Report on the Activities of the ACH 2006 Nominating Committee

Ray Siemens — September 27, 2006

The committee was composed of:

• Alan Galey (ctte secretary)
• Lorna Hughes (ex officio)
• Steve Ramsay
• Susan Schreibman
• Ray Siemens (chair)
• Claire Warwick
• Neil Fraistat

This year's Committee charge was to provide a slate of nominees for the representatives on Executive Council (3). We operated within the parameters of the Bylaws (http://www.ach.org/documents/ACH_Constitution_Bylaws.html#Elections) and the “Procedures of the ACH Nominating Committee” (http://www.ach.org/nominations/nominating_procedures.html)

We concluded our deliberations before the beginning of the academic term, and present six candidates for three upcoming vacancies on the Executive Council. The candidate bios were attached to our September report, circulated to Lorna and Stefan, cc. Chuck.

The slate is as follows:

• Dot Porter
• Gary Shawver
• Natasha Smith
• John Walsh
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin
• Martin Wynne

It is worth noting that we received some feedback from potential nominees as part of the process, including the following stated concerns:

• they may be too busy to take on duties associated with the EC if they were to be elected (a sign of the times; there is, indeed, a lot going on for people with our interests);
• we don't pay their way to come to meetings, and they or their department can't bear the cost of the travel (in addition to the investment of time they would make); and
• there are problems with our elections process that will have to be resolved before they will consider involvement with us through an election (already dealt with, I think, at last year’s EC meeting in Paris, with a new system in place for this coming election).

In keeping with standard process, the results of the election will be announced to candidates directly by the Secretary when they are public, to ACH membership via HUMANIST in the spring, and through a revised version of this report presented at the EC meeting at DH2007 in Urbana-Champaign this June.

Note: as per the HUMANIST announcement, those elected to positions were:

• Dot Porter (U Kentucky)
• Gary Shawver (New York U)
• Natasha Smith (U North Carolina)
• John Walsh (Indiana U)

The committee would like to thank everyone who participated in this very important process.