POLY Councilors' Report of the Washington Meeting

At the Washington National Meeting (August 16-20, 2009), POLY was represented at the ACS Council by Bill Daly, H. N. Cheng, and John Pochan. The following account summarizes some selected activities in the committees and groups that POLY Councilors are involved in.

Division Activities Committee (DAC) - John Pochan

At the request of the Division of Chemical Technicians (TECH) and the recommendation of DAC, the Council voted to disband TECH. Note: 96% of TECH members are members of other divisions and the TECH membership felt it was unnecessary to continue as a separate entity.

DAC completed the second round of Innovative Project funding with the award of 10 more grants. POLY received two awards during the spring vetting of the awards.

A DAC committee on the electronic dissemination of national meeting content continues to work with ACS staff and Content Management Corporation to improve and enlarge captured video content. Business models are being vetted and will be presented to the divisions at a future national meeting. Content recorded in Washington is available on line to all meeting registrants.

Multidisciplinary Program Planning Group (MPPG) - John Pochan

Themes for San Francisco (2010) (Chemistry for a Sustainable World), Boston (2010) (Chemistry for Preventing and Combating Disease, Anaheim (2011)(Chemistry of Natural Resources), and Denver (2011) (Chemistry of Air, Space and Water ) had been confirmed previously. The theme for San Diego (2012) - Chemistry of Life - was approved. The committee is requesting suggestions for thematic program leaders for the 2011 and 1012 meetings. If you have any suggestion, please contact me (johnpochan@hotmail.com). MPPG is also supporting alternate programming formats - see information below on the alternate poster format for the Washington meeting. If you have suggestions for alternative formats within or outside the national meeting, please get them to me. Note: There is the possibility of applying for funding via a DAC Innovation Award (http://membership.acs.org/C/CDA/awards.html ) if the alternative is unique and will help out constituents.

Committee on Meetings & Expositions (M&E) - Bill Daly and H. N. Cheng

The Washington meeting was successful from the point of view of attendance (over 14,319) and programming (8700 papers and posters). Because the pilot Sunday expo program was successful at Salt Lake City, the expo was again open in Washington on Sunday evening between 6:30-8:30 PM. The show was well attended. In view of cost of living increase, M&E recommended a $10 increase in registration fee in 2010 national meetings.

At this meeting a large number of presentations were recorded. It was expected that more talks will be recorded in the future. Anyone who registered for the meeting has access to these recorded talks on the ACS webpage. In conformity with the green initiative, M&E worked hard to make the meeting greener - by reducing unnecessary paper, recycling disposal materials, and reducing waste. The effort to decrease bus shuttles, however, seemed to be viewed negatively by membership.

At this meeting, POLY pioneered a new poster format. Instead of having the posters on Sunday and Tuesday evenings at the Convention Center, all POLY posters were presented at the Grand Hyatt at the same time as the oral sessions of the corresponding symposia. M&E approved this new format and was very interested in how it worked out.

M&E has changed the company that ran the OASys computer abstract entry system. The new system (called PACS) will be used for the Spring 2010 meeting. Thus, the abstract and preprint entry for the upcoming meeting will use the new system (deadline being October 19, 2009).

Committee on Committees (ConC) - H. N. Cheng

The Committee on Committees (ConC) is responsible for the effective and efficient operation of Council-related committees. At this meeting, staffing of different committees was discussed, together with a mini-review of committees. In addition, the ConC handles specific tasks. Several tasks of interest may be mentioned here:

1) The report by the joint Board-ConC Action Enablement Team on alignment of ACS Council-related committees was reviewed.
2) The ConC Task Force on Senior Chemists is making good progress, under the leadership of Eli Pearce. A symposium on ÒHow to be a ConsultantÓ was held at this meeting. The Tuesday breakfast meeting was sold out. In addition to Eli, several POLY members are involved, e.g., Bill Daly, Bob (Kodak) Moore, and H. N. Cheng.
3) ConC Subcommittee on Industrial Pipeline would like to increase participation by industrial ACS members in ACS governance. If any industrial POLY member is interested, please get in touch with H.N. at hncheng100@yahoo.com

Committee on Nomenclature, Terminology, and Symbols (NTS) - H. N. Cheng

This committee strives to provide leadership in nomenclature and coordinates its work with other national and international organizations on nomenclature, particularly with respect to ACS publications. The two urgent matters are the redefinition of the kilogram and the naming of element 112. For information on other activities, visit their website at http://membership.acs.org/N/NOME

Other Items of Interest 1) The ACS is taking a leading role in the celebration of the International Year of Chemistry-2011 (IYOC-2011).

2) The ACS Leadership Development System (LDS) offers many courses. Anyone interested can sign up to take them at www.acs.org/leaderdevelopment

3) A new program called Chemistry Ambassadors is designed to equip ACS members to be more effective spokespersons for chemistry. More information may be found at www.acs.org/chemistryambassadors