Lab Practice Committee Minutes– Feb 28, 2014
Mary, Wendy, Amy, Sandy, Carol, Steve, Anita
+++Seminar Planning+++
Agenda/Brochure: Catherine finished “blurbed” & Robin has the brochure done. Waiting for Karlyn to return to the office to review it and then Amy will send it out to the Committee members to proofread. There have been a number of mistakes lately in the brochures. Look specifically for spelling errors.
Once the brochure is completed the office will make a student flyer for us to send to our contacts. 3 vendors and 3 students signed up already. Students can register by calling the MWEA office.
The seminar is listed on the MWEA webpage but some of the typical links are set yet. A new webpage is being rolled out in March. The links may not be set up until the new page is active.
Deadlines: There is a new speaker confirmation form. Amy passed a copy around
· Speaker confirmation & bio - 4/29/14
· Presentations – 4/29/14
· Abstracts 4/11/14
Vendor Updates: Amy will get from the MWEA office one week prior to the seminar a list of vendors who are actually coming to the seminar & their contact info. Mary will follow up with the vendors about raffle gifts (if we do one). Amy to contact Karlyn on office’s support for raffles (may be taking a stance against them).
Mary will locate the draft of the vendor survey and forward to Amy
Idexx has verbally committed to coming to the seminar
Menu: The office is taking care of this. The meal will be buffet style.
Seminar help: registration help? Amy will ask Catherine as she lives close by.
Microphone: Some speakers don’t like to hold microphones but participants sitting in the back of the room can’t hear above the HVAC. Look into having lapel mics available
Speaker Gifts: At the last meeting Karlyn said the current speaker gifts were the pens with the magnet base. The office thought that our idea of Element coasters was fine. We can have the office purchase for us or we can purchase and get reimbursed. If committee members would like to purchase their own sets it would be better to order ourselves. Amy will collect orders for anyone on the committee who would like to purchase a set of 4 for $20.
Student/Educator Rate: AWWA at the national level has a list of student groups and their contacts. MWEA doesn’t have anything similar. Once the flyer is done Amy will forward this on to those groups and check with MWEA to see what contacts they do have. Sandy will send her list of contacts collected from LPC members from previous years. Amy will send them the flyer. Anyone with a new university contact should send it to Amy.
Vendors: They would like a few minutes to give a short introduction of themselves and their products. A god time would be during the ½ break.
Sponsors: MELA? They don’t provide us with any service or mailing list. They do not get any share of our proceeds. There is not down side to using their logo on our brochure. We don’t know what the down side would be to removing it. If we want to appeal to a broader audience maybe we should keep their logo. ACS also was a sponsor in the past. AWWA is a sponsor. We share out proceeds with them. The brochure goes to their members. West Michigan ACS has organized a bus from Grand Rapids to Chicago for Pittcon for 3/6/14, $20 per member & $30 for non-members.
Survey: include future topics but use a check list of categories. For example topics could be …safety, methods. Also include space for them to be more specific. If someone were to check safety as a topic they could comment that they’d like information on gas cylinder storage.
Checklist for seminar: Add microphone needs and contact speakers if no presentation sent in by deadline.
+++National LPC +++Amy shared a copy of some information from a newsletter about WEF LPC. There appears to only be about 15 LPC committees at the state level in the country.
+++FLUSH update+++ Angella will be awarded the Educator of the year award.
Tours for scouts are being scheduled for May 14th and 21st
Angella and Sandy will reschedule meeting w/ Girl Scouts of W. Michigan to get into their source book.
There is a proposed new name and acronym for the patch. “SPLASH”
There may be funds available from AWWA to introduce a new SPLASH patch
Carol at the Bay City plant will not be able to coordinate scheduling tours for this program in the future. The county is taking over the water plant.
+++LPC Course update+++ The committee meeting in February was cancelled. The committee has an agenda for the first course. The next step is for Sandy and Amy to begin typing up the course material which will include a summary of the SOP’s. The two retirees on the committee will be helping with finding graph, charts, diagrams and other helpful visual aids. They’ll also contribute tips, tricks and technique information for the course book.
The committee will be dividing up the work and creating a list of desired photos and videos for the power point. This list will likely go out to the LPC committee members. Videos will likely be recorded by MWE office staff who have access to video equipment are who are experienced. Help may be needed for the shoot locations. MWEA will likely be looking for places close to Lansing or facilities who are hosting MWEA classes. This will ease access to labs. Carol has volunteered to help with the video editing and sorting through pictures and videos.
Wendy will send a link to a website from New Mexico that might be helpful
+++College Programs+++ Baker College is looking to start a program for water and wastewater. They are looking at educating people for the smaller plants that are common in northern Michigan. The Delta and Bay College programs include microbiology courses. This material is not likely to be used by people in smaller plants so Bakers plan is to cover different material. Delta and Bay cover this material so that their students can take the lower level DEQ exams and get their first operator license upon completing their course work.
+++Next Meetings+++ next month we will be in South Clinton County WWTP. We’ll probably get a tour. Next month we’ll also schedule our meetings for the next 6 months.