How to Organize A Symposium

Anyone can organize a PMSE symposium at a national ACS meeting. To propose a topic, use the one-page Proposal Form below as a guide, and submit the completed form to any of the Technical Program Co-Chairs listed at the bottom. You may wish to discuss your idea with one of the Program Co-Chairs first; please do not hesitate to call or e-mail. In addition to traditional PMSE program areas, the Program Co-Chairs are especially interested in symposia devoted to new or emerging areas of polymer technology and science.

The Program Co-Chairs and the organizers of the proposed symposia will jointly decide on which national meeting would be most appropriate to hold the symposium. A listing for the symposium (title and organizers' contact information) will run twice annually in both Chemical & Engineering News and the PMSE Proceedings (preprint book) from the time the symposium is put on the program until the meeting in which it runs. Of course, additional advertising (by paper or e-mail, web pages, etc.) by the organizers would boost interest in both attending and presenting at the symposium.

The Technical Program Committee has prepared a comprehensive set of Guidelines for Symposium Organizers to assist you in planning your symposium. This 20+ page packet is available upon request from one of the Program Co-Chairs; it will automatically be sent to you and your co-organizers once your symposium is added to the PMSE program. In brief, the principal duties which fall upon a symposium organizer are:

1) Make sure key researchers in the area are invited to participate in the symposium. Often, getting commitments from a few key individuals early can help, through advertising, to generate even greater interest in the symposium.

2) Obtain any funds necessary to partially defray the costs of selected speakers (generally academics from overseas). Several sources of funding are described in the Guidelines for Symposium Organizers.

3) Assemble the program for the symposium, including the ACS Abstracts and PMSE Preprints from each participant, and forward these to the PMSE Vice-Chair for incorporation into the national meeting program.

The Guidelines for Symposium Organizers contains detailed checklists and timelines for the items generic to all symposia, which should be especially helpful to first-time organizers. In addition, the Guidelines contain application forms for funding from PMSE, and from the ACS Corporation Associates, as well as a sample application to the Petroleum Research Fund (none of these exceeds four pages). In addition, the Program Co-Chairs will be happy to discuss the organization of your symposium with you if you have any questions. Many PMSE symposia have resulted in books, typically in the ACS Symposium Series, and PMSE encourages such publication. Contact information for ACS Books is provided in the Guidelines.

Technical programs are truly the heart of the Division's activities, so we thank you for your interest!

Proposal Form for New PMSE Symposium

Thank you for your interest in organizing a symposium for the PMSE Division of the ACS. Please fill in this form as completely as you are able so that we can give your idea proper consideration.

Organizers' Names and Contact Information

(address, phone, email): __________________________________________________________________________________________

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Symposium Title:___________________________________________________________________________________

Brief Description of Topics to be covered:_________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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Proposed date/venue:_________________________________________________________________________

Potential invited speakers:_____________________________________________________________________

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Potential Cosponsors, if any (in and out of ACS):___________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Other relevant information:____________________________________________________________________

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Return form to any of the Technical Program Chairs:
 

For information of the planned symposia, please see PMSE Future Programs

, Number of access since October 10, 2000