Montana Section – American Chemical Society

April 14, 2007 Executive Committee Minutes (pdf version)

Dawn Bregel – Secretary

The Executive Committee of the Montana Section of the American Chemical Society met on Saturday, April 14 at Montana Tech University as part of the agenda for the annual Spring Meeting-in-Miniature.

Those present at the meeting were:

Earle Adams – Chair
Janice Alexander – Chair Elect
Tony Haag – Treasurer
Dawn Bregel – Secretary
Doug Coe – Alternate Councilor
Kyle Strode – Past Chair
Doug Cameron

The meeting was called to order at 3:30 PM.

Items of Discussion

1) Treasurer’ report
(a) Tony Haag distributed copies of the treasurer’s report. The section is in good financial standing.
(b) The committee decided to eliminate the educational account (an internal account) because more money goes out than in.
(c) The committee accepted the treasurer’s report.

2) Councilor’s report from the Spring 2007 National ACS Meeting

Cyd McClure (councilor) attended the spring 2007 national meeting but was not present at the April 14 executive committee meeting, thus no councilor’s report was presented. Kyle Strode agreed to send Cyd an email requesting a councilor’s report be sent electronically to the executive committee.

3) Impromptu discussion of creating more committee position

(a) Pursue participation from chemists at Montana State. The most likely candidate is assistant professor Hien Nguyen. Possible nominee for chair elect?
(b) As the chair, Earle Adams can appoint ad hoc committee members. Perhaps establish positions for an industry representative and a high school teacher. Possibly pay ACS membership for one high school teacher per year and that person becomes chair of a high school committee.
(c) Potential nominees for councilor (for next election): Kyle Strode, Don Stierle, Steve Holmgren. The goal is to get someone active in the local section. The issue will be discussed again in the fall.

(a) Montana Tech will no longer host the Montana ACS website. The site is currently being transferred over to the National ACS site as host. This will give executive committee members the ability to post items to the site.
(b) Tony Haag will take over as webmaster.

(a) There were eight nominations from the region for the high school teaching award, one of which was from Montana. There were NO nominations for the volunteer service award as of the April 1 deadline. There should be 5-6 nominations by April 16.

(b) There needs to be a systematic process for getting nominees for both the local and regional high school teacher awards. The executive committee focused on formulating a process for getting local section nominees.
The approximate time frame is as follows:

1. send out an announcement of nomination request before the end of the academic year
2. send the nomination request in early fall
3. deadline for nominations is sometime in October or November
4. the executive committee or a subcommittee will vote electronically to chose a winner

(c) The same time frame will be followed for the volunteer service award.

(d) Kyle Strode will draft a letter for the volunteer service award.

(e) Earle Adams and Doug Cameron will work on gathering a list of principals and superintendents and will draft the initial announcement of request for nominations for the local high school award.

The committee decided on Chico Hot Springs as the ideal location. Depending on availability at Chico, the social will be held the weekend of October 20 or October 27.

Kyle Strode proposed that executive committee members be compensated for travel and lodging costs related to attendance of fall and spring meetings. The committee agreed that this was a fair idea and the section will reimburse executive committee members for lodging costs and gas used to travel to and from the fall and spring meetings. Receipts must be submitted to the treasurer.

(a) Kyle Strode suggested a Montana section sponsored speaker tour as an annual event. The goal would be to get top Montana researchers out into the state, sharing their research. Doug Coe suggested including industrial chemists (Rocky Mountain Labs, Glaxo Smith Kline) as well as academic chemists. All those present at the meeting supported with Kyle’s plan, and he agreed to take leadership of organizing the tour each year.

(b) In conjunction with several other sections in the region, Janice Alexander submitted an ACS national speaker tour proposal. There has been no decision from National ACS yet.

(a) The remaining $4800 of the current EPSCoR Innovative grant will be used for the high school teacher’s summer workshop previously discussed. The location and the date are set. At least 6 teachers are currently signed up.

(b) As per the discussion at the executive committee meeting at the Fall Social, Earle followed up on the idea of writing an Innovative grant proposal to fund a joint meeting with Idaho and Wyoming sections. One of the Idaho sections was interested in pursuing a joint meeting. Due to the limited interest from other the other sections, the committee decided that this is not the best idea for an Innovative grant.

(c) Another idea discussed for an Innovative grant proposal was to use the money as seed money to supplement and/or set a precedent for the Montana speaker tour (see item 8a). For this to be innovative, perhaps have a big name researcher from a Montana university travel to smaller schools such as community colleges and tribal colleges.

Possible dates suggested were February 23 or not until April 5. The issue will be revisited at the fall meeting.