Environment

The AUECO Story & Timeline

2007:

• May
• • Three Export Officers (Steve Eisner, David Brady, and Gretta Rowold) met for the first time at the FDP Phase IV Export Controls Symposium at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C.
    
    
• Summer
• • Steve Eisner and Gretta Rowold discuss the idea of putting together a formal export control meeting of 10-12 export control officers from various universities around the country.
  • Gretta points to the DoE ECCO Group as a model.
• November
• • Steve Eisner, David Brady, and Adilia Koch attend the NCURA annual meeting in Washington D.C. and continue to flesh out ideas for an export control officers' meeting.

2008:

• January
• • David Brady requests a conference call with Steve Eisner and Adilia Koch to discuss setting an agenda for an export officers' meeting.
  • Steve responds that he had been web-searching for other university export officers to invite to join the teleconference.
  • Steve sets the wheels in motion by further opining that, "My feeling is that participants on this call, and the group going forward, should be mid-level research administrators with specific day-today export control responsibilities. I do not see a need for this group to fall under the aegis of NCURA. I'd like to see this "Core" group become formalized over time as an association of university export control officers."
• February
• • Adilia Koch suggests a repeating export officers' teleconference be set up.
  • Steve Eisner sends out an email asking for feedback and if participants desired to make the teleconferences a regularly scheduled event.
  • Gretta Rowold writes the group expressing an interest in meeting all of the teleconference participants. In this same email, Gretta suggest convening as a group at the 2nd FDP Export Controls Symposium at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA in May 2008.
    
• March 
• • Gretta Rowold plans to write the group saying that several attendees are looking forward to meeting and that May 13 is looking like the best time to try to get together during the Symposium and to respond and confirm via email if interested.
  • This email was preceded by Steve Eisner suggesting that Gretta "please follow up with an email to the group stating there will be a 'pre-FDP symposium planning meeting', hosted by Stanford University, from 4:30-7:30pm on May 13. The planning meeting will address the development of the group's charter/mission statement and organization, to be followed by the development of an agenda reflecting that the group would like to have answered by DDTC and other federal participants (of the FDP symposium)."
• May 
• • Steve Eisner developed a draft agenda and drafted an initial Export Control Officers' Group charter and bylaws to be reviewed by David Brady and Gretta Rowold a week before the FDP Symposium.
  • Steve wrote the group, "My intent is to come up with a Statement of Purpose and draft bylaws for circulation prior to the meeting and for discussion there at. I can do that tomorrow for your comment before we circulate the Agenda, Draft Statement of Purpose and Draft Bylaws to the group over the weekend. It would be useful to have a variety of suggestions for the group name in hand to circulate for consideration by members prior to selection at the Tuesday meeting; so my thought is to send a preliminary email to the group on Thursday (after your review of the draft agenda) for group name suggestions so we can include those suggestion when we circulate the agenda, draft statement of purpose and draft bylaws."
  • Early May 13, Steve Eisner hopped a red-eye flight from California to Virginia. His room at the Fair Lakes Hyatt was a suite, to which he requested that his bed be removed and tables, chairs, and refreshments be brought up in anticipation of the coming meeting of export control officers who were able to join the symposium.
    
  • David Brady and Steve Eisner met in the early afternoon of May 13, 2008 (prior to other attendees joining for the meeting) to finalize the draft charter and bylaws.
  • At 4:30pm on May 13, 2008, the very first meeting is held. 17 attendees were present. It was at this meeting that the original charter and bylaws were approved.
  • Attendees report spending an absurd amount of time trying to determine the official pronunciation. "OW-ECHO", "OH-ECHO", "AW-ECHO" and "EYE-YUKO" were all proposed. It wasn't until over 10 years later that the official pronunciation was decided on as "A-U-ECHO".
  • Steve's bed was not located until 2am. Steve was not pleased as his aforementioned red-eye earlier that morning for arrival at the meeting and symposium had caught up with him.

2009:

• June/July
• • AUECO logo design and preparation - see the "Fun Facts" page for more detail and a look at the early design options!
    
• August
• • David Brady writes the group informing them of a suggested full day session for the second annual AUECO planning meeting, scheduled for October.
    

• October
• • Oct 20, 2009, AUECO held its second annual planning meeting at Stanford-in-Washington. Confirmed attendees were David Brady, Gretta Rowold, Brandi Boniface, Jennifer May, Kelly Hochstetler, Nora Moriarty, Pat Schlesinger, Robin Witherspoon, Steve Eisner, and Tami Hemingway.
    

2010:

• November
• • Jennifer May writes the group on Nov 5, 2010, that the third annual planning meeting would be scheduled for February 2011 at the University of Central Florida.
    

2011:

• February
• • Inaugural members attended the third annual planning meeting on Feb 22, 2011, at the University of Central Florida campus in Orlando.
• October
  
• • Kelly Hochstetler mused to the association via the listserv that the salamander known as the Hellbender now requires an export license.
  • Gretta Rowold in jest issued a still standing and yet unaccepted challenge of personally paying $20 to the first AUECO member who licenses a hellbender for export. (Michael Miller's anecdote in the same thread about catching and eating said hellbenders on hikes in the Appalachians did not qualify.)
  • Shortly thereafter, the general rumination was that the Hellbender should be AUECO's official mascot.
    

2012:

• Early
• • AUECO deferred the fourth annual planning meeting til 2013 in conjunction with a national export control conference hosted by the University of Southern Florida scheduled for early 2013. The USF conference was later cancelled and the planning meeting did not occur.
    

2013:

• March
• • The Inaugural AUECO Annual Conference on the Impact of Export Controls on Higher Education and Scientific Institutions was held on March 26-27, 2013, at the Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel on the University of Pennsylvania campus.
  • This meeting was open to non-members and included presentations by the then 27 AUECO members as well as some government representatives.
  • With the exception of 2020 and 2021's cancelled conferences due to the COVID pandemic, AUECO has held an annual conference and membership meeting each year since 2013. See our Past Conferences page for further details and login to your member account (via the 'Log in' button to the very far top right of this page) to access the agenda and training materials for each of these years under Member Resources.