Local Section/Division Interactions Generate New Activities

"It is a time to build and grow; an opportunity to renew and redefine."

The funding petition for local sections and divisions, which was approved in mid-2003, offers exciting possibilities for local sections to accomplish new things, engage in new activities. Here is an opportunity to introduce activities that were off limits because of a lack of funding. And many of you have taken advantage of that opportunity. By the April 1 deadline, we had received 20 proposals for the second round of the Innovative Grant Program. I am eager to begin reviewing these requests to learn more about the new activities that are on the horizon!

Remember: The funds are intended to jump start fresh, innovative activities that can be conducted by an individual section, in cooperation with another section, or as an interactive activity with one or more divisions. If you did not submit a request this time around, don’t fret; another opportunity will be available this fall.

Local section life often becomes too bland if you do the same things the same way. Same ol,’ same ol.’ Doing things differently may make them more interesting to more members. Each year local sections elect new officers who bring fresh ideas and approaches to doing things. Something as simple as a change of venue might attract new members and encourage attendance at monthly meetings by current members. Local sections that make use of the ACS Speaker Service have the opportunity, as often as several times a year, to invite a speaker from a different area of the country to lecture on an unusual topic. The Speaker Service has recruited about 200 speakers—experts on a variety of subjects—from which sections may select. That’s an easy way to have successful, interesting meetings or get-togethers. Regular-format meetings are relatively easy to repeat in another year.

New concepts are difficult to create. What do you do when confronted with a challenge? If there is time, you would look at other successful programs and mimic something that has worked well for those sections. Some would cry, “Plagiarism, copycat!” But you are not stealing anything that is copyrighted or has monetary value. And we’ve all heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! I’m never ashamed to mimic another section’s activities and turn ideas or concepts into something even better for my own section. LSAC will tell you about “best practices” of other sections. There are lots of ways to learn what other groups are doing, and you’re already doing one—reading this newsletter! C&ENews is another source. Reading other local sections’ annual reports is yet another. Did you know that many local section annual reports are available on the Internet? While a visit to a local section Web site is certainly informative, why not visit another section in person? An evening spent at a neighboring section may bring new contacts, reestablish old contacts, and prompt you to think about new activities that your own section could undertake. Or you might be inspired to plan activities from which both your section and your neighbor might benefit, e.g., larger audiences, new attendees, different interactions, innovative ideas, etc. Ask yourself why regional meetings are generally so successful. Change is often good, and new groups meeting and interacting can provide change and new ways of thinking about familiar situations and practices. It is stimulating to hear, see, and learn of new technologies, new concepts, new science.

Consider having one joint meeting a year with a neighbor on each side of you. That would be a simple way to have three or four different types of meetings each year. You could also have the four sections come together for an annual, mini-regional meeting. That would assure numerous new interactions. (Request assistance with the cost of such a venture with an Innovative Project grant!) Local sections in Detroit, Huron Valley, and Toledo shared a visit to a Detroit Tigers baseball game last year. The same three groups are sponsoring a joint meeting at which an astronaut (a Michigan native) will be a guest. The meeting will coincide with Astronomy Day scheduled for this spring. If your adjacent neighboring groups are too far apart, two groups might jointly sponsor a two-day visit by a noted outside speaker in late afternoon or early evening on successive days on two different subjects. There would be an event in each section’s area, and section members could choose to attend either or both events. That is essentially the aim of the ACS Speaker Service, but on a somewhat smaller scale. If your plans get that far along, you might even invite another section down the road to participate—and you now have a Speaker Tour. This will cost only $300 per section for the speaker, and ACS will pay part of the cost. The possibilities are endless if you look for them. We are supporting all of these interactions with Innovative Project Funds this year. More information will follow.

On Tuesday afternoon at the national meeting in Anaheim there was an open session of LSAC in which local section representatives talked about their activities and plans. That session was followed by a reception for local section officers, tour speakers, and division officers. Local sections are encouraged to invite division members in the local section to attend their meetings, and divisions are being encouraged to find division-oriented tour speakers for the speaker service.

If you are planning to attend the fall meeting in Philadelphia, be sure to put the Tuesday evening awards ceremony on your calendar. Awards will be presented for activities and for Outstanding Performance by a Local Section (six of them). Over 39 awards will be given, including six top prizes to the Most Outstanding Local Sections. Of great importance to those of you seeking new ideas is the Poster Session for all of the finalists in each category, which precedes the award presentations at the ChemLuminary Awards. Go! Mimic! Copy! Steal good ideas! They’re free! Remember: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

LSAC has an important new joint subcommittee with the Divisional Activities Committee. Members of both committees convene at each national meeting and occasionally between meetings electronically to propose and discuss modes of interaction that local sections and divisions might share and facilitate jointly. The new committee is called the LSAC/DAC Joint Subcommittee on Local Section and Division Interaction (not an imaginative name, but descriptive). The co-chairs are Leslie McQuire of LSAC and the North Jersey Section and Ben Chastain, chair of History of Chemistry Division and a member of the Alabama Section. The purpose is to look for and identify joint activities that some sections might carry out with some divisions. The new Local Section/Division Funding Petition approved last summer helps both committees fund new activities with one-time Innovative Project Grants of up to $3,000 from LSAC. Funding can come from both LSAC and/or DAC if the activity is proposed to both committees. The new Innovative Project Grants program specifically requests that sort of imaginative proposal/activity between two or more local sections or local section(s) and division(s).

I previously mentioned the Huron Valley/Detroit/Toledo group activity. Other examples are the Younger Chemists (YCC) groups of Midland (Michigan) and Huron Valley that propose the establishment of an active YCC in the Huron Valley section (home of University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, and others). North Jersey has proposed a joint afternoon symposium with the Medicinal and Organic Divisions in Central NJ, the crossroads of the pharmaceutical industry, preceded by a symposium on “The Future of Chemistry and Chemical Research in NJ” in the morning. Coastal Georgia Section will have a meeting on the Savannah River Project with the Nuclear Chemistry Division. South Jersey Section ran an opinion survey among its members, many of whom are in the chemical industry, and learned that many members think South Jersey Section does nothing to attract or interest chemists in industry. As a result, they have proposed a symposium on process chemistry to attract participants from the area's chemical industries. Central Arkansas has a project in cooperation with the Arkansas Conference on Teaching to introduce “Green Chemistry” to science teachers of grades 5–12. We have funded 18 of the projects proposed in the October submissions, some fully and some partially. We do not fund honoraria or food in the form of meals. Funding ranged from $3,000 (the maximum), to a low of $700, the amount requested for part of a project that interacted with about 1,500 students. Come see for yourself some of the innovative activities that were funded.

As I mentioned earlier, we have just begun to review the second round of proposals, and I am looking forward to reading each one. October 1 and April 1 are the deadlines for proposal submission each year. Sections may apply twice within a year if they were not successful in the first round, but can only be funded once in a given year.

At a recent luncheon meeting, a group of eight section and division leaders were challenged to find and propose a joint activity that a section and a division at that table could carry out. After a round of introductions, no one had an idea for cooperation and despaired of finding any! Moments later, however, one participant revealed himself as chair of a division. Shortly, another revealed herself as chair of a local section that was home to three different industries very relevant to the division chair’s subject area within that section’s geographical area, and that employed a good number of local section members. A successful joint meeting may be proposed and ought to be very successful. These groups were unaware of one another and had no reason for interaction prior to that lunch-time conversation. Indeed, they were even reluctant to talk about or consider joint activity at first. It was not easy, but the hope of finding some possible interaction provided the catalyst. You have to want to do, and you have to talk to others in order to find a way to do. Seek and you shall find! One cannot go to, and through, graduate school without being an optimist. So we’re all capable of being optimistic. An optimist never looks at a glass half full of water and says, “I don’t have any, it’s only half full.” The optimist says, “What can I do with that much water?” Sometimes section and division leaders need their optimism to see just how much that “water” can be.

LSAC strives to continue to meet the needs of its members and local sections and to reach into the future. Our Subcommittee on Future Local Sections and Leaders (Leslie McQuire, chair) regularly leads a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that local sections may face in the future. He notes that “we cannot prevent social or demographic change, but we can work to alter the impact of those changes.” Some of the changes and challenges discussed at the New York meeting last fall were:

(a) the aging of our members
(b) a smaller, less willing, and perhaps less able volunteer pool
(c) the increasing potential of technology
(d) the changing nature of leadership and training
(e) alternative meeting formats (e-meetings)
(f) the continuing and increasing need to add value to our programming
(g) low attendance at local section activities
(h) participation of industrial members in local section activities

I am sure that each local section faces many of these issues, as well as numerous others that we all share. Let us hear about other challenges you face. We especially want to hear about solutions to challenges you have faced and about steps you have undertaken to counter them and improve your section’s performance. Nothing is constant but change! So change, adapt, and grow your section with it.

“Indeed, it is a time to build and grow; an opportunity to renew and redefine.”

Yorke E. Rhodes, Chair
Local Section Activities Committee

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