MIDDLE EAST OUTREACH COUNCIL
MEOC Business Meeting Minutes Friday, November 15, 2019, 4:00 - 5:00 PM CST Sheraton New Orleans, New Orleans, LA Participants: Craig Cangemi (QFI; President), Christopher Rose (University of Texas at Austin; Past-President/Treasurer), Katie Aslan (University of Texas at Austin; President-Elect/Membership Chair), Betsey Coleman (Colorado Academy-Retired; Board Member/Conferences Co-Chair), Susan Douglass (Georgetown University; Board Member/Book Awards Committee Co-Chair), Emma Harver (Duke University-University of North Carolina Consortium; Board Member/Book Awards Committee Co-Chair), Jacqueline Vidal (Garza Independence High School; Board Member), Pren “Dunn” Woods (Alston Middle School; Board Member), Lisa Adeli (University of Arizona), Mai Ayyad (Fulbright Commission Egypt), Jean Campbell (Portland State University-Retired), Richard Doughty (Aramco World), Jonathan Friedlander (UCLA), Harrison Guthorn (SQCC), Asser Hany (Fulbright Commission Egypt), Fidele Harfouche (NYU), Rima Hassouneh (University of Michigan), Fatma Ismail (ARCE), Krishna Kulkarni (University of Chicago), Jennifer Mathlouthi (Aramco World), Melinda McClimans (Ohio State University), Larry Michalak (U.C. Berkeley), Maggie Nassif (Fulbright Commission Egypt), Barbara Petzen (Middle East Connections & CSIS; Conferences Co-Chair), James Ryan (NYU), Cristin Siebert (Yale University), Madison Sindorf (NaTakallam), Jeremie Smith (Ohio State University). Welcome: President Craig Cangemi brought the meeting to order at 4:07 PM. and welcomed all attendees. Approval of 2019 Business Meeting Minutes: Copies of the minutes from the business meeting, held November 16, 2018, in San Antonio, TX, were distributed. Chris Rose made a motion to approve the 2018 minutes, the motion was seconded by Barbara Petzen, and the minutes were approved. Secretary Joe Stanik was not able to attend this meeting; Emma Harver took minutes for the business meeting in his absence. Treasurer’s Report: Chris Rose, Treasurer, passed out copies of the treasurer’s report. Chris reported that as of November 14, 2019, MEOC has $9,482.06 in checking and $48,419.90 in savings for a total amount of $57,901.96. This year, Saudi Aramco offered a donation of $10,000. Primary expenses of MEOC are associated with three major conferences; the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE). Chris is keeping an eye on interest rates to see if it would be advantageous to move funds from MEOC’s savings account to an account with a higher interest rate. Jean Campbell made a motion to approve the 2019 treasure’s report, Lisa Adeli seconded the motion, and the report was approved. 2019 Election Results: Craig announced that there were two positions in this year’s election; one for president-elect and one board member position. Katie Aslan, Director of Outreach and Public Programs at the University of Texas at Austin, was elected as president-elect, and Gregory Hill, a High School Geography Educator from Mesquite, Texas, was elected to the board. Next year, there will be several positions open on the board; members were invited to begin thinking about nominations for the elections. Membership: Membership chair, Katie Aslan, announced that we currently have 16 institutional members (soon to be 17), 49 individual paid members, and around 700 access members. Katie shared that while these numbers have not changed much since 2018, the number of institutional members has increased. For questions about becoming a member, please contact Katie Aslan, [email protected]. MEOC Outreach Professionals Workshop: From 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 16, 2019, in the Estherwood Room (4th floor), Barbara Petzen and Chris Rose will be leading an Outreach Professionals Workshop. The program will include a conversation about experiential programming rather than content delivery along. The workshop will also allow for networking among outreach professionals. 2019 Conferences: Barbara Petzen, Conferences Chair, shared that MEOC will participate in two upcoming national conferences. First, MEOC will staff a booth at NCSS, November 22-24, 2019, in Austin, TX, where MEOC usually interacts with about 500 educators. This year, the NCSS conference is a collaboration of NCSS, the Texas Council for the Social Studies, and the National Council for Geographic Education. Barbara invited those interested in working a shift at the booth and conversing with teachers interested in the Middle East to contact her ([email protected]). Barbara Petzen and Chris Rose will hold MEOC’s pre-conference clinic--“Culinary Cultures of the Middle East”--in a teaching kitchen in Austin. This will be a full-day workshop using food to learn about the Middle East and its connections to other regions. Lisa Adeli created a list of Middle East-related conference sessions at NCSS for distribution. Second, MEOC will have a presence at NCTE, November 21-24, 2019, in Baltimore, MD, where MEOC usually interacts with about 800 teachers. MEOC is participating in a shared booth with five other global book award organizations. Collaboration magnifies the presence of the global book awards. The awarding organizations are also partnering together to host a panel at NCTE--“Sparking Curiosity about the World through Global Children’s and Young Adult Literature”--scheduled for Thursday, November 21, 2019, 11:00 A.M. - 12:15 P.M. Book Awards co-chair Susan Douglass will be the MEOC representative on the panel. Most of the awards are also hosting author signings at the global book awards booth. MEOC has arranged to have Karen Leggett Abouraya do a signing of her books Malala Yousafzai: Warrior with Words (2014) and Hands Around the Library: Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books (2012). 2019 MEOC Book Awards: Book awards co-chair, Susan Douglass, gave a preliminary announcement about the 2019 book award winners. The formal announcement will be made next week at NCSS and NCTE, so participants were asked to keep mum about the award winners. The 2019 book award sub-committees were chaired by Barbara Petzen (literature), Angela Williams (picture books), and Roberta Robinson (non-fiction). The winners of the 2019 book award are as follows: Youth Literature: Winner: Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram Winner: Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh Honorable Mention: The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas Non-Fiction: Winner: The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown Honorable Mention: Ibn Battuta: The Journey of a Medieval Muslim by Edoardo Albert Picture Book: Winner: A Drop of the Sea by Ingrid Chabbert; Illustrated by Guridi Winner: Riding a Donkey Backwards: Wise and Foolish Tales of Mulla Nasruddin retold by Sean Taylor & the Khayaal Theatre; Illustrated by Shirin Adl Honorable Mention: Tomorrow by Nadine Kaadan Honorable Mention: My Grandma and Me by Mina Javaherbin; Illustrated by Lindsey Yankey Following the book awards announcement, there was robust discussion of how to increase visibility of the awards. In recent years, MEOC has partnered with the other global book award organization on a Global Reads webinar series featuring authors of the award-winning books. Teachers affiliated with MEOC spread the news of the awards. An idea was proposed to survey teachers a few years after each awards announcement to see how they are using the books in their classrooms and gathering classroom resource materials. Another suggestion for spreading news of the awards was to submit reviews to journals on children’s literature. QFI has a book grant program and invites teachers to apply for classroom sets of award-winning books. To date, QFI has given out about 2,500 books to teachers across the country. In return, teachers write about how they have used the books in the classroom. There was a suggestion to engage Schools of Education with the awards to encourage pre-service teachers to integrate award-winning books into the curriculum. Aramco World will be writing reviews on some of the winning books in their publication. MEOC will work on generating a list of organizations and contacts with whom to share the book awards. New Business: Craig shared that a new goal for MEOC is increasing its visibility, presence, and growing membership, as more paid members increase income and allows the organization to put on more programming and work. In the coming year, the MEOC board will be thinking about how to increase membership as well as financial contributions from other sources. MEOC will also be going through a re-branding process in the coming year and will be working with a Los Angeles-based designer to design a new logo and brand identity. MEOC will also purchase a more robust conference set-up at national conferences to stand out among the hundreds of exhibitors. Craig welcomed ideas about ways we that the organization can grow and connect with more educators. Outreach Professional Updates – 2019 Success Stories: Attendees of the meeting shared exciting accomplishments from the past year. Craig adjourned the meeting at 5:04 P.M. Minutes recorded by: Emma Harver, MEOC Board Member and Book Awards Co-Chair. Respectfully Submitted, Joseph T. Stanik MEOC Secretary Comments are closed.
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