2018Q3 Reports: Secretary

ACL Officers of 2018

• President:
  • Marti A. Hearst, UC Berkeley, USA
• Past President:
  • Joakim Nivre, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Vice President:
  • Ming Zhou, Microsoft Research Asia, China
• VP-elect:
  • Hinrich Schütze, LMU Munich, Germany
• Treasurer:
  • David Yarowsky, John Hopkins University, USA
• Past Treasurer:
  • Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, Canada
• secretary:
  • Shiqi Zhao, Baidu, China
• Information Chair:
  • Jing-Shin Chang, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan
• SIG Chair:
  • Jennifer Foster, Dublin City University, Ireland
• Conference Chair:
  • Barbara Di Eugenio, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
• CL Editor
  • Paola Merlo (2014-2018 July), University of Geneva, Switzerland
  • Hwee Tou Ng (2018 July - ), National University of Singapore
• EACL Chair:
  • Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp, Belgium
• NAACL Chair:
  • Julia Hockenmaier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• AACL Chair:
  • Haifeng Wang, Baidu, China

Election of 2019 will take place in the fall. The opening positions are VP-elect and Information Chair.

Exec Meetings

There are two exec meetings in 2018:

• winter teleconference
  • March 10, 2018
  • Minutes: 2018Q1 Minutes (public version)
• summer in-person meeting
  • July 15, 2018, Melbourne
  • Agenda: 2018Q3 Agenda

Nominating Committee of 2018

• Three ACL Past Presidents:
  • Chris Manning (male, Americas) (2017-2018) (General Chair of the committee)
  • Pushpak Bhattacharyya (male, APAC) (2017-2019)
  • Joakim Nivre (male, EMEA) (2018-2020)
• Six existing ACL Fellows:
  • Michael Collins (male, Americas) (2017-2018)
  • Eva Hajicová (female, EMEA) (2017-2018) (LTA nomination subchair of 2018)
  • Julia Hirschberg (female, Americas) (2017-2019) (Fellows selection subchair of 2018)
  • Yuji Matsumoto (male, APAC) (2017-2019) (Exec nominations subchair of 2018)
  • Eduard Hovy (male, Americas) (2018-2020)
  • Candace Sidner (female, Americas) (2018-2020)

ACL Resolutions

Nine resolutions have been passed in the first half of 2018:

June 25, 2018

We adopt a Distinguished Service Award.

June 6, 2018

We accept the following motion:

• the exec requests that the nominating committee select candidates for the next member at large that are uniquely qualified to serve as information chair, independent of geographic region.
• The exec further requests that the nominating committee interview potential nominees to assess their qualifications, and only nominate members that have the time, willingness, and the experience to lead a software team to procure new digital services as well as maintain exiting legacy software, and oversee the transition from legacy software to newer software solutions.

May 2, 2018

We approve the constitution and the initial slate of board members of Asia-Pacific Chapter of ACL (AACL)

March 14, 2018

We approve the candidates of CL editor. The candidates will be asked in order.

February 23, 2018

We approve the three candidates for a new TACL editor-in-chief, which will be approached by the search committee.

February 16, 2018

We approve the proposal for training for harassment complaint responders:

(a) we accept Anne Grant's proposal;

(b) Emily M. Bender and Graeme Hirst liaise with Anne Grant to develop the course;

(c) we boot up a complaints committee forthwith so that as many of its members as possible can attend the training at ACL in Melbourne on the day before the tutorial day and Exec meeting.

February 7, 2018

We adopt the following rules concerning conflicts of interest in the nominating committee when electing new fellows:

1. Members of the nominating committee are not allowed to contribute to new nominations (as nominators or recommenders) while serving on the committee.

2. Members who have earlier contributed to nominations that remain in the system should if possible ask other people to replace them (as nominator or recommender). If this is not possible, the concerned member should declare that they have a conflict of interest and not take part in the evaluation of that nomination (see point 3 below).

3. Members who have a conflict of interest with respect to a nomination should declare this and not take part in the evaluation of that nomination. Conflicts of interest are assumed to exist if committee members have contributed to the nomination (see point 2 above), if they have a close family relationship to the nominee, if they have co-authored a paper or collaborated with the nominee in the previous five years, if they are employed at the same company or institution as the nominee, or if they have other relations to the nominee that can be seen to constitute a conflict of interest.

4. If one or more conflicts of interest exist, the nominating committee shall first evaluate and rank the nominees for which no conflicts exist. The remaining nominees shall then each be evaluated and inserted into the ranking by the subset of the committee that does not have a conflict for that nominee.

January 24, 2018

The Exec approve the following proposal concerning rules and procedures for electing Fellows:

1. Members of the Exec and the Nominating Committee are not be eligible to become Fellows while serving. People should be informed about this before being nominated to the Exec.

2. Nominators should be informed about the outcome of their nominations but without specific information about why a particular nominee was not elected.

3. Information about criteria and conditions for selection (including the 0.2% rule) should be provided in the instructions for nominators.

January 13, 2018

We approved the following two changes concerning ACL membership registration/renewal: (1) We open the registration for the next membership year on December 1, instead of January 1. (2) For all members who registered after December 1, 2017, their memberships can be rolled over to 2018.

The full list of ACL resolutions can be found here: ACL Resolutions