ACS NEWS
Council Holds Dues To This Year's Level, Acts On Other Matters Ernest L. Carpenter C&EN Washington A t its meeting last month in New / % Orleans, the American Chemical J L J L Society Council acted on a number of matters, including setting membership dues for next year, selecting candidates for president-elect, and raising meeting.registration fees for students. However, the absence of petitions
to amend society governance documents—a frequent item on the council's agenda—helped hold the length of the meeting to less than three and a half hours. On the matter of membership dues, the council voted to retain 1997 dues at the same $99 level as this year (C&EN, April 1, page 6), even though the bylaw formula for adjusting dues for inflation would have increased dues $3.00 next
Board forms new unit to operate all ACS publishing At its meeting in New Orleans, the ACS Board of Directors established a new unit to direct ACS's publishing operations, approved 1997 subscription prices for ACS journals and magazines, increased this year's Petroleum Research Fund grant budget, and acted on several other matters. The new publications unit, called the Governing Board for Publishing, will direct the operations of all ACS publications, including Chemical Abstracts Service and some 30 journals and magazines (C&EN, April 1, page 6). The governing board will be responsible to the ACS Board and will take over many of the activities of the Society Committee on Publications, the CAS Governing Board, and some publications-related activities of the ACS Board. According to the Visiting Committee on Publications, the board-appointed committee that recommended formation of the new governing board, this major change in how ACS directs its publishing operations is in response to a number of factors, including growth in the number of articles published, increased cost of publishing, the need to control subscription prices, and the impact of new electronic and digital technologies on ACS's publishing operations and the business environment in which the publications must compete. The new unit will provide a number of advantages. For instance, the governing board's meetings will be more frequent and their timing more flexible than the
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APRIL 15,1996 C&EN
normal meeting cycle of ACS committees, and business decisions will not require the time-consuming comment periods that are customary in ACS's overlapping committee structure. The new board's members will include professional publishing and information industry managers, and thus it will be able to respond more quickly to the fast-changing publishing world. Its members also will provide the expertise to operate ACS's $200 million publishing enterprise more like a business entity. A number of changes in the society's committee structure will be needed to make the governing board a formal part of the society's governance, including elimination of the CAS Governing Board and the Society Committee on Publications (SCOP). A Joint BoardCouncil Committee on Publications is expected to be established—similar in purpose to the Joint Board-Council Committee on Chemical Abstracts Service—to maintain ACS member input to the publications program. Most of these changes will be accomplished through a petition to amend the ACS bylaws—which must be adopted by the ACS Council and confirmed by the ACS Board to become effective. Such a petition will likely be on the council's agenda for consideration at the next ACS national meeting in August in Orlando, Fla., and for action at the ACS national meeting in April 1997 in San Francisco.
year to $102. However, in view of a strong budgetary performance in 1995, with an increase of $15.8 million in unrestricted net assets, the Society Committee on Budget & Finance recommended no increase in dues—a motion carried unanimously by the council. The committee cautioned that future years may not always bring such favorable finances, and membership dues then might have to rise.
The board and SCOP agreed with the Visiting Committee that a year's delay in setting up the new governing board is undesirable, so the board will establish a "temporary" governing board this year. SCOP has agreed to delegate certain authority to this temporary board so that it can begin operating as soon as possible. The ACS Board chairman is in the process of appointing a search committee to recommend members. The 10-member governing board will consist of the ACS executive director (as its chairman); the ACS Board chairman; the director of the ACS Publications Division; the director of Chemical Abstracts Service; two ACS members with executive-level experience (not members of the ACS Board), one from industry and one from academia; two nonACS members with management experience in the information industry; and two others with management-level experience in the publishing industry, one of whom may be an ACS member but not a member of the ACS Board. Among other actions taken by the ACS Board were approval of 1997 subscription prices for ACS journals and magazines. Prices for members and nonmembers will increase an average of 6 to 7% from this year, a much smaller increase than in most recent years, even though the number of manuscripts published is expected to increase. None of the publications will increase at a double-digit rate. Under the newly adopted prices, for instance, the society's flagship journal—the Journal of the American Chemical Society—will cost mem-
The two candidates for 1997 president-elect, whom councilors selected from a field of four nominees, are Daryle H. Busch and Paul H. L. Walter. Busch is Roberts Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and Walter is professor of chemistry at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and was chairman of the ACS Board of Directors from 1993 to 1995. The other two nominees were Edward M. Arnett, emeritus professor of chemistry at Duke University, and Richard N. Zare, Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Selection of the two candidates for president-elect completes the formal nominating process for this fall's annual ACS election, although additional candidates may be nominated by petition until the July 15 deadline.
beis $125 next year ($5.00 more than this year) and nonmembers $1,695 ($71 more). The board also authorized an additional $200,000 in grant outlays from the Petroleum Research Fund in 1996, over and above the $12 million already budgeted. And it approved a name change for the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry to the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, and accepted the offer of the Rita H. Small Charitable Trust to sponsor the 1997 presentation. The board also established an endowment, with an initial contribution from the Morris S. Smith Foundation, to support this award beyond 1997. In another award-related action, the board approved the merger of the Francis P. Garvan and the John M. Olin Endowments and approved the draft founding document establishing the Garvan-Olin Medal Endowment. The purpose of this endowment is to generate sufficient income to fund the Garvan-Olin Medal, the annual ACS award that recognizes distinguished service to chemistry by women chemists. In addition, the board approved several other items, including: • Establishment of a group with broad representation from the society's committees to thoroughly investigate the issue of immigration prior to the society's establishing a policy on this subject. • Acceptance in principle of the strategic plan of the Committee on the Inter-
Candidates for director from Region III and Region VI as well as candidates for two director-at-large posts have already been selected and were announced at the council meeting. Candidates for Region III director are Maureen G. Chan, recently retired from AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.; and Donald E. Jones, professor of chemistry at Western Maryland College, Westminster. Candidates for Region VI director are incumbent Glenn A. Crosby, professor of chemistry at Washington State University, Pullman; and Stephen A. Rodemeyer, professor of chemistry at California State University, Fresno. The four candidates for director-atlarge are Michael P. Doyle, D. R. Semmes Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Trinity University, San Antonio; incumbent Attila E. Pavlath,
national Chemistry Celebration and agreement that it be used as guidance for the preparation of related funding requests for 1997-2000. An International Chemistry Celebration, sort of a worldwide National Chemistry Week, is planned for 1999. • Discharge of the Special Committee on the Smithsonian Exhibit, having reached an impasse in persuading the Smithsonian Institution to make any changes to the ACS-funded "Science in American Life" exhibit at the National Museum of American History. • Eligibility of ACS matching grants for all nongovernmental grants and gifts of $2,500 or more to any component of National Chemistry Week or the International Chemistry Celebration given through the ACS Development Office, administered through Public Outreach, and that are not otherwise restricted. • Adoption of the document "Principles of Good Laboratory Practice for Clinical Laboratories" as a policy statement for distribution to appropriate organizations. • Adoption of a resolution that the board and ACS staff express on behalf of the entire membership their gratitude to Towson State University in Maryland—in particular its chemistry department—for its 11 consecutive years of generous support of the ACS publication ChemMatters by providing technical advice, library and Internet resources, and office space, and for enthusiastically supporting efforts to improve secondary science education in the U.S.
research leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif.; Lura J. Powell, director of the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards & Technology, Gaithersburg, Md.; and Edwin P. Przybylowicz, director of the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y. The other incumbent director-atlarge whose term expires at the end of this year, Paul Walter, is a candidate for president-elect. The council also adopted a recommendation to the ACS Board that it increase student registration fees for national meetings to $25 from the current $15, beginning next year. This action comes at a time when ACS has attracted growing numbers of students to national meetings with an expanded student program. However, the financial balance of providing an expanded program and the larger number of attendees paying reduced registration fees has resulted in a declining average dollar revenue per attendee for the society, according to the Committee on Meetings & Expositions. The $10 increase, while seen as modest, will help turn around the decline in average revenue per attendee. In addition, the council approved the Wyoming Section's request to annex the 20 unassigned counties in Wyoming not already part of the section. The annexation adds a vast, sparsely populated region to what has been a three-county section surrounding Laramie. For the record, a large majority of the 50 or so ACS members in these unassigned counties favored the annexation, as did the five local sections whose boundaries are contiguous to the state of Wyoming. In another action, councilors approved changing the meeting dates of the 222nd ACS national meeting in Chicago to Aug. 25-30, 2001, from the previous week. The Committee on Meetings & Expositions reported that the experimental scheduling of the technical programs at national meetings from Sunday through Thursday will continue at least through 1999. However, for next year's fall meeting in Las Vegas, the technical program will begin on Monday rather than Sunday, because of hotels' commitment of rooms through the previous Saturday. • APRIL 15,1996 C&EN
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ACS NEWS
Guide to May local section meetings featuring ACS tour speakers As a service to society members and the public, C&EN publishes from fall to spring monthly guides to ACS tour speaker appearances at upcoming meetings. For general information about these events, which are open to all interested Meeting city Local section
Date (May) Topic code
Meeting city Local section
persons, consult the alphabetical listing of cities and their corresponding local sections along with the topic/speaker key. For additional information contact the local section or the ACS Speaker Service at (202) 872-4613.
Date (May) I Meeting city Topic code Local section
Date (May) I Meeting city Topic code Local section
Date (May) Topic code
Akron, Ohio 15/TBA Akron J. Hermiller, (216)796-3786
Erie, Pa. 16/TBA Erie R. Gallivan, (814) 454-6770
Manhattan, Kan. 13/E Kansas State University L Seitz, (913)776-2735
Syracuse 16/B Syracuse T. Freedman, (315)443-1134
Binghamton, N.Y. 17/D Binghamton M. Starzak, (607) 777-2089
Honolulu 28/C Hawaii M. Tierno, (808)471-4174
Reno, Nev. 24/A Sierra Nevada J. Tomer, (702) 784-6041
TBA, Pa. 13/TBA Corning R. McSweeney, (717) 268-5424
Cleveland 14/TBA Northeastern Ohio S. Lawate, (216)943-1200 ext. 2978
Kansas City, Mo. 15/E Kansas City E. Parente, (816)966-7138
Ridgecrest, Calif. 23/A Mojave Desert C. Brazier, (805) 275-5951
Wichita, Kan. 14/E Wichita M.Zandler, (316)689-3120
Lawrence, Kan. 16/E University of Kansas K. Heppert, (913)865-1748
Stockton, Calif. 21/TBA Sacramento K. Ozimy, (916)987-3933
Wooster, Ohio 13/TBA Wooster R. Kriens, (419)289-5268
Davis, Calif. 20/TBA Sacramento K. Ozimy, (916)987-3933
Topic/Speaker Key A.
Chemistry in the Sherlock Holmes Stories. J. O'Brien, Southwest Missouri State U
B.
Environmental Behavior of Plutonium. G. Choppin, Florida State U.
C.
Famous Mad Hatters. J. O'Brien
D.
Plutonium: An Element for All Scientists. G. Choppin
E.
Supercritical Fluids: Unveiling the Myth and Mystery. V. Krukonis, Phasex Corp.
TBA.To Be Announced
Other local section meetings in May For further information about any of the following events, call the local section contacts at the telephone numbers given. Meeting city Local section
Meeting site Date/time
Topic/speaker/aif i I iation
Chicago Chicago
Chicago O'Hare Marriott Hotel 24/7:30 PM
Ring-Slippage Mechanisms and Kinetics of Ligand Substitution of Organotransition-Metal Complexes. F. Basolo, Northwestern U
R. Sykstus (708) 647-8405
Columbus, Ohio Columbus
Schmidt's Banquet Haus 14/6 PM
A Commercially Viable Process for Phytate Removal from Soy Isolate. T. Mazer, Abbott Laboratories
M. Franks (614)447-3600 ext. 2283
Villanova, Pa. Philadelphia
Villanova University 23/6:30 PM
Chemistry in the Crime Laboratory. R. Saferstein, Forensic Science Consultant
L.Harper (215) 382-1589
38 APRIL 15,1996 C&EN
Contact Telephone No.
