DCSTFI Website

[Nichole Fitzgerald]

Hey Guys!

I finally had some free time today to finish this up- check it out!

https://sites.google.com/site/dcstfiinfo/

I know it's atrociously ugly. Sorry :-( If I get some time I'll pretty it up a bit.

For now, check it out and make sure that you are happy with the content. Anyone with access to the DCSTFI.info gmail account can make edits (ie the board). 

I was careful to not include actual email addresses on the site. But the addresses are accessible if, for instance, you download the enrollment form. Let me know if you don't like this (Todd, I'm looking at you because it will affect you most). 

It's easy to add more information so let me know if there are other things you want to see. Also I'm happy to delete things, too.

Feedback is welcome.

Nichole

[Heather Kimmel]

Nichole - thank you for putting this together!  I've only had a minute to do a quick click-around on the site, but I think it is a great start. We'll need to update a few things, but that should be pretty straightforward. On the contact page, all of the e-mail addresses are spelled out - was that intentional or a function of the page formatting?

On this point, we need to start getting ready for the orientation presentation on Sept. 3. Nichole & Teressa - I know you won't be there, but if you have any thoughts with regard to things that you wish you knew about DCSTFI when you started or thing that weren't clear in the beginning, please let me know so that the four of us can be sure to clarify those points. I'm leaning towards giving a quick PowerPoint presentation just so that the incoming fellows can see AND hear our points ... suggestions are more than welcome!

A couple of other quick administrative things: I checked two things with Hugh Webster, the lawyer who helped us reinstate DCSTFI's corporate status with the district. One is that the current bylaws we have are valid, even though many of the changes were made while DCSTFI was not a legal corporation. I wanted to be sure of this so that we didn't run into issues later with using the incorrect set of bylaws, as there have been some significant changes over the years.

The second issue was whether it would be feasible or cost-effective to try to collect the outstanding balance from former fellows who left the plan owing a balance. Hugh said that we really didn't have any legal recourse and that it would be difficult to find a collection company to work with us for a relatively small amount of money. We do have bylaw provisions that allow us to stop a former fellow from rejoining the plan until they are in good standing, i.e. have a zero balance with DCSTFI. I will be sure that we have documentation of what these fellows owe on the DCSTFI Board's Google Drive, so that future boards will have access to this information. The current board has made a good faith attempt (multiple attempts, actually) to contact all of these fellows using the most recent contact information we have, with success in one case, but not in the other six cases. We will consider this task completed.

I think those are all of the issues for the moment. I am still working on putting together a timeline of sorts of Board activities to make it a bit easier for the next Board to keep track of what needs to be done and when.The draft is on the Google drive - it's VERY rough and VERY incomplete, but please make the changes you see fit. We'll finalize this document as a Board before the annual meeting in October.

Again, thank you for your hard work and insights!  It's been a pleasure working with all of you this year!

Cheers - Heather

--
Heather L. Kimmel, PhD
AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, 2011-2013
Economics, Exposure, and Technology Division, OPPT, OCSPP
US EPA
1201 Constitution Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20004
kimmel....@epa.gov
hlki...@gmail.com
Office: 202-564-1818
TEXT only: 770-843-8482

[Teressa Trusty]

This is great Nichole. I think having everything in one location will help with communications. I didn't look closely at content and I think the aesthetics are fine. 

I have one suggestion for organization. The Welcome page only has links right now. Could we move the History text to this page? It's history but it also explains who we are and what we do. Might be nice to have that up front and eliminate one click. Just a thought.

Regards,

Teressa 

[Teressa Trusty]

Hi Heather, 

I think the presentation last year did a good job of covering what we needed to know as new Fellows. The one thing that does seem to confuse people into the year, or at least the one that I have seen, is when does a question go to us, to billing, to Todd, and to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. 

I can't recall if we had something like this last year, but maybe a hand out that explains the role of each and gives a couple example questions to help people understand where to direct their questions? This could also be added to the new website.

Regards,

Teressa

[Nichole Fitzgerald]

Teressa- definitely. I'll change that right now.

Heather- spelling out the email addresses was intentional- it's a strategy to avoid our email addresses getting added to spam lists. This might not be a real problem, though, and I'd be happy to revise them to make them look like a normal address. Let me know what you guys prefer.

I chose to err on the conservative side for all of the content. This might be hyper-conservative though- let me know if you think I should add more info, be more explicit about things.