Tour Speakers—One of the Oldest Activities of Local Sections

In the spring issue of Leading Together, I wrote about one of the newest activities of the Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC), the new Innovative Grants Proposals. This program was introduced in fall 2003 after much discussion and activity preceding approval of the Petition for Funding for Local Sections and Divisions. After the program was announced, we received 53 proposals from sections, funded 34 of them, and have about $40,000 remaining. Funding two-thirds of the proposals is good news for those of you who have not yet received a grant. Get out your pens or log onto your computers and submit a project proposal. Remember that the deadline is August 1, 2004. We want to give this money to you for a new activity—for your own section, cooperatively with another section or division, or both. The time is short, so I am giving you a heads-up to get ready.

In this issue of Leading Together, I am switching topics—from the newest to one of the oldest activities of LSAC, the Speaker Service, which supplies Tour Speakers to local sections. The Speaker Service is a partnership of LSAC and the Office of Local Section Activities, 189 local sections (you), and about 200 volunteer speakers who give their time to go to your sections to share some of their ideas. These ideas may be technical at the highest or newest levels of our science, or technical or interesting for their practicality or current interest. Or they may be applications of chemical science in particular areas of interest to the speaker—topics such as winemaking, gardening, gourmet foods, or dieting. I hesitate to say areas of interest that may be hobbies to the speaker, because that sounds like too much fun, but isn’t that what makes a talk interesting, fun for the speaker, and fun for the audience?

My own particular Tour Speaker topic is “Astrochemistry, Evolution of Organic Molecular Species in Interstellar Clouds.” Initially, that topic was a hobby or layman’s interest for me, but as more and more molecules have been identified by the NASA Space Science Program and other agencies over the last 30 years, my hobby has gradually become more of a technical interest. I have now conducted research in molecular structures—where they come from, their chemical origin in space. I like the German word for space: the All. Apparently, there are plenty of Trekkies out there who find my subject appealing, because I have traveled to and given 3 to 5 lectures in each of 14 circuits in the past several years. That’s 60 to 70 sections that I have visited, out of the 189 local sections. That’s a significant number! I’m still a piker, though, compared to John Fortman and Attila Pavlath, both of whom are approaching 100% of local sections visited.

Typically, a Tour Speaker may give lectures in one circuit each year, or sometimes two. The visit takes a lot of time and can be difficult to coordinate with a working person’s schedule. We have gradually decreased the number of visits from 4 or 5 per circuit to 3, typically. The visit can take place on either a Monday-to-Wednesday or a Wednesday-to-Friday basis. That schedule seems to be easier for individual speakers and does not completely disrupt their lives. After all, Tour Speakers are volunteers, and while they do get their expenses paid, they are not paid for their services. In my own case, I have often made 3 or 4 tours per year because I am retired (from New York University) and can schedule the visits more readily. I enjoy meeting people in sections, especially as chair of LSAC for 3 years. It’s wonderful for me to participate in your section meetings and see close up what sections are like, rather than simply reading the cold words and tables of your annual reports.

There are 28 circuits within the United States (including local sections in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico). Each circuit is made up of several local sections, usually 6-8, within a specific geographical area that is reachable by car or plane from one day to the next. The most arduous trip I have taken was in the Heartland Circuit, which took me from Kearney, NE, to Ames, IA, to St. Paul, MN, up to Bemidji, MN, then down to Sioux Falls, SD. That was 1,500 miles in 5 days in a rental car. I was exhausted by the end of the week. On one trip in and around Tennessee I was pursued—at least it felt that way—by several tornadoes in one day while I drove from Chattanooga to Memphis. One, the biggest storm I’ve ever seen, was a tornado that eventually ripped through Nashville and went across I-45 behind me; I could see it in my rear-view mirror. Another time I drove from Quincy, IL, to St. Louis in a Saturday morning snow storm in order to catch a flight to BWI to attend a dinner of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Historical Society. By the time I got to St. Louis that morning, I was slewing in 6-8 inches of new, unplowed snow. Amazing I got there at all. Ah me, the things we do for fun!

When I have free time during my travels, and when I arrive sufficiently early, I like to visit other facilities or speak to high school student groups about something scientific and related to my area, but not from my talk. President-elect Bill Carroll does this with his tours and recommends that we all do it. I concur. I often ask students how big they think a light year is, the distance light travels in a year. They have no idea, and I say let’s calculate it. So it’s really a case of dimensional analysis converting 186,000 miles per second, a number many of them know but can’t comprehend, to the equivalent per year. The exercise is great to do, but the approximate answer is equally unfamiliar: about 10¹⁶! I will never forget one young man in the high school at Grambling College in Northwestern Louisiana during my very first tour. In the middle of my number analysis he said, “You’re not from here. You don’t talk like us.” When I said, “I’m from New York and I live in New York City, right on Broadway and Tenth Street,” he refused to believe me. “You can’t be from New York City!” he exclaimed. He really made my day. And his comments helped to initiate interaction with his classmates and some of his teachers. I’ll never forget him.

That’s what it’s like to be a Tour Speaker. Would you like to join us? There’s a brochure on the ACS Local Section Web site, or e-mail Deb McLaughlin. The program offers sections—especially the smaller ones— speakers and topics that would otherwise be unavailable to them. And it’s quite a good deal: A section must pay only $300 for a speaker that might come from Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other points. Come and join us; it’s worth your while. We’re always looking for new, interesting subjects and Tour Speakers.

Yorke E. Rhodes, Chair
Local Section Activities Committee

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