentation right this time.

2. Review of actions from previous meeting on 1 October 2005

The following items were not covered elsewhere in the meeting’s agenda:

  • It had not been possible to advertise the details of the Gartner Agreement because Gartner wished to reconsider certain parts of the agreement. Further details were awaited.
  • Details of the TERENA Agreement had been circulated to EUNIS members.
  • The eLearning Task Force snapshots survey had been delayed because of the illness of Jens Dørup. A questionnaire had been circulated to EUNIS members in November 2005. There had not been a huge response and a reminder would be issued soon. The Task Force hoped to meet in April to prepare a paper for EUNIS2006 giving the results of the survey.
  •  The Board agreed to add links to two reports on eLearning support environments from JISCinfoNet and UCISA in the UK, provided they gave permission to do so.
  • The Proceedings of EUNIS2005 were available online at the University of Manchester’s website. The Executive Secretary was asked to check the ISBN for the Proceedings publication, and to let Yves Epelboin know the relevant URL.
3. TERENA’s EARNEST Foresight Study

The Board agreed that Martin Price should jointly lead the Campus Issues sub-group working on TERENA’s EARNEST Foresight Study. This work would be additional to his role as EUNIS Executive Secretary. Several members of the Board agreed to take part in EARNEST. Ligia Ribeiro and Yves Epelboin planned to attend a workshop launching the Foresight Study in Berlin in May.

4. EKMA Agreement

Following advice from Bas Cordewener, discussion was deferred until the Board’s next meeting.

5. CAUDIT Agreement

The Board agreed the terms of an agreement with the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT). Yves Epelboin had met Ian Hunter (Executive Officer of CAUDIT) at EDUCAUSE in October 2005 and CAUDIT were keen to develop a relationship with EUNIS. It was understood CAUDIT were meeting soon, so an agreement could be in place quickly.

6. Gartner Symposium, Barcelona, Spain, 21-24 May 2006

Markku Kuula and Ivan Vrana volunteered to take up the two free places at the Gartner Symposium in May 2006.

7. Membership
a. New members joined since 1 October 2005

The following were formally admitted to membership by the Board:

International Business School (Bulgaria)

University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland)

L’Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis (France)

Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)

Hogeschool Drenthe (Netherlands)

Fontys University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)

Police Academy of the Netherlands (Netherlands)

Universiteit Utrecht (Netherlands)

UNINETT (Norway)

University of Novi Sad (Serbia and Montenegro)

University of Murcia (Spain)

Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

KION SpA (Italy)  – Corporate member

Total: Full – 81; Corresponding – 4; Corporate – 10

The Executive Secretary was asked to confirm that the Police Academy of the Netherlands is a Higher Education institution.

b. Membership recruitment drive

The Executive Secretary tabled an outline paper on the benefits of membership of EUNIS. The Board suggested a number of additional points to be included in the final paper. These were:-

    • Stress that a stronger EUNIS would result from more members taking part
    • Emphasise links at Rector level – EUA, Rectors’ Seminar
    • Mention Best Paper Award at annual conference
    • Add Drexel and MAGPI to list of international collaborators
8. Elections 2006

The Board noted there would be a number of elections at the annual meetings in Tartu in June 2006.

a. Board

Jean-Francois Desnos, Ligia Ribeiro and Andrew Rothery will finish their periods of membership of the Board in 2006. All were eligible for re-election to the Board by Council. [It has since been discovered that Ligia is not eligible for re-election because she will no longer be a member of Council representing Portugal. Also, following the sad death of Jens Dørup, an election for a Board member for the remaining one year of Jens’ term will be required.]

b. Council

Several new countries and ‘chambers’ are represented in EUNIS, and their representatives will be elected to Council by their General Assembly constituencies.

c. Officers

All Officers for 2006-7 will be elected by the new Board.

9. EUNIS Web site

Yves Epelboin circulated model pages of a redesigned web site. The Board approved the design and recognised it would be important to develop good content for the site. It was hoped the new EUNIS site would be able to accommodate approved content from Corporate members. It was also hoped that all historical EUNIS Conference information would be brought into the central site.

Previously the EUNIS web site had been hosted within Yves Epelboin’s department in Université Pierre et Marie Curie at Jussieu, Paris. It was planned to move the site to a central institutional server at Jussieu which would enable more people to edit content using Dreamweaver.

The Board asked Yves to investigate whether a restricted area of the site could be created, accessible only to Board members.

10. EUNIS Elite Award 2006

The Board agreed new terms for the EUNIS Elite Award 2006. They have been redrafted to broaden the scope of the Award. It was agreed that competition for the 2006 Award should be advertised immediately. The winner would be announced in Tartu.

11. EUNIS2006 Conference

There had been a very good response to the Call For Papers for EUNIS2006. At the latest count 93 papers had been accepted.

The Board was still concerned that potential delegates might be put off attending EUNIS2006 because they were uncertain about travelling from Tallinn Airport to Tartu. It was agreed to ask colleagues in Tartu whether it would be feasible to arrange for buses from Tallinn to Tartu to stop at the airport to pick up EUNIS delegates.

12. Future Conferences

The Board asked Jean-Francois Desnos to plan to hold EUNIS2007 in Grenoble (France). It was still hoped that EUNIS2008 would take place in Aarhus (Denmark), but there was uncertainty because of Jens Dørup’s serious illness. Council member Jan Madey has volunteered to host EUNIS2009 in Warsaw (Poland). Colleagues in the Netherlands have also expressed a wish to host the annual EUNIS conference.

 

Martin Price , EUNIS Executive Secretary 7.6.2006