Lissa Dulany,
Georgia Section
As a councilor for the Georgia section, I am a member of two national ACS committees, the Women Chemists Committee (WCC) and the Divisional Activities Committee (DAC).One does not have to be a councilor to be a member of the WCC, but does to be a member of DAC.The WCC is charged with attracting, encouraging and promoting women as chemists and as members of the ACS, through travel awards for students, the WCC newsletter and webpage, and two awards, among many other activities.The DAC is charged with policy decisions regarding the creation and dissolution of divisions, and acting as a liaison and coordinator between the divisions and the ACS.These committees meet on Saturday and Sunday during national meetings.
At DAC, a report was given by the ACS Focussed Programming Office (ProSpectives), which has been charged by the Board of Directors to develop focussed programming to compete with (so-called) beautique associations/societies.These groups, often for profit, produce symposia and seminars that are seen as a potential threat to the technical programming of the ACS.The first ProSpectives offering, Combinatorial Chemistry, attracted 200+ “youngish”, mostly industrial attendees, and was not seen to directly compete with any ACS division programming as it focussed on the applied aspects of the topic.Other future endeavors include:Proteomics:its impact on drug discovery and disease (April, 2001) and Biological Applications of Nanotechnology (June, 2001).These will continue.
As
chair of the Divisional Enhancement (DE) Subcommittee of DAC, I facilitated
the selection of Divisions for recognition at the Chemluminary Celebration
on Tuesday, August 22nd.Six
divisions were chosen for recognition of either innovation or outstanding
service to members on the basis on their annual reports.(See
Tuesday’s section below for those recognized.)
The
DE
Subcommittee also allocated $20K of grant money to special division projects,
and the selection was made during this meeting.Seven
projects were chosen for partial funding:
·AGFD:$4K.With
a goal to attract and retain younger chemists as Division members, this
proposal would partially fund travel awards for the Graduate Candidate
Symposium, and help support a current award for a young scientist and help
initiate a corporate young scientist award.
·CELL:$2K.In
the last several years, this division has begun a process of re-focus and
alignment, such that they propose to change the division name to Cellulose
and Biopolymer Materials Division.This
has included joint programming with POLY and other divisions, and the creation
of a new Gordon Conference on the Chemistry of Polysaccharides. The
subcommittee was supportive of this re-focus for the division, and could
provide seed money for this activity and its associated programming plans.
·GEOC:$2K.Support
was provided as seed money for the establishment of a biennial GEO Division
Medal (which would recognize a division member).Support
existed for getting the award (medallion design and initial costs), but
not for sustaining this award.
·INOR:$4K.Support
was provided for graduate and undergraduate student travel awards for presentation
of papers/posters at ACS national meetings.
·ORG:$1.5K
(all that was requested).Support
was provided for a symposium in San Diego that would feature synthetic
organic chemists (academic & industrial) who are women.
·POLY:$3.5K.Support
was provided for this innovative program where K-12 Polymer Ambassadors
are provided with training and materials to enable them to become teachers
teaching teachers, an ongoing project w/ PMSE, RUBB.
·TECH:$3K.Support
was provided to assist with their marketing strategy to attract more Chemical
Technicians, including outreach beyond the typical. Again, funding was
provided as seed money the development of a promotional booth, but sustaining
the shipping costs of a traveling booth for local, regional, and extra-ACS
meetings would have to be identified elsewhere.
These
grants could not be announced at the Chemluminary Celebration (due to tight
scripting), but the recipients have since been notified.
The WCC also meets on Saturdays (all day), so I was able to join them at noon for the remainder of the day.The highlights of this meeting include:a discussion of upcoming articles for the WCC newsletter, the announcement of the student travel award winners (who are recognized at the WCC luncheon; recently an Emory student received one of these grants), and the announcement of the Overcoming Challenges award winner (recipient must be enrolled in a 2 or 4 year undergraduate program).
On Sunday, August 20th, lunch occurred in conjunction with a Division Chairs liaison/communication opportunity.Several of the topics included:the use of computer projection equipment for presentations at national meetings, internet balloting, on-line preprints, and on-line abstract submission.
The DAC committee meeting resumed at 1:30.A presentation was given on the Presidential task force on Local Section vs. Division allocation as regards to councilors.The discussion continues, with a meeting scheduled just after the ACS Council meeting on Wednesday, August 23rd.
Bob Bovenschulte, Director of ACS Publications, gave a presentation onACS books and publications.ACS symposium series are now produced in conjunction with Oxford University Press, with a 40% discount to sponsoring division members, and a 25% discount to all ACS members.By this method, the ACS still continues to publish 30-35 books/year, unfortunately with a continued erosion in sales (average sales is 350 copies, and a decline in “standing orders”).This may be due to the delayed timeframe for publication, which doesn’t occur until 12-24 months of the symposium.There is discussion about “print-on-demand” books, CD’s, etc. balance this financially.
POLY now offers preprints on line; ENVI now offers preprints on CD-ROM.Individual owns the copyright on the individual preprint, while the division owns the copyright on the document as a whole.
A series of recommendations were drawn up concerning divisions affiliating with other technical organizations.
In between Sunday night and Tuesday night, my job intervened, so I returned to Atlanta.
On Tuesday evening, August 22nd at the Chemluminary Celebration, as chair of the Divisional Enhancement Subcommittee of DAC, I announced the Divisions who were recognized for innovation or outstanding service to their members.These were:
·The Division of Chemistry and the Law, who teamed up with the Santa Clara Valley local section to hold an “inventors make a difference day.”Held at the Intel Musuem, this event promoted invention, innovation and patents to students, parents, scientists, engineers and inventors, with a concerted outreach to minority elementary and middle school students.
·The Division of Education, who sponsor a series of free online conferences and increased programming at regional meetings that has resulted in both increased membership and member involvement.
·The Division of Environmental Chemistry, who have developed an aggressive program for attracting and retaining younger members by placing them in leadership roles within the division.
·The Division of Inorganic Chemistry, who has pioneered electronic balloting for its annual elections, teaming with many ACS units to ensure eligibility, security and accuracy for its members and for the election results.
·The Division of Organic Chemistry, who has raised funds for 18 graduate student fellowships (at $18,500 each) from industrial sponsors.In addition, the division maintains an organic chemistry employment opportunities web site for its members.
·The Division of Polymer Chemistry, who conducted a “2000 by 2000” campaign to attract 2000 new ACS members, and achieved this by the August national meeting.They are also the first division to use electronic preprints in partnership with the ACS publications division.They strive to include industrial content and involvement in their programming.
On Wednesday, August 23rd, I participated in the ACS Council meeting as a councilor from the Georgia Section.New council members were elected to the Committee on Committees (ConC:Ronald Archer, Joe Hightower, Dorothy Philips, Barbara Sawrey and Isiah Warner—a former Herty Award winner), Council Policy Committee (CPC:Bonnie Charpentier, Ann Hunt, Charles Rowell, and Kathleen Trahanovsky), and Committee on Nominations and Elections (N&E:Jeannette Brown, Richard Deming, Thomas Gilbert, Barbara Peterson and David Wohlers).
All local section members are reminded to vote
in the ACS National Elections this fall.The
nominees for President-Elect are Glenn Crosby and Eli Pearce, both outstanding
candidates.
Local section members are encouraged to participate in the Legislative Action Network email system, where responses are directly sent to Congress regarding issues of interest to chemists and scientists.
The ACS has a 94% member retention rate, which is outstanding among professional societies.Recently the concern has been retaining younger and new members, and from what I understand, the concerted effort to involve members more quickly in the society is resulting in success among these groups, too.
The ACS is exploring a cooperative relationship with the American Chemistry Council (the former Chemical Manufacturers Association).In addition, the ACS has joined forces with the Green Chemistry Association.
At the council meeting, one petition was placed on the agenda for urgent action:to increase the size of standing committees of the council.This intent of this action would be to create more opportunities for councilors to serve on ACS committees.The petition of urgent action was denied, and the petition itself will be voted on at the council meeting in San Diego.At various meetings that I attended, the sentiment was there for increased committee size, but not without some opportunities for the committees to plan for this expansion.Changing a committee size from 6-15 to 12-24 members could make for a very unwieldy situation without planning and foresight.
Electronic voting services are being investigated for national ACS elections.
The Georgia section now resides in the ACS 4th District for voting purposes, and not the 4th Region.For regional programming and meetings, we are still in the Southeast Region.Nomenclature…
Dues will not increase in 2001, but will remain at the 2000 level of $108.This was voted on and approved at the last council meeting, and the board concurred.
The online housing capability for this national meeting was a big success.Look for online meeting registration for the San Diego meeting in Spring, 2001.
There was a HUGE discussion about the other Petition for action:meeting registration categories.This proposal was recommitted to the Meetings & Expositions Committee to all for the reciprocal agreements with other technical societies that are being put in place.
60% of the ACS is less than 50 years old, while (of course) 40% is more than 50 years old.Most recently, the group of members aged 21-25 increased by 69%, which is great!
The Fertilizer and Soil Chemistry Division will dissolve 12/31/2000, and be re-located and re-organized as a subdivision of the Agrochemicals Division.
The Committee on Economic and Professional Affairs has developed an online chemistry salary comparison system available through the ACS website.
If you’re looking for fun ideas to promote chemistry in the local section, look to acs.org/local sections for the most recent “top activities” mentioned in LS annual reports.
The ACS participates in the nomination process for the National Medals of Science.
The US Senate is to take action in September
on the diversion of 25% of US Patent Office user fees to other government
offices!!!Let your elected officials
know how shortsighted this is.
Helen and Alfred (post-humously) Free will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame on September 9, 2000 for their invention of theDiabetes Glucose Test Strips.
On a personal note, I would like to encourage all ACS members to get involved with a technical division.Before I became a member of DAC, I didn’t realize how important this was (though I already was a division member, POLY and PMSE).Divisions are charged with developing all the technical programming at national meetings.So the next time you ask, “why doesn’t the ACS offer a symposium or session focussed on ______ “ whatever topic of interest of you, realize that YOU are the ACS, and figure out which division would be the most logical place for such a topic, and then suggest it.Or better yet, volunteer to help plan it!!It’s not that difficult, and you’ll meet great people and make great professional connections.
That’s all for this meeting’s report.
Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Lissa Dulany (Margaret A. Dulany)
Councilor, Georgia Section
September 5, 2000
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Last Updated Septembet 26, 2000.