Saturday, November 13, 2010

AMC Meeting: Saturday morning


Dave Cahn addressed the AMC.

Admits he started off on wrong foot and that he didn't know the culture and traditions of the role of the ombudsman. Asks for the opportunity to build a positive relationship with the AMC.

Robin's opinion: That took some ethical and reflective fortitude. It is a much better start to a relationship we are all still trying to define.
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Elissa's report about the IBD meeting. Her report will appear in her column in January and in the IJ in some near-future issue.

Jean questioned why IBD still hasn't addressed their responsibility for some portion of our N&L suit costs. MIL's Exec Dir and legal team is overloaded and hasn't had time yet. (my summary of the explanation)
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Discussion of Conti's motion regarding Ombudsman at the table (Cahn had earlier today asked that it be withdrawn). Conti agreed to withdraw the motion.
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Recht: Strategic Plan

Suggests changing one of our core values: add "...and to the encouragement of trust and understanding through the an appropriate balance of openness and transparency whenever possible and privacy and confidentiality when necessary."

I proposed and the others chimed into tidy it up to:
"Intellectual integrity demonstrated by organizational dedication to ethical, truthful, and evidence-based decision making and ...an appropriate balance between openness and privacy, and between transparency and confidentiality." (passed)

Dashboard: lots of graphically illustrated, updated-daily numeric data on the Web site. (will be visible soon)

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Recap of work sessions from yesterday:

We want to make sure some version of Dr. Frank's powerpoint on testing is available for others to see and make sure the AMC gets a timeline on when some of those change will roll out so we can tell LGs. Regarding events and AGs, it's a continual dialog. We'll form a committee to go forward with it.

Consensus is that how we approached and worked on the mega issues was good and productive. It might have been once to get some more closure on the topics; some wish we could have spent more time really talking about the topics, and we certainly don't have any ACTIONS that we're deciding to take as a result of all the dialog yesterday.

Dan questioned the value of our time at the TAGT luncheon and speaker. Nick thought it was worthwhile and gave Mensa more exposure to that organization.

Greg encourages us to have longer, conversation-laden breaks between mega issues.

Guy and others pointed out that the day was long and perhaps beyond what even we Mensans can handle attention-wise. (I agree-- it was grueling and my brain was pretty much dead long before I was done needing it.)

We need a siesta!

Quick discussion of what topics we want next time: I asked for education about all the "rules" for LGs and Guy asked for an update on Risk Management issues.




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2 comments:

Jared said...

I'll use this post as the springboard for an issue that was slightly more pertinent to the Friday discussion, Dr. Lawlis' presentation related to testing, and our procedures dealing with possibly sending out scores once again...

How are the tests actually scored? Do one or more members of the National Office staff sit down and grade the tests at all? Or are the tests sent to an outside organization for grading and official notification of the scores, and staff merely relates the pass/fail interpretation to the test takers (and records the results in some manner within National's databases)? If staffers are the ones who actually grade the tests, what are the procedures that they utilize? And what is the necessary training/certification that they undergo (a la the LG proctors) to be permitted to grade the tests?

Robin Crawford said...

I'm a proctor, so using that information, I am fairly certain that one test is scored with a Scantron machine and the other is hand scored by a properly trained staff person. Additionally, I have a wee bit of education in testing processes, norming, etc (I was a special ed teacher and such a class was required). So, without actually knowing for sure, I would think that they have a chart of raw scores and ages that makes it quick and easy to tell if a result is above or bow the 98th percentile. I don't know what training the staff goes through, but I do know that Mary (staff in charge of testing) and Dr. Lawlis meet and consult with each other on a regular basis, so I assume he trained her and supervises her scoring procedures.