LCSA Board Meeting Minutes - 2017-06-07 - International Society for Industrial Ecology

Date: 7 June, 2017

First Meeting of New Board Members

Agenda

The Board

First name	Surname		email address	Institution
Matthew	Eckelman		m.eckelman@northeastern.edu	Northeastern University
Thomas	Gloria	Chair	tgloria@fas.harvard.edu	Harvard
Paulina	Jaramillo		pjaramil@andrew.cmu.edu	Carnegie-Mellon University
Wenjie	Liao		wenjieliao@outlook.com	Sichuan University
Stephan	Pfister		stephan.pfister@ifu.baug.ethz.ch	ETH Zurich
Cassandra	Thiel	Vice-Chair	Cassandra.Thiel@nyumc.org	NYU
Yuan	Yao		Yuan_Yao@ncsu.edu	North Carolina State University

Introductions

Tom Gloria – Harvard arts and sciences faculty; dir. Of sustainability program (2000 students); role in LSCA – was vice chair (Jeroen Guinee chair) for 2 years; assoc editor for JIE
Matt Eckelman – NEU Civil & enviro engineering; background chemical and environmental eng; courses in LCA and air quality, pollution control, energy systems; started LCA about 10 years ago; more chemical background, turning toward green buildings/cive
Yuan Yao – NC State forest biomaterials dept; LCA work for chemical things and biofuels/biomaterials; technology development (work with fac members as team); teach capstone design for ugrads, research for sustainability
Stephan Pfister – ETH-Zurich scientist, with Stefanie Helweg; ecological system design; IE assessments; LCA and impact assessment development; water consumption in LCA; towel production inventory; more spatial details than average (regionalization); ecoivent for data provision; social LCA interests
Cassandra Thiel – NYU assistant professor; healthcare sustainability; LCAs of surgery; teaches public service students Operations Management and intro to Environmental Sustainability

Paulina Jaramillo and Wenjie Liao unable to join this meeting.

Committee Overview & Background

Committee had been relatively dormant; Jeroen got it rolling again
Day-to-day: meet once per month
Quarterly meetings with ISIE advisory board; as issues come up, emails sent to Edgar/ISIE leadership
Upcoming Conferences:
- Chicago Conference (ISIE/ISSST Joint, 2017)
- Swiss Gordon Research Conference (2018)
- Beijing Conference
- Ongoing debate: Should we have more conferences (in North America, specifically?)
  - Matt: if ISSST partnership goes well, perhaps we could have an ISIE North American section conference partnering with ISSST (which is annual)

Committee Goals (Previous)

Guide society on the space around LCSA.
- What is LCSA?
Garner support and interest on LCSA.
- JIE will come out with special issue on LCSA. 9 articles submitted, final stages of productions
- Activity (LinkedIn/Facebook/etc.) has been low
Conference activities:
- organize to meet with each other (meet face-to-face)
- struggled to have a larger meeting (open invitation meetings at the conference)
Continued conversations about financial viability and growth of ISIE/LCSA section

Thoughts on What the 2017 Board can work towards

There tends to be a focus on the academic side within ISIE; perhaps this committee could focus more on practice side
Measures of progress and quantification advancement for members
- Advances in methodology
Topic support for members:
- We have a broad purview
- Emergence of “nexus” issues (water, energy, land, food, etc.)
- Net positive aspects of LC-measures (Greg Morris’ work at Harvard)
  - Conversation around impacts and benefits
- Matt: do we have a publicity & policy agenda for ISIE/LCSA?
  - Ex: publish reports/op-eds on US policy (for US political leaders)
  - Tom: may have to be careful with 503c status; would need to inform ISIE leadership of any external communications
  - Ex goal: op-ed for NYT to talk about IE and how it fits within Supply Chain, Operations, Sustainability, etc.
    - Ex: concepts of circular economy
  - Yuan: Do we have any engagement with ISIE members who sign up with our division?
    - Tom: attempted in Surrey meeting, but a tepid response
    - There are special issues of JIE with a call for authors; lots of the connections tend to be focused around the journal
      - Incentive focused on publishing
      - Website could perhaps be improved to facilitate this

Website Feedback (email from Paul Hoekman)

I am interested in any ideas you may have with regards to the site, but also have a few specific questions:

Can you give a brief description of what member interaction you currently have within the ISIE site, and outside of the ISIE site?
Do you have any particularly positive or negative feelings towards certain tools or communication channels (e.g. Facebook works great but Mailchimp is useless)?
If you have interaction tools (blogs, mailing lists, etc.) outside of the ISIE website, is there a particular reason for not using the ISIE site?
Are there other tools or things that you would currently like to have available for your Section (be it inside the ISIE site or independently from the site)?
Say three years down the line, in your wildest dreams and thinking in a "the sky is the limit" scenario, can you think of any high-tech tools or a revolutionary vision that you would love for your Section to have when it comes to its online presence and activities?

Send responses to Tom, and he will consolidate our thoughts.
Other thoughts discussed today
- Send regular updates about this boards’ meetings (so members know something is happening)
- Ability to search for members (who share interests, or may be interested in finding speakers, etc.)

ISIE/ISSST Chicago Conference Meeting

Availability for meeting is restricted to Wednesday (6/28) lunchtime (http://isie-issst2017.uic.edu/program.html)
- Stephan will not be attending
- Predicted attendance: Cassie, Matt, Yuan, Tom
Probably not an opportunity to try to meet with broader section members (maybe Tuesday night.. but most likely not)
- Matt: Will we advertise about the section at the conference? Tom: not sure but probably not

Section