I am sure you have been wondering why we have not had any meetings recently. So have we. It isn't for lack of trying. Normally, the ACS has a bunch of speakers "on a tour", and we say yes to that guy, and no to this other guy. Anyway, they don't send a speaker out to just one section. In our case, the (lets be PC here) gentleperson has to hit several of the sections in this area in a week's time frame, (and by this area, I include Alaska to Oregon). For some reason, the powers that be in the other sections have been telling the Speaker Service to stuff it. Some of them have local people lined up, a somewhat easy thing to do in a big city or if you happen to have a National Lab in your back door. Some of them think all the proposed speakers stink. Some of them are just having a bad hair day. I don't know. I have only been the observer of a bunch of emails on this subject (not my yob to do this, after all) and it has been beyond wierdness.
So Harry Davis, our Section Grand Leader, tried to get a guy from Avista to tell us about fuel cells. Didn't happen, don't know why, just didn't happen. Now he is working on trying to get a guy from Nike to talk about shoe soles, in which I guess there must be a chemical or two, but he is having a hard time punching through their guard robots that seem to reject any phone or email messages that you would send to their corporate headquarters.
So, we just don't know when the next meeting is gonna be. We really want one in the spring time, but somebody has to get up on their hind legs and flap their gums, and so far we can't find anybody to do it. And to think that we actually feed them at the Onion, too!!! If anybody out there has any suggestions, as long as the person can speak in some resemblance of an indo-european language, please let one of us know, and we will send out a trapping party to haul this person in.
I actually have been doing some communicating with the assembled multitude, but it has been by email. At the end of this epistle, you will find two overdue messages from one Stanley Pine, who appears to have taken over from our good friend Glenn Crosby as the local area board member. In the future, as these homilies come rolling in, I will send them out to our email list, unless I have a newsletter planned in the near future.
In actually reading Director Pine's letter, it reminded me about our favorite subject, NORM. This year it aint here in Spokaloo, it is in Bozeman Montana, a short 7 hour drive East of here on I90. It will be June 12-14 (thurs, fri, forget sat), and you can get information on how to register at (you are Really gonna like this, those are underscores between the words of the file name)
www.mtech.edu/chem/acs/norm/norm_main_page.htm
Registration is now open, and they have three hotels and a student dorm to serve you. Keep in mind, the most famous dinosaur museum in North America (Western half) is located there at the Museum of the Rockies.
Speaking of which, I have valid email addresses for about 50 of our 80 members. If you have not got any emails from me recently, then I don't have your address. If you would like to get some spam from me now and then, please send me a short email to demattia@acm.org (note that it is acm, not acs, ACS is too cheap to give out any free email addresses but the Association for Computing Machinery is not). If you Are on my list, and want to get off it, send me an email to that effect too, and you will never hear from my mail listserver again.
And, Oh Yes, the elections. Much to everybody's surprise, most of the people who ran for office, actually won. So Harry Davis is our Chair, Dave Cleary is our 2nd banana, and your humble servant is again responsible for writing this drivel and shaking coins out of the piggy bank when necessary.
And, our web site is back online again. Gonzaga blew it away when NORM ended, and when somebody (moi) finally noticed it, Gonzaga had come up with a committee to decide if certain non profit groups were worthy of being hosted on their fine linux boxes. After much deliberation and soul searching, not to mention we pointed out that the ACM guys were being hosted on their servers and they are a much bigger bunch of geeks than we are, we are finally back online. However, with a new URL (note that it does NOT have www in front of it):
At the moment, there aint much there, but I do have the last three years worth of newsletters (the ones I wrote, naturally) on there, and of course, our Bylaws, most interesting reading you should try it sometime about midnight. I will try to dig up even more wunnerful stuff, like meeting times, if we ever find a speaker for our meetings......
And finally at the end of this tome, there is a letter from the ACS staff person who guides all of us local section officers. It appears that National wants to give us local sections more money, but they don't know where to get it from except of course from the hides of the members, so there is going to be some sort of vote on this question sometime soon. I suppose that if I was not six months behind in reading C&EN I would know about all this, and so would you, but the whole thing was news to me and so I present it for your kind attention.
Jeffrey A. Rahn's Councilor Report
This last month I attended the ACS National Meeting in New Orleans from Sunday, March 22 through Wednesday, March 26. I had a busy but productive time going committee meetings and listening to some excellent papers. The major topic of discussion in New Orleans concerned a petition to change the way Chemistry Divisions and Local Sections are funded. The petition requires a change in the bylaws of the American Chemistry Society which means it must go to a vote of all members of the Society. Over 90% of the Western Division Councilor Caucus on late Sunday afternoon was devoted to the discussion of the petition. Most of the of Local Section Activities Committee Open Meeting was also devoted to discussing the pros and cons of the petition. When all the councilors assembled on Wednesday morning for the Council Meeting I thought that discussion was over and all we needed to do was vote on the measure. I should clarify, the vote was not to accept the change in bylaws but to allow members to vote for or against the petition. After 25+ councilors gave their varying views on the matter we voted unanimously to let the membership vote on the matter.
In the next month or so all member of the ACS will receive a ballot asking whether you are in favor of changing the way divisions and local sections are funded. Personally, after listening to hours of information and discussion, I feel this change will benefit the Society and will vote in favor of passage. Whether you are in favor of the petition or not, I encourage each member to vote. I will try to summarize some of the key points below, but if you would like more detailed information please go to: http://membership.acs.org/c/cda/ccaucus.htm and click "Petition to Increase Funding to Local Sections and Divisions," or contact me personally: (509) 359-6069 or jrahn@ewu.edu .
The ACS needs both local sections and divisions. The major purpose of the divisions is to organize great scientific programs for national meetings. The divisions are allotted about $300,000 annually to cover 2 meetings per year. This amounts to only about 5% of the cost of running divisional activities at a national meeting. Even with external fund raising or mandatory dues a number of divisions are short on funds.
Quoting from James Burke, Chair of the ACS Committee on Budget and Finance: "Local sections have always been a reliable resource for continuing education, professional socialization, and career development for members. Each year, sections are asked to do more to enhance science education, promote scientific literacy, encourage promising students to pursue careers in chemistry, and be ambassadors for chemistry in their communities and with government. These efforts require money and ample volunteer time. . . . Some local sections are prosperous, but many are scraping by."
The petition will increase the allotments given to both divisions and local sections to make up for funding shortfalls. Division funding would increase in 4 stages based on a percentage of membership dues: 3% this year and increasing to 9% in 2007. Local section funding would increase to 11% in 2004 and stay at that level. Thus, total support for divisions and local sections would rise to 20% of member dues by 2007. I am sure increased funding sounds great, but the money must come from somewhere. If the petition is approved it will cost about $9.00 per member, on top of the dues increases the council annually decides.
For the last four years I have been a member of the Committee on Nomenclature, Terminology and Symbols. This committee examines problems and monitors developments in nomenclature, terminology and symbols, coordinates the activities of divisional and other committees dealing with such matters within the Society, advises and consults with editors of Society publications acts for the Council in the consideration and action on such documents and proposals presented to the Society, acts for the Council in providing liaison in matters of these issues with non-Society organizations, and makes recommendations to the Council in matters related to these issues. At our open meeting we discussed topics ranging from the proposed name of element-110 (darmstadtium, Ds) to defining the mole and kilogram based on exact integer values. Believe or not there was lively discussion on both topics.
At the Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC) open meeting it was announced that the theme for National Chemistry Week (NCW) for October 19-25, 2003 will be "Earth's Atmosphere and Beyond." Dr. Harry Gray (current Chair-Elect) is also the NCW event coordinator for our local section. If you would like to help out next fall please contact Dr. Gray. LSAC has established a Speaker Service Advisory Board, which met for the first time in New Orleans. Its purpose is to provide advice, information, and recommendations on the Speaker Service's current and future policies and procedures. The Speaker's Service provides many of the people who speak at our local section meetings. One problem that I hope the Advisory Board addresses is the lack of general interest speakers willing to come to the Northwest.
Career Services is looking for "Career Counselors" especially in the BioTech Field. "Career Counselors" are people willing to give advice about a chosen field i.e. BioTech. Anyone interested can contact Career Services through the ACS Web page.
Report on the Washington State Science Olympiad.
On Saturday April 6th Eastern Washington University hosted the 2003 Washington State Science Olympiad. Our local section (Inland Northwest) was a major financial sponsor of the event. In addition a number of members took the time to be event supervisors, judges, or just volunteer helpers. Approximately 20 members of the EWU Student Affiliate of the ACS also helped set up and judge events.
Students from 22 junior high schools and 22 high schools throughout the state took part in over 20 different events covering biology, physics, geology, exercise science, and of course chemistry. Five of the events had a major chemistry emphasis. Cheney Middle School students participated in: "Can't Judge Powder By its Color" in which they performed tests on substances then used their observations to answer questions; and in "Science Crime Busters" in which they tried to correctly identify liquids, solids and other material in a crime scenario. High school students from Shadle Park in Spokane and Jenkins High School in Chewelah took part in: "Chemistry Lab", "Polymer Detectives", and "Qualitative Analysis" events. The Shadle Park and Jenkins teams both placed well in the "Qualitative Analysis" event, and the Shadle team was the top team in the "Chemistry Lab" event.
Sam Hopf, one of the head organizers of the event, suggested that our local section completely take over the chemistry section of the Olympiad. Harry Davis, our section chair, is positive on this idea. We will be discussing if and how to do this in the next few months. If anybody out there is willing to participate, please contact Harry at davish@gonzaga.edu.
From Harry Davis, Chair of our Section
A biannual session of the American Chemical Society Leadership Conference for local section chairs and/or chair-elects was held over the weekend of April 25-27 in Salt Lake City. As chair of our Inland Northwest Section, I attended that meeting.
From talking with other chairs and chair-elects, it was clear that a common problem amongst all of the smaller sections, those with memberships less than 500 or so, is that of low participation amongst our members in section meetings. The problem for these sections, like ours, is that these sections either encompass a very large geographic area that makes meeting attendance difficult, and/or there is not a critical mass of people whose interests are sufficiently close that one event will draw in a significant number of participants. With respect to our own section, I believe that the latter concern is more of an issue than the former. So, in the upcoming months, I will endeavor to address ways to deal this issue. No clear solution to this problem emerged, but I think there are two approaches that should be adopted to try to find some resolution. One is to have some meetings in which the content is focused and intended to appeal only to a select group, and the other is to have some meetings in which there is some social aspect associated with the scientific content of the speaker's presentation that will encourage a large cross section of members to participate.
From talking with several K-12 teachers, it became clear that one of the major changes I think we should make in planning our section meetings is to have at least one meeting in the spring and one in the fall that addresses issues of K-12 teachers of science. While this is not an issue of immediate concern to those of us in post secondary education, there are a significant number of K-12 teachers within our local section whose participation should be a priority for us. Through networking at the Leadership Conference, I learned of several good sources of speakers in this area. A meeting of this type fits into my strategy of having some meetings that are more focused on one group of members.
Other section chairs mentioned social events combined with a chemistry flavor that have drawn in a good number of participants These types of events included such activities as a winery tour that included a talk given by the vintner along with a wine and cheese social. This type of event serves two functions: it provides some scientific content that is of general appeal, and perhaps more importantly, it brings a large portion of the members together to talk (I believe that 'network' is the operative word the Leadership Conference organizers would like me to use!) with each other in ways that might lead to beneficial interactions for teaching and research alike. Our area is rich with opportunities for having meetings that would have this type of combination.
There was overwhelming support among the Leadership Conference organizers and participants for welcoming the general population in our communities to our local meetings. Everyone agreed that this is just one way to help educate the non-chemists in our society about the benefits that chemists and chemistry provide to the world. This must necessarily involve good public relations work on our part to advertise those events that are of some general interest nature.
Another major point that was made by the organizers of the Leadership Conference was that as chairs, we need to get others active in the Sections affairs so that as we move from chairs to former-chairs, there will be some continuum in good leadership. Along this line of thought, I encourage new university and college faculty, and K-12 teachers to become involved with our section's leadership.
I look forward to trying to accomplish these goals in the coming months, and I hope that others within our section will feel motivated to volunteer and offer help.