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The 230th national meeting of the American Chemical Society will be held in a few weeks in Washington, D.C. The society's headquarters are in Washington, of course, which makes national meetings held here unique for ACS staff members like me. Such meetings are both exciting--we feel like we are welcoming a large number of ACS members to our home--and challenging logistically.
The technical program for the Washington meeting takes up the bulk of this hefty issue of C&EN. As is always the case with the technical program for an ACS national meeting, this one is chock-full of symposia spanning the broad gamut that is chemistry. Some of the intriguing titles that caught my eye as I scanned the program:
◾ Edible & Medicinal Mushrooms: Chemistry & Biological Effects (AGFD)
◾ Control of Invasive Species: Regulatory Concerns & Achievements (AGRO)
◾ Sensors & Instrumentation for Counterterrorism (ANYL)
◾ The Business Case for Diversity in the Chemical Enterprise (BMGT)
◾ Structural Biology of DNA Repair (TOXI)
◾ Preventing Doping in Sports: A Herculean Task (CHAL)
◾ Combinatorial Approaches to Materials (PMSE)
◾ Charge-Transfer Processes: Making Connections (PHYS)
The meeting will feature more than 700 such symposia, along with the wide range of social events and governance meetings that traditionally occur at a national meeting.
A noteworthy event at the Washington meeting is the second Academic Employment Initiative (AEI) poster session, which will be held at Sci-Mix on Monday, Aug. 29. About 170 prospective faculty job candidates will describe their research for academic recruiters at the AEI event.
The AEI program was proposed in 2004 by then-ACS president Charles P. Casey and is being supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to broaden the academic hiring process by making it easier for faculty recruiters to meet and interact with several job candidates in a short time and in a relatively informal setting.
"As a department chair," Casey says, "I recognized the biggest problem with our antiquated faculty recruitment system was that the earliest stages of the recruiting process are based solely on paper applications--personal contact came too late in the process. This problem particularly affected the recruitment of a diverse faculty. The AEI poster session was designed to open up the faculty hiring process by providing a forum for relatively informal interaction between job applicants and representatives of departments seeking new faculty. With personal interaction before invitations for formal campus visits and interviews, universities do not have to rely solely on paper portfolios and letters of recommendation. I'm happy that last year's AEI poster session was the initial contact that led to several hiring decisions. I hope that all departments, and particularly the top research universities, will take advantage of the opportunity that AEI provides to see the broadest range of candidates."
About 120 job candidates presented posters at the fall meeting in Philadelphia in August 2004. Many presenters were enthusiastic about the experience. According to one: "The AEI made me more confident in my job search. There was a lot of interest in both me and my poster at the meeting, and that early positive feedback really helped me out. I think that the poster session can help you make it from the 'big pile' to the 'shortlist' for phone interviews, or maybe even to the interview phase."
Another prospective candidate said: "At the AEI poster session, I had the opportunity to speak with more than 10 representatives from all over the country. I am convinced that this was an invaluable opportunity for me to practice discussing my qualifications and job interests with potential employers."
The one negative expressed by a number of participants in last year's AEI poster session was lack of participation by recruiters from major research universities. One of the explicit goals of AEI is to increase the diversity of the pool of candidates for positions at such institutions. Casey hopes that the AEI poster session at the upcoming Washington meeting draws a larger number of such recruiters.
Here's to a successful AEI in Washington, and to a successful national meeting overall.
Thanks for reading.
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