2018 ATHEN Annual Meeting Minutes

ATHEN 2018 Annual Meeting Minutes 

November 14, 2018 (Wednesday) 
Accessing Higher Ground Conference 
Westminster Colorado 
Minutes by Krista Greear 

Brought to order 6:32 p.m. By Sean Keegan, Executive Board President.  

Executive Council Members Attending 

  1. Sean Keegan, President 
  2. Dawn Hunziker, Vice-President 
  3. Joe Humbert, Treasurer 
  4. Krista Greear, Secretary 
  5. Shannon Lavey, Membership Coordinator 
  6. Wink Harner, Member at Large 

Ascertained a quorum of members in attendance. 

Membership Update 

  • 81 professional 
  • 72 Institutions 
  • 1 Associate/Partner 
  • 1 student 
  • 21 signed up/renewed at Virtual Conference 
  • 47 signed up at AHG 

Treasurer Report 

  • Joe presented financial report 
  • Total = $26k 
  • Full financial report available for those who want it 
  • Most of expenses were web hosting 
  • Very different financial state than we were 5 years ago 

Approval of 2017 minutes 

Dawn H. motion to approve minutes of 2017.  

Heidi S. seconded. 

Vote: Unanimous. Opposed None. 

Updates 

Teresa Haven Scholarship Award 

  • It’s an academic scholarship for student with disability.  
  • Explained the requirements, evaluation rubric and process for evaluation.  
  • Needing volunteers to help with process.  
  • If interested in participating to be a reviewer, raise your hand, Shannon will write down names. 
  • Receiving notification after Thanksgiving with next steps.  
  • All electronic participation 

Ron Stewart Professional Development 

  • Sean explained the purpose and requirements of the development award.  
  • Had about 4 applicants, recipient was announced.  
  • Will start earlier than previous year. Begin about May/June time frame.  

ATHEN and AHEAD partnered for Master Class 

  • Dawn H. and Rob H. coordinated to set up master class.  
  • Met about once a week.  
  • Asked others to join but due to job changes, had to do some last-minute maneuvering.  
  • Nate to join 2 weeks before session and it was meant to be.  
  • Heidi S, Terrill T, Sheryl B, Krista G, Sue C, Sean K all joined remotely.  
  • Great session overall.  
  • Only was going to support 2 trainers on site. AHEAD didn’t love the idea of the interactive Zoom session. ATHEN covered cost of 3rd trainer to help round out the areas of expertise, and to pay for a dedicated internet session.  
  • Received positive comments from AHEAD leadership.  
  • Dan C – did we make any money? 
  • Dawn H. – something to consider for future involvement.  

ATHEN Virtual Conference – Share. Learn. Engage.  

  • Rachel Thompson was the go-to person. Did heroic effort.  
  • Was free for ATHEN members.  
  • Used Zoom account.  
  • Had a captioner available for live captioning.  
  • Kept it low cost to average 
  • Averaged about 20 participants per session. 4 sessions. 45-50 mins plus questions.  
  • Friday in June prob not ideal.  
  • 2 people in the room participated.  
  • Looked at AHG and CSUN presentation sheet and looked at high attendance to invite select speakers to re-presenting or providing an update.  
  • Make a note of favorite sessions and let Executive Council know.  
  • April may be a better month for Virtual Conference than June.  

Collaboration Groups 


  • Facilitating collaborations with vendors.    


Canvas Group 

  • Facilitating collaborations with vendors.  
  • Feb 8th2013 was the first meeting of 10 people or so.  
  • Terrill Thompson is leading 
  • Canvas has a group with Canvas, logs issues in discussion forum.  
  • People from Instructure that are actively monitoring this.  
  • “Been really productive” 
  • Really comfortable with accessibility of LMS. Feel like Instructure is onboard.  
  • 183 participants across 93 unique institutions.  
  • Meet 3x a year instead of monthly meetings.  

Microsoft Collaboration 

  • Meets 3x in a month. 
  • Hadi not pleased about ATHEN representation in this collaboration group.  
  • Wants to come and join us via Teams (but Hadi forced them to use Zoom).  
  • Hadi posts via ATHEN, but no one has seen.  
  • Require NDA which is why some people can’t participate.  
  • Terrill points out that there probably is a communication breakdown – need to rethink method.
    • Collaborate.athenpro.org is a resource link that may not be utilized.  
  • Anyone is welcome to participate, regardless of background.  
  • MS broke things that used to work (keyboard accessibility, add/remove features) 
  • Hadi stressed the importance of collaboration with Microsoft.  
  • Sheryl – maybe this group would appeal to someone with more of a background. Look around campus to see who would be more interested.  
  • Hadi – 2 hrs a month for impacting such a high impact is worth the payoff.  
  • Dawn H – how do we navigate the difference between participating as ATHEN or as representatives from our institutions? 
  • Hadi – ATHEN is a label 
  • Terrill – ATHEN is the talent pool for this industry of accessibility professionals in higher ed.  

Video Project 

  • This project is unfinished business.  
  • Goal is to curate and evaluate videos that are useful, short, accurate, captioned videos,  
  • Dan – started doing it with a student. Has a great list. Completely forgot about sharing.  
  • Cath – What topics are we looking at? 
  • Sean – field of access technology, alt media, assistive technology 
  • Sean – we created 16 videos about web accessibility (Creative Commons) 
  • Robert Beech’s  
  • Heidi, Cath, Cathy Cahill, Linda volunteered. 
  • Kayla from DO-IT was volunteered by Sheryl B.  

Election Results 

  • Will need to have a special election for vacant positions 
  • Election results 
  • President – Dawn Hunziker wins 
  • Vice-President – currently vacant 
  • Secretary – currently vacant 
  • Member at Large – Wink Harner 

New Business 


  • Needing another volunteer for coordinating Virtual Conference.   


ATHEN and AHEAD collaboration 

  • Dawn – ATHEN should be a strong collaboration. Did have conversation with new president of AHEAD (Kristie Orr), and Jaime Axelrod to see what opportunities are there.  
  • Sheryl – Terrill and I are heading up the AHEAD Tech SIG and agree that this partnership should deepen.  
  • Terrill – certification discussion from 2 years ago. Might be part of that partnership? 
  • Sean – the price point has been a deterrent from IAAP certification.  
  • Wink – happy to help with course description.     

Meeting adjourned @ 7:49 p.m. Dan Comden motioned to adjourn. Heidi Scher seconded. Motion carried unanimously.