Council Preview

When the ACS Council meets next month in San Francisco, it will act on three petitions and select candidates for national office.

The full text of petitions for action and associated committee reports are available for viewing or downloading at www.ACS.org/bulletin5 (click on “Petitions”).

The “Petition on Admissions Committee” is straightforward. It seeks dissolution of the ACS Admissions Committee and transfer of virtually all of the group’s duties to the Council Committee on Membership Affairs. The responsibility for handling appeals of admission decisions is the only duty that petitioners aim to transfer to the Council Policy Committee.

Petitioners believe it is unnecessary to have a committee whose primary duty is to decide whether an applicant with unusual qualifications can be an ACS member. There should be few if any of these borderline applications because ACS membership no longer requires an ACS-certified bachelor’s degree or a noncertified bachelor’s degree plus a set number of years of chemical employment. These relaxed admission requirements were approved in 2008 (C&EN, May 5, 2008, page 50). This petition is not controversial.

The same cannot be said for the “Petition on Candidate Selection by Member Petition,” which is also up for action in San Francisco. At its last meeting in Washington, D.C., the ACS Council rejected the petitioners’ request for “urgent action.” The petition is extremely controversial, and if the intense emotion its discussion garnered at the last meeting is any indication, debate could get messy in a hurry. Dramatic speeches punctuated by amendments from the floor, out-of-order calls for votes, and general confusion could well be in store for councilors next month.

Because this petition deals with petition candidates, it is complicated. Under the current bylaws, candidates’ names will appear on ballots for ACS president-elect, district director, and director-at-large in one of two ways: Councilors can either select candidates from a slate of nominees developed by the Committee on Nominations & Elections (N&E) or individual members can bypass vetting by the council by collecting a sufficient number of member signatures and submitting them (in the form of a petition) to the ACS executive director. Upon verification of those signatures, the individual on whose behalf they were collected is a “petition candidate” and is listed along with the N&E candidates on the official ballot.

Over the past several years, N&E has brought forward petitions or rule changes that have resulted in new processes regarding ACS national elections. Specifically, the maximum length of candidates’ official election statements has been reduced, and the number of signatures required for access to national ballots by petition candidates has increased markedly. These developments alarm proponents of the “Petition on Candidate Selection by Member Petition,” several of whom attained national office as petition candidates. They believe that members’ right to vote for whomever they choose is being threatened by N&E’s actions, and they want that right ensconced in the ACS constitution.

As could be expected, N&E opposes not only the petition but the current setup as well, saying that petition candidacy is unfair to N&E nominees because petition candidates don’t have to be voted upon by the council to advance to the ballot.

Although policies and procedures regarding petition candidacy are already clearly spelled out in the society’s bylaws, petitioners aim to ensconce petition candidacy in the ACS constitution. The constitution is considerably more difficult to change than the bylaws, and the difficulty of the path to modification of the constitution, in and of itself, could hinder other society governance bodies from threatening petition candidacy.

“The Petition on Election Timelines 2009” is also up for action in San Francisco. Petitioners propose to change the bylaws to decrease the time lag between when N&E nominates members for national office and when the ACS Council selects candidates from this pool of nominees. It also would require that petitions for a space on the national election ballot be turned in to the executive director by June 15 of the election year, rather than by July 15. Other date changes proposed are a March 1 rather than Jan. 15 deadline for N&E to finalize its slate of nominees for national office and Oct. 10 instead of Oct. 31 for ballot distribution in national elections.

A two-thirds council vote is required for approval of amendments to the bylaws. If approved by council, the amendments will become effective upon confirmation by the ACS Board of Directors. A majority vote of council is required for adoption of amendments to the constitution. If approved by council, a constitutional amendment will become effective upon ratification by a majority of members voting in the first national election after council approval.

The council will also be introduced to four nominees for the office of ACS president-elect for 2011. The list of names was not available at C&EN press time because one or more nominees withdrew from consideration for personal reasons, and it was too late for N&E to fill the slots. Nevertheless, four nominees will make brief presentations to the ACS Council, which will then select two of the four as candidates for the spot in the presidential succession.

Earlier this year, councilors in Districts II and IV chose candidates from lists of nominees prepared by N&E to stand for election in the fall as district directors for 2011–13. Nominees for director of District II are George M. Bodner, the Arthur E. Kelley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University; Andrew D. Jorgensen, an associate professor and director of general chemistry at the University of Toledo, Ohio; V. Michael Mautino, senior marketing representative for Bayer MaterialScience, in Pittsburgh; and Joseph R. Peterson, a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Nominees for director of District IV are John W. Finley, a professor at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Larry K. Krannich, a professor emeritus at the University of Alabama, Birmingham; Will E. Lynch, a professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University, in Savannah, Ga.; and Ingrid Montes, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan.

Nominees for director-at-large, a group from which the council will elect two directors this fall, are Janan M. Hayes, a professor emeritus at Merced College, in Sacramento, Calif.; Robert L. Lichter, principal for Merrimack Consultants, in Great Barrington, Mass.; Kathleen M. Schulz, president of Business Results, in Albuquerque, N.M.; and Kent J. Voorhees, a professor at Colorado School of Mines. The names of the selected candidates will be announced in San Francisco.

The ACS Council meeting will be held starting at 8 AM on Wednesday, March 21, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in San Francisco. All ACS members are encouraged to observe the meeting.