council, board act in new orleans
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COUNCIL, BOARD ACT IN NEW ORLEANS Board approves several initiatives; council passes three petitions, defeats fourth
Linda Raber C&EN Washington
At their meetings last month in New Orleans, the American Chemical Society Board and Council dealt
with complicated and lengthy agendas. The decisions reached at these meetings will help define ACS well into the 21st century.
In a swift and unequivocal move, the ACS Board unanimously approved a position statement condemning the Kansas State Board of Education's decision to remove references to evolution and the origins of the universe from the state's education standards and assessments. The resolution calls the action "a giant step backward for Kansas."
In a news release accompanying the board's decision, ACS President-elect Daryle H. Busch, professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, said: "On the eve of a new millennium, it has never been more important that modern views of science and technology are understood by all Americans. As a Kansan, as a scientist, and as an educator, I know our students deserve no less than that." Later in the week, upon hearing that the board had adopted this position, the ACS Council broke into applause.
The board also unanimously approved a statement supporting initiatives that could encourage the exchange of science and technology information between the U.S. and Cuba. In particular, the statement encourages that review of applications by Cuban and American scientists to travel between the two nations be transparent and based on scientific merit. It suggests formation of a U.S.-Cuba consultative group on science to foster closer scientific collaboration and further mutual understanding. In the statement, ACS says it considers the decline in scientific and academic exchanges between Cuba and the U.S. to be a response to pervasive political hostilities and detrimental to science.
To ensure that chemistry's information resources remain safe, the board also approved $45 million in spending to build new facilities and renovate existing facilities of the society's Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Division in Columbus, Ohio. The plan is to build a two-story data center; to renovate other facilities; to replace major, older equipment; and to renovate telecommunications distribution systems. ACS aims to finance the project with proceeds from a tax-exempt industrial revenue bond issue planned for Oct. 19. Work on the new data center, which will cost $19.8 million, is slated to begin next month and be completed by December 2000.
The Society Committee on Budget & Finance reported in New Orleans that ACS finances are in good shape. As of July 31, ACS core programs—which ex-
elude the Petroleum Research Fund, the Member Insurance Program, and the Matching Gift Program—are projected to end 1999 with a net contribution of $912,000. When the contributions and offsets of the excluded programs are counted in, the net contribution is expected to total $988,000. ACS is expected to end 1999 well within board-established financial targets.
In other items related to the budget, the ACS Board approved three programs for inclusion within the 2000 proposed budget. An office of graduate education will be established within the ACS Education & International Activities Division, but the board declined to establish a governance committee for the office. The proposal for this office grew out of recommendations made by an invitational conference on graduate education in chemistry that was convened last February to study the role ACS should play in graduate education. The office will develop an agenda for a coordinated ACS program in graduate education. This is expected to be a continuing activity and will be funded at a level not to exceed $170,000 for 2000.
The ACS Membership Division received funding to conduct ChemCensus 2000, an employment survey to be sent to the 95,000 ACS members who have
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Makeup of elected council committees for 2000 During their meeting, councilors elected three members to the Committee on Committees, four to the Council Policy Committee, and five to the Committee on Nominations & Elections, all for the 2000-02 term. For 2000, the membership of the committees will be as follows:
COMMITTEE ON COUNCIL POLICY COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS COMMITTEES3 COMMITTEE13 & ELECTIONS
Elected at New Orleans Janan M. Hayes John L. Massingill Jr. Wanda W. Rauscher
Continuing members Peter A. Christie Clara D. Craver Richard L. Deming Ray A. Dickie Carol A. Duane Joe W. Hightower Lydia E. M. Hines Neil D. Jespersen Barbara A. Sawrey Herbert B. Silber Mary E. Thompson Isiah M. Warner
Elected at New Orleans Robin J. Hood Paul R. Jones Ted J. Logan Howard M. Peters
Continuing members Jeannette E. Brown Dennis Chamot Merle I. Eiss Ann P. Moffett Gallucio Madeleine M. Joullie Charles F. Rowell Jack H. Stocker Kent J. Voorhees
Elected at New Orleans Michael P. Doyle Bonnie A. Lawlor Mamie W. Moy Anne T. O'Brien Robert A. Pett
Continuing members Howard G. Barth Rita R. Boggs Bonnie A. Charpentier Donald D. Clarke Stanley C. Israel Gordon L. Nelson Mary V. Orna Peter J. Stang Kathleen D. Trahanovsky H. David Wohlers
a The president-elect is a member (ex officio) of this committee, b The president, president-elect, immediate past-president, and executive director are members (ex officio) of this committee.
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U.S. addresses; are under age 70; and are neither emeritus, retired, nor student members. Reports expected to come out of this survey will include ones on Women in Chemistry 2000, Industrial Chemists 2000, Academic Chemists 2000, and Chemistry Employment 2000. The approved budget for ChemCensus 2000 is $135,000 in 2000 and $32,000 in 2001.
The board also agreed to fund the Office of Communications' request to conduct a public opinion study expected to improve and update information used to define the society's public audience. The society hasn't measured public opinion in more than 12 years, so there are few precise methods to measure the progress the society's public programs are making in improving understanding and appreciation of chemistry. The public opinion survey will likely include a general study of adult Americans on issues related to chemistry and chemists, and one or more smaller surveys in which key questions related to a specific topical area or program are addressed. The study is expected to be a three-year activity, funded at $59,000 per year.
The ACS Council meeting was one of the lengthiest and the most animated in the past decade. Petitions that passed council muster aimed to clarify the society's bylaws regarding affiliation with other technical organizations, change the way member anniversary dates are set, and change the procedure for setting the surcharge for foreign delivery of Chemical & Engineering News. These changes will become official when ratified by the ACS Board of Directors. A petition to
change the society's bylaws to loosen the member population requirements for electing regional directors failed, but not before it generated some discussion.
In detail, the petition to clarify the process by which ACS and its local sections and divisions can form affiliations with other technical organizations passed on voice vote without discussion. Bylaw X, which is affected by this change, is ambiguous and has caused some confusion as to the limitations on such affiliations. The amended bylaw makes it clear that while society affiliations are permitted, those of less than one year's duration will have to be approved by the board of directors. If affiliations last more than one year, the ACS Council, as well as the board, would be asked to approve them. Affiliations by local sections or divisions of ACS will become effective upon authorization by their own governing bodies and confirmation by the Council Committee on Constitution & Bylaws.
Moreover, divisional affiliations will also have to be approved by the Committee on Divisional Activities. Any society affiliation will be terminated after five years unless reauthorized by the board of directors; any local section or division affiliation will be terminated after five years unless reauthorized by its respective governing bodies. The petition is the product of a special presidential task force that was appointed in 1997 by then-ACS President Paul S. Anderson.
Another petition that was approved on voice vote without discussion was one that changes ACS membership from being calculated on a calendar-year basis with quarterly start dates to a rolling 12-
Councll meeting generates applause.
month membership year. It is expected that the changes will enhance the society's ability to attract and retain new members. Current members will retain their original anniversary dates, but new and reinstated members will start their membership as soon as their applications are processed. This change is expected to create a system that is consistent with members' service expectations.
Also passed on voice vote without discussion was a petition that makes the method by which the surcharge for foreign delivery of C&EN is set consistent with the method by which foreign-delivery surcharges are set for all other ACS publications. Instead of having the surcharge fixed by the ACS Board with the approval of the council, the surcharge will now be defined in board regulations and will most likely be set by the Governing Board for Publishing, which sets prices for all other ACS publications.
But one petition up for council action was upstaged by an earlier recommendation by the Committee on Nominations & Elections to reshuffle the local sections within the regions that elect regional directors. Redistricting of local sections is one way to bring the number of members within the electoral regions under constitutional guidelines. Some action was necessary because, according to current bylaws, the number of members whose addresses lie within these regions should be within 10% of the result obtained when dividing the society's membership population by six. This is necessary to ensure equal representation among members living in the six ACS regions.
The redisricting plan recommended by the Committee on Nominations & Elections would relocate 20 local sections. The committee believes that these changes will result in achieving the goal of a more equitable distribution of members among the six voting regions. It is also expected that this plan would eliminate the need for redisricting for as long as 10 years.
Opponents of the redistricting were adamant that they wanted to maintain their current regional ties. For example, John Connolly of the ACS Colorado Section, told the council that Colorado members of ACS, 80% of whom live west of Interstate 25, are strongly opposed to the redistricting that would take them out of the more western Region VI and put them into the more midwestern Region V. But councilor James P. Shoffner of the ACS Chicago Section said that the Region V caucus supported the redis-
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tricting unanimously. The Washington, D.C., Section councilors voted unanimously against it, but the Pittsburgh Section was very happy with the plan. In the end, the recommendation to redis-trict was supported by the council and will become effective on Jan. 1, 2000.
So, when the formal petition was presented to the council to increase the allowable member population distribution from ±10% to ±15% within the six geographical regions that elect regional directors, much of its thunder was gone. Since the redistricting plan had already been approved, the petition—which simply provided another way of making sure elections for regional directors were in compliance with society bylaws—seemed less necessary. It was defeated on a voice vote.
The controversy surrounding the re-districting proposal was small compared to the hourlong, frequently passionate, and sometimes angry discussion surrounding a plan that would increase some registration fees for national meetings to allow the ACS national meetings program to break even in five years.
Because overhead costs were reallocated several years ago, the national meetings are currently operating at a deficit. The financial goal for the national meetings operation is to break even over a rolling five-year period. After 18 months of review and amendment, the Committee on Meetings & Expositions asked the council to endorse a long-range financial plan to address the deficit.
In this plan, the changes in the fee structure would include increases in student and precollege teacher fees. The increases would be phased in gradually over quite a few years. The student affiliates and precollege teacher rates would increase by $5.00 per year and the graduate student member rate, by
$10 per year. Student affiliates and precollege teacher fees will be capped at 25% of the ACS member registration fee; graduate student, retired member, and emeritus member fees will be capped at 50% of full member fees. This plan is expected to achieve breakeven in 2004 and has been endorsed by the Committee on Budget & Finance, the Women Chemists Committee, the International Activities Committee, the Local Section Activities Committee, the Society Committee on Education, and others.
The plan is relatively simple, but some councilors contended that this budget would be balanced on the backs of the wrong people. Almost three dozen people spoke up, many of them urging the council not to endorse the plan. Some were very concerned that raising the precollege teacher fee would shut teachers out of ACS national meetings because school districts generally do not support teacher involvement in professional organizations. Others were exasperated that an accounting change—reallocation of overhead—caused the problem in the first place. Most of the opponents spoke against any barriers being erected that could discourage undergraduate student involvement in society meetings.
The Committee on Meetings & Expositions had been able to address some of these concerns by assuring the Society Committee on Education (SOCED) that any potential increase of student affiliates fees at national meetings would be carefully monitored to ensure that no decrease in student registration results as a consequence. In addition, SOCED requested and the Committee on Meetings & Expositions agreed that if any adverse impact were noted, ACS would find some means to subsidize further the student affiliates registration fee at national meetings.
The plan will be presented to the board of directors for action at its December meeting. If approved, the new rate structure will be put in place in 2000 with an advance member registration fee of $245.
In other actions, the ACS Board of Directors:
• Approved nominal cosponsorship of CHEMRAWN XIV, 'Toward Environmentally Benign Processes & Products," which will be held at the University of Colorado, Boulder, June 9-13, 2001.
• Authorized $25,000 of existing funds for the support of CHEMRAWN XIV.
• Approved nominal cosponsorship of the January 2000 American Meteorological Society meeting.
• Allocated $4,000 to support the Engineers & Scientists Joint Committee on Pensions' request to study the feasibility of implementing a society-based occupational retirement plan.
The council acted on the following additional matters:
• Approved a change in the name of the Committee on Nomenclature to the Committee on Nomenclature, Terminology & Symbols.
• Concurred with a task force's recommendation and voted that the Committee on Publications would assume those duties and responsibilities currently assigned to the Committee on Copyrights and discharged the Committee on Copyrights. The board of directors concurred in this action.
• Approved a change in name and status of the Committee on Public Relations from an "other" council committee to the Joint Board-Council Committee on Public Relations & Communications. The board of directors concurred in this action.^
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Council adopts petitions on affiliations, membership anniversaries, C&EN delivery surcharge Proposed amendment Bylaw affected Major provisions Council action
Society Affiliation with Other Bylaw X; Bylaw VII, Sec. 13; Sets limitations on society affiliations and formalizes Carried Technical Organizations Bylaw VIII, Sec. 10 approval procedures
Membership Anniversary Bylaw I, Sec. 2 and 4; Bylaw Changes ACS membership period from calendar year to Carried Dates for New and XII, Sec. 3, a (para. 4), d, e, rolling membership year Reinstated Members (para. 1), f, g (para.1), i, and j
Change in Member Bylaw V, Sec. 4, a Requires that regions electing directors have populations Defeated Population for Defining that vary by ±15% instead of current 10% allowable Regional Boundaries variance
Surcharge for Delivery of the Bylaw XII, Sec. 3, a (para. 2) Defines authority for setting the surcharge for foreign Carried Official Organ delivery of C&EN in board regulations rather than in the
bylaws