ACS HURON VALLEY SECTION
Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
December14, 2017
Location: Paesanos, Ann Arbor, MI
PresentBrackman, Contis, Dobrowolski, Hall, Kolopajlo, Lynam, van der Laan
1.Call to Order
The meeting opened at 5.29 pm.
2.November Minutes
The November 2017 meeting minutes were approved.
3.Communications from the Chair (Aaron)
Aaron indicated that this will be his last meeting as he will be moving to Minneapolis in the coming months.
We need to hold elections form the Chair-Elect and Treasurer and Councilor. An e-mail should be sent out to the membership to solicit nominations. Once received, a ballot should be drawn up and sent to the membership for voting. Larry offered to help Wade with sending emails out to the list-serve.
Preparations are underway to file the 2017 Annual Report and Financial Report, due on February 15th, 2018. We are invited to provide a summary of highlights for the year that can subsequently be cut and pasted into FORMs. Please send your submissions to Aaron or Harriet.
Earth Day 2018, NSF international is planning to have a table but Aaron will not be involved with that. If the HVACS plans to sponsor a table we should let the Leslie Science Center know by February at the latest. At a minimum we should continue with our sponsorship as there are many organizations who want to participate and if we let our sponsorship lapse it might be difficult to renew it and run a demo at future Earth Day events. In the event that we have a demo table, we need a coordinator who will organize the event and solicit for volunteers. A budget of $350 would be needed, $250 for sponsorship and $100 for supplies. We also need to plan a demo activity for children to (Zero waste, kid friendly with an Earth Day theme) conduct when they visit our table. There are many good ones in the Celebrating Chemistry magazine. Aaron has many copies from 2013-2017 which he would like to pass on to us.
4.Communication from Chair-Elect (Harriet)
Harriet was unable to be at the meeting.
5.Communications from Treasurer (Wade)
There were no communications as Wade was unable to attend our meeting
6.Communications from Councilors
Nina discussed that a change in by laws to allow representation for international members will be voted on at the upcoming ACS National Meeting in New Orleans.
This year marks the 50th year of Project SEED and there are plans to institute the program globally.
7.Communications from Student Chapters
EMU – Larry indicated that he is now the faculty advisor to the Chemistry Club. They recently received an honorable mention from the National Office based on their activities last year.
U of M (UG and POLY/PMSE)– Ryan reported that the graduate student assisted outreach program to schools continues. Over 1,000 students have been reached in the Detroit area. The group also runs teacher workshops. This outreach program and results were published in manuscript titled “Augmenting Primary and Secondary Education with Polymer Science and Engineering in a special themed issue Polymer Concepts Across the Curriculum in the November 2017 edition of Journal of Chemical Education.
The committee approved $200 towards expenses for the “Beyond Graduate School: Career Opportunities Workshop series in 2018.
8.Communications from Outreach/Events
Aaron indicated that we should continue to post information on the website and facebook keeping in mind that these posting should contain dates, times and venues.
9.Open/New Topics
Larry is interested in starting an initiative to provide assistance to out of work HVACS members. It was decided that we will start a pilot grant program awarding two grants ($500) to help with expenses to find a new job. Some examples would be a travel grant to help with registration for national or regional ACS meetings. We discussed putting a questionnaire on the web/facebook sites which could be used to select candidates and final awardees. We will discuss this in more detail at our next meeting.
In addition, we also want to provide additional resources, e.g. a listing of companies in the area that hire chemists as a resource. Paul mentioned an additional resource - ACS Insight Lab where members can join discussion boards and networks.
The Leadership Institutewill be held in Dallas in January 2018, Mary offered to go this year and will look into the registration and update committee members.
For the 2021 CERM meeting:
We need to identify committees (budget, etc) needed to form to start planning the meeting. Each committee will need a leader to organize and coordinate efforts.
We need to find potential speakers for the meeting by reaching out to them to see if they are interested in speaking.
We will continue to communicate with other chapters/or past organizers to seek their input about planning trajectories.
The 2018 CERM will be in Toledo, OH. We will post information on our web/facebook sites to bring awareness to our chapter members.