ASA President Karen Kafadar convened the initial ASA Board meeting of 2019 at the ASA headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The highlights of the meeting follow.

Discussion Items

• The board heard presentations by teams of students from North Carolina State University, Purdue University, and Vanderbilt University. The presentations represented the students’ work in the ASA Leadership Challenge, part of 2018 ASA President Lisa LaVange’s Leadership Institute. Each team created a business plan with ideas to grow ASA membership. The board was thoroughly impressed with the thoughtfulness of the teams’ ideas and the quality of their presentations.

• Publications Representative Scott Evans updated the board on discussions being held by the ASA’s Committee on Publications about issues such as the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) plan for multiauthor paper recognition and Plan S, a European open-access initiative.

• As it does annually, the board discussed the status of committees in the Membership Council. This council serves as the connection between these committees and the board. The board expressed gratitude for the great work these committees do on behalf of the profession and association.

• The board discussed ways to improve involvement with the data science community through the ASA’s Symposium on Statistics in Data Science (SDSS) and our sponsorship of the Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA) Conference.

• The board received the final report of the ad hoc Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Assault and final summary of the questionnaire distributed to membership. The board thanked the task force for its excellent work in developing a new policy and in making other key recommendations. A report of the task force work and board discussions will appear in the July issue of Amstat News.

Action Items

• The board approved new editorial appointments for Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA) Theory and Methods (Ian McKeague, Marina Vannucci, and Jane-Ling Wang), JASA/The American Statistician Reviews (Adrian Dobra), and Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research (Toshimitsu Hamasaki), effective next year.

• The board accepted the ASA’s audited financial statement for 2018 and congratulated ASA Associate Executive Director and Director of Operations Steve Porzio for another successful audit.

• The board increased institutional rates for journals by 6% to offset cost increases. (Members get free electronic access to journals as part of their membership dues.) An additional increase to institutional rates for JASA and Journal of Business & Economic Statistics was approved to increase the number of pages in these journals to reduce the backlog of papers.

Reported Items

• Porzio updated the board on ASA financials for 2018, which included a higher-than-expected net operating income for the fiscal year.

• ASA Treasurer Amarjot Kaur updated the board on the status of the ASA’s investments. 2018 was a year of ups and downs for the market. Investments were down at the end of 2018 over the start but had nearly regained all those losses by the end of February 2019. Kaur said the Investment Committee continues to review the ASA’s long-term investment policy.

• The board received progress reports on the strategic initiatives launched by ASA President Karen Kafadar. In addition, ASA President-elect Wendy Martinez introduced the board to her ideas for 2020.

• The Council of Chapters Governing Board (COCGB) and Council of Sections Governing Board (COSGB) reported on their recent activities. The COCGB reviewed many matters, including plans for JSM, virtual mentoring workshops, the chapter visitation program, and the traveling course. The COSGB reported on initiatives for increasing diversity and inclusion, leadership development, and improving the annual section reporting system. Both councils also made modifications to their charters.

• ASA Science Policy Director Steve Pierson updated the board on the decennial census citizenship question, the status of proposed changes to the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the US Department of Agriculture, ongoing issues at the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, the realignment of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics within the Department of Transportation, status of science and statistical agency budgets, and the latest on the continued persecution of Greek statistician Andreas Georgiou.

The board met June 7 in Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss the 2020 budget and will meet again July 26–27, 2019, in Denver, prior to JSM.