The BSA Council met Sunday, August 12, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in Albuquerque, NM. This report to members of the Genetics Section is not exhaustive, but rather contains those items which your representative believes are most important or most relevant to the Section. If you would like to discuss the contents herein, please contact me at jhigginbotham@transy.edu or handihiggi@home.com.

All reports to the Council including committee and section reports can be accessed at http://www.botany.org/bsa/membership/council2001/.

Numbers of interest

• The BSA has 2396 members this year, down from 2565 members last year. The Genetics Section has 184 members this year. Of the 19 sections, we are the seventh largest.
• If anyone has a special initiative, there is money for it as $27,000 has been allocated from the Endowment income pending the final budget. Submit requests to the Executive Com.

Future meetings

• Botany2002 will be held in Madison, Wisconsin with an expanded format featuring education and outreach August 1-3 followed by the scientific conference August 3-8.
• Botany2003 will be held in Mobile. Alabama.
• The Council approved Snowbird, Utah as the site for Botany2004.
• Suggestions are being solicited for 2005 which is an International Botanical Conference year.
• The BSA centennial year is 2006. The meeting will be somewhere in the Northeast.

New to the position

• New officers as of the BSA Banquet are Scott Russell, President-Elect, and Joe Armstrong, Treasurer.
• The Council approved Jim Mickle as the new Council Representative to the Executive Com.
• The Council approved Stefan Vogel as a new Corresponding Member.
• Johanne Stogran is our new Meetings Manager which is a new position.
• The Council approved hiring Daniller + Company for a period of three years to mount a successful giving campaign or, in other words, to raise funds for the BSA Endowment. Estimated three year commitment is $70,500 - $82,000.
• A new Webmaster is needed or at least volunteers to do some of the work. It was suggested that the position be split into
1. webmaster who is the manager;
2. systems administrator who services the servers and;
3. development person who constructs pages and writes code.
4. If you are interested contact Scott Russell.

Membership and AJB

• The Council approved changes in dues structure. For the category of Professional Membership, dues are recommended to be $45.00 without a hardcopy AJB subscription and $100.00 with a hardcopy AJB subscription. The new category of Teachers (K-12) was approved with dues recommended to be $35.00 without and $70.00 with a hardcopy AJB.
• Because of the anticipated change in dues structure. Electronic AJB will soon become unavailable to non-members. Non-member access fees are suggested to be $7.00 for seven days to get a paper and $20.00 for 14 days to browse. There will be a one year moving wall.

Discussion topics

• Should we be taking a more active role in informing and/or influencing public policy? The feeling of the Council seems to be, "yes." To this end, a Public Affairs ad hoc Committee will be formed. Expect spam-o-grams.
• It seems that some folks have been publishing their abstracts with no intention of actually coming to the meeting and presenting. It was suggested that "Works in Progress" web pages might be constructed to give these folks an outlet for publication without impacting sessions as they do now.