Council Preview

When the American Chemical Society Council meets later this month during the ACS national meeting in Denver, it will select candidates for national office and vote on a change to society dues. It will also vote on petitions to form two new ACS international chemical sciences chapters and will consider two other petitions to amend the society’s bylaws.

The Committee on Nominations & Elections (N&E) laid the groundwork for the council last fall when it prepared a slate of nominees for the office of ACS president-elect for 2016. The four nominees are G. Bryan Balazs, an associate program leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; Allison A. Campbell, associate laboratory director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Richland, Wash.; David J. Lohse, a retired distinguished research associate in ExxonMobil Research & Engineering’s Corporate Strategic Research Labs, Annandale, N.J.; and Christopher J. Welch, science lead for analytical chemistry in Merck Research Laboratories’ Department of Process & Analytical Chemistry, Rahway, N.J.

A “President-Elect Nominee Town Hall Meeting” will be held in Centennial Ballrooms F & G at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center on Sunday, March 22, 4:30–5:30 PM. Nominees, councilors, and other ACS members can interact at this event via a moderated question-and-answer format. During the council meeting on the following Wednesday, councilors will select two of the nominees to run this fall as official candidates for 2016 president-elect.

Last fall, N&E also prepared slates of nominees for the position of director in Districts I and V for the 2016–18 term. Earlier this month, councilors in the two districts chose candidates from among those nominees. The selected candidates, who will be announced during the council meeting in Denver, will stand for election in the fall.

Nominees who agreed to run for District I director are Perry L. Catchings Sr., vice president of process operations, NBD Nanotechnologies, Boston; incumbent Thomas R. Gilbert, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Northeastern University, Boston; Gerard F. R. (Ged) Parkin, professor of chemistry, Columbia University; and Laura E. Pence, professor of chemistry, University of Hartford.

Nominees who agreed to run for director of District V are incumbent John E. Adams, Curators’ Teaching Professor in the department of chemistry, University of Missouri, Columbia; Debbie C. Crans, professor in the department of chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Kenneth P. Fivizzani, retired manager of chemical safety programs at Nalco, who currently lives in Naperville, Ill.; and Donna G. Friedman, professor of chemistry, St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley.

Candidates who agreed to run for director-at-large, a group from which councilors will elect two directors this fall for the 2016–18 term, are Willem R. Leenstra, associate professor of chemistry, University of Vermont, Burlington; incumbent Ingrid Montes, professor of chemistry, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras; Mary Jo Ondrechen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Northeastern University; and Thomas W. Smith, professor of chemistry and microsystems engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology.

In addition to its election-related work, the council will vote on two “Petitions To Charter International Chemical Sciences Chapters,” which, if subsequently approved by the board of directors, would establish ACS chapters in India and Taiwan.

Two other petitions to amend the society’s bylaws are up for consideration in Denver, but they will not come up for action until the fall 2015 council meeting in Boston. The “Petition on Member Expulsion” aims to streamline the process for dismissing a member from the society for conduct that injures the society or its reputation or is contrary to its objects. And the “Petition on Preferential Voting” seeks to broaden the use of preferential balloting in elections for director-at-large candidates when necessary to achieve a majority of votes to win an election. ACS already allows for the use of preferential voting—in which voters rank their choices of nominees and candidates, rather than select a single name for each position—in electing the president-elect and district directors.

The full text of petitions and associated committee reports is available at www.acs.org/bulletin5 (click on “Petitions”).

Other business before the council includes approval of a $4.00 increase in ACS dues to $162 for 2016.

Also in Denver, the Committee on Committees expects to seek council approval to continue the Committee on Ethics and the Committee on Science.

The ACS Council meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 25, in Centennial Ballroom D–H at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center. All ACS members are encouraged to attend the meeting, which will start at 8 AM.