Mid-Atlantic Section AIAA
Council Meeting Minutes
April 7, 2011
Robin Vaughan, Secretary
April 7, 2011 APL Main Cafeteria Laurel, MD 6:30 PM
Attendees:
Section council officers: Carolyn Slivinski, Surya Raghu, Andrea Kodys, Robin Vaughan
Others: Ron McCandless, Kate Stambaugh, Vinny Ramachandran, Jack Kolletty, Ned Brokloff
The meeting began with a discussion with Ned Brokloff of APL about the May event featuring Bobby Braun, NASA Chief Technologist. Ned is a member of the local chapter of Penn State alumni who are organizing this event. He passed around a flyer that they will use to advertise the event. They are asking our section and APL Space Department to be co-sponsors. The model rocketry association is already a co-sponsor. The event will include a small dinner with Dr. Braun in the Barton Room for invited guests, followed by a catered reception in the Kossiakoff Center, ending with the talk by Dr. Braun. They are requesting that the section contribute $500 towards the cost of the event. They have also asked the APL Space Department to contribute $1000-$1500 and the alumni association is contributing $500. There will be a fee for attendees of the reception to also help defray the costs. They expect the catering to cost around $5000 based on an estimate from Sodexho at APL for hot hors d’oeuvres and non-alcoholic beverages. As a co-sponsor we will be guaranteed 100 slots to be reserved for section members out of the 500 possible attendees. We can also staff an exhibit table in the Kossiakoff Center to provide information about AIAA programs and membership during the event. They have set up a web site for registration and the deadline will be May 18 or 19 based on when the caterer needs to have a final count. The council approved spending $500 to become a co-sponsor for this event. We will send 2 people to the dinner and have an exhibit table. Carolyn will send Ned some corrections to the AIAA logo and section name for their flyer. We will advertise this event on our web site and send a notice to section members.
Meeting minutes from the last council meeting on 3/10/11 were approved with one minor correction to the date of the May program featuring Bobby Braun (May 25 instead of May 11, the revised version is posted on the section AIAA SharePoint site.)
A treasurer’s report was submitted via e-mail. Our checking account balance is fine. Additional expenses for YPSE 2010 have been paid, so the net profit for that event is now around $700. (A larger profit had been reported previously.) Sarah Haack (treasurer) is still trying to contact Rick Ohlemacher from National Capitol Section to get information about setting up the education fund in memory of Victor Lougheed.
Tom Milnes was unable to attend the meeting, but he did send out an e-mail report on his education-related activities. Andrea is going to participate in the STEM fair at Gorman Crossing School. She will have the students make water rocket launchers. The council approved spending a small amount to replenish her supplies for making the rockets. Ron had a follow-up conversation with teachers in Baltimore County at Chesapeake High School regarding the aerospace component of their Project Lead the Way program. They are looking for ideas for a capstone project done by 12th grade students. Raghu and Andrea indicated that they would be interested in helping design possible projects for them.
Four people from the section (Andrea, Tom, Robin, and Dave Myre from USNA) worked as judges at the Baltimore Science Fair on March 26. We selected winners for our section-sponsored cash award and projects that received certificates of recognition from the middle school and high school categories. Andrea attended the awards ceremony on March 27 to hand out our awards. She has invited the winners to give a talk on their projects at the YPSE conference in November. One of the students has said that he will attend. She is working on a write-up and pictures to populate a section on our web site. She is checking with the parents and students to get permission to post the pictures.
The April 6 talk on foreign space programs was well attended. A group of students from the Naval Academy came over from Annapolis and the head of the APL Space Department also attended. Unfortunately, two of the four speakers had to cancel at the last minute so only the Japanese and ESA sections were given. Robin is going to post their presentations on the SharePoint site.
We reviewed plans for future section programs. Given that the Bobby Braun event is in May and we are expecting the SSTC to also have its town hall event in May or June, we will not have any more lecture programs until the fall. We will need to find a speaker for the awards dinner which will be sometime in June.
Jack Koletty reported on plans for programs for the NCS SSTC (National Capitol Section Space Systems Technical Committee) for the rest of the year. They have had problems getting events organized and have only held one of the four planned programs so far this year. They are currently working on the Town Hall program to be held at George Washington University. They hope to have a panel of chief scientists from NASA, GSFC, and NOAA. Scott Pace from NASA will be the moderator. They are working to get students from local universities to attend. The program on UAVs planned for the Naval Academy has been pushed back to the fall. Robin suggested that Jack contact Dave Myre who helped with the science fair judging to help coordinate with USNA.
The date for the tour of the NASA Wallops Island facility has been moved to May 13. Carolyn is working with representatives of the NCS and Hampton Roads sections to coordinate transportation from the D.C. area. Robin will be the contact for questions and reservations for this event. We need to check on the requirements for ID and any restrictions on who can attend (e.g. US citizens only, age limit for children, maximum number of attendees). There is a draft flyer for this event and we need to get the announcement out to the section members and on our web site soon. It was suggested that we look into getting some Category 3 money from AIAA Region 1 for this event, but we need to find out if this event meets the criteria for Category 3 funding. (This trip was successful with about 55 attendees from all 3 sections combined.)
The YP Rocket Competition was held in Culpepper, VA and was successful. The winning YP team was from Hampton Roads section, the team from the Delaware section came in second.
Barbara Leary has sent out the call for nominations for Engineer and Engineering Manager of the Year awards. She is getting questions about how to distinguish between the management and “plain” awards and will continue to accept nominations as they come in. Carolyn will ask her to look into places to have the dinner this year. It was suggested that we consider having the dinner in the north Baltimore area rather than close to APL to spread our programs over more geographical area that would be convenient for other section members.
The awards dinner for the UMD student chapter will be held on April 25. Kate Stambaugh will attend to represent the section.
The visits to Congress on Congressional Visit Day (March 15-16) were successful. Our section attendees were included in a group with NCS and Delaware section attendees. Mark Lewis and one of his PhD students attended the visits to the House. Most meetings were with congressional staff members, but they did speak with one member of the House.
We are working on finalizing the flyer for the logo contest. Andrea will send the latest draft of the flyer and text for the e-mail announcement to the council members for review via e-mail this week. Participants will be given 1 month to submit designs and the winner will be announced at the awards dinner. (This has since been sent out and a notice is on our web sites.)
Robin reported that she was unable to reserve the APL picnic area over the summer as it had been booked for all non-holiday Saturdays. She was able to get a reservation for Saturday October 6 so we will have the picnic in the fall this year.
We revised the dates for election of new officers for 2011-12. The proposed slate of officers and requests for write-in nominations was sent to the section today. Nominations are due by April 18. We plan to close elections by mid-May. (This has since been changed to the end of May. Voting will take place between May 16 and May 31.)
The kick-off meeting for planning for YPSE 2011 was held in Raghu’s office in Columbia on March 28 at 6:30 PM. Vinny Ramachandran is working on setting up g-mail and a Google site for organizing the information. There will be a follow-up meeting on April 20 in the APL cafeteria. Everyone is asked to bring at least one new person to add to our pool of volunteers to help with the conference.
The next council meeting was tentatively set for Tuesday May 17 at 6:30 PM in the APL cafeteria.