Scientific and Technical Employee Development (STED)
Conference Call February 1, 2007

Committee members:

Meeting Introduction:

• Bob Hainly opened the teleconference and reviewed the agenda.
• Bob announced that the note taker for the meeting would rotate among committee members. John Trommer will be the note taker for this conference call.

Comments on the minutes for the November meeting:

• Suggestion was made to put all action items from the action item log into the meeting minutes and use a color to highlight them. 
• Steve Blanchard indicated he would like to see decisions made by the committee in the minutes as well as action items and also highlight them with a color.
• Virginia de Lima suggested that non-active items from the action item log be excluded and include only current items.
• Bob requested that committee members provide their opinion on action items to be included in the minutes and he will consider all suggestions.

Review of the Action Item Log:

• Change Steve Sorenson to Franceska Wilde on the OWQ list.
• Spelling change on line 4 (essential).
• Action Item 3 - Training of new employees - Donna will continue to work on this.
• Action Item 12- Post old minutes from past meetings on the web - If Donna has an electronic file, she will post them but she isn't going to retype old handwritten notes.
• Leo indicated the need to document previous scientists and their work by video and/or presentations posted to the web to pass on knowledge.
• Steve asked where we wanted to post these web pages - discipline offices or more central.
• DECISION – Committee indicated HQ web pages would probably be appropriate.
• ACTION ITEM – Steve will start process of posting videos and presentations that we already have to internal web pages and add more as we get them.
• ACTION ITEM – Steve to determine if we need approval (similar to reports) for public web page posting and public viewing.

Virginia indicated she did not have a chance to discuss work of the STED committee at the recent District Chiefs meeting.

• Dorrie is not sure about her role in the action item concerning NWIS course conversions to TEL. Steve offered to help by making initial contact with NWIS Executive Steering Committee. Dorrie is a member of the NWIS committee, but feels she is probably not the one to come up with the list of NWIS courses for conversion.

Priority Items - from November Meeting:

• TEL course development support
• ACTION ITEM – Steve to go to Bob Hirsch with request when we get a budget.
• At this point in the year, the 0.5 FTE request (~$42K) could be divided between 0.25 FTE for OED and about $20K for Roger Lee to work on QW Principles course conversion.
• Steve is still waiting on a cost estimate for QW Principles TEL course conversion from Franceska Wilde (OWQ).
• ACTION ITEM – Steve will provide a draft of the recommendation to STED before request is made
• TEL course conversion status
• Data Aging Course already released - Some positive feedback. Steve would like all techs who work records to take this course.
• Editing Unit Values in ADAPS course may be out, but Steve is not sure. (Note: announcement of course availability went out 3/1/07).
• Discipline Offices to develop prioritized lists of courses for conversion to TEL
• OSW (Steve) - Parts of the Hydro-Acoustics course could be converted to TEL to be taken prior to the regular course.
• OGW (Dave) - General feeling from OGW was that they didn't see anything that they felt strongly about at this time. Dave will touch base with Bill Alley to see if he still feels the same way. Bob asked if there was a GW Principles course that could be converted.
• ACTION ITEM – Dave will check on potential for conversion of GW Principles course.
• OWQ (Franceska/Steve) - Franceska is trying to contract with Roger Lee to work on the QW Principles course. All chapters may not be able to stand alone. QW group is expecting help with converting the QW Principles course to TEL. OWQ won't be able to do as much as they would like if they don't get some help. Current plan is for OWQ to fund conversion of 9 of 20 modules at estimated cost of $22K (after Federal budget resolved). Additional 11 modules expected to cost about $30K. Looking for support from Senior Staff to complete. Course will be a good display to promote TEL conversions.
• NWIS (Dorrie) - No discussion yet with the NWIS committee about courses for conversion to TEL.

Tuition for TEL Courses (general discussion):

• Decision from November Meeting -Tuition should be charged for some courses and not for others.
• Criteria for tuition need to be developed
• Main purpose is to recover salaries for SMEs who are not paid by discipline office or receive appropriated money.
• Other purposes for charging tuition - salaries for development, Breeze licensing, and hardware to develop a self-sustaining program.
• Concepts for charging - which courses would be mandatory or necessary (level 1 type courses), and which courses would be recommended for career development.
• Options discussed
• Charge nominal cost for all courses - might raise more money than having some free courses and some expensive courses.
• Are we trying to recover costs or do that and make the program self sustaining?
• Estimated costs: Licensing ($20K) + 1.5 FTE for course development ($150K) + SME cost ($130K) – outside support for Tj ($100K) is approximately $200K. Could we raise $200K per year? At $100 per course we would need to have 2000 people taking a course.
• Senior staff was not supportive of tuition in the past, but may be more receptive now. Steve would like to see this as a WRD program and not get lost in the OED.
• Because of costs not reimbursed, tuition may have to be charged, but TEL is a more efficient way to make training available than sending everyone to the NTC. In short run, this may not be self sustaining, but if tuition covered even half the costs, it might be easier to sell to Senior Staff. When there are more courses, it may approach sustainability.
• Should cooperators and other disciplines be charged more than WRD because they are not paying development costs?
• Would a flat rate per cost center for unlimited access (annual subscription) work?
• Should an essential course have little or no cost and charge tuition for all others? Some courses, however, might not be considered as level 1 type courses but may be essential to a specific project.
• Should charges be different for individual circumstances?
• DECISION – We need to poll our peers. Contact those who are involved and see what they think courses should cost or what they would be willing to pay.
• Some options - all free, all have the same fee, sliding scale by length, sliding scale by content, range of cost ($250 - $1000? Depending on complexity/length of course).
• ACTION ITEM – Virginia will put a draft e-mail together and send to committee members for input.