Grants & Awards

The Board Committee on Grants & Awards (G&A) met virtually on March 14.

The committee voted to recommend to the board a screened list of six nominees for the 2012 Priestley Medal and a screened list of five nominees for the 2012 Award for Volunteer Service to ACS.

The 2011 Awards Review Committee (ARC) reported that it will review 16 of the ACS national awards to ensure that the awards program continues to meet the objectives of the society.

The Fellows Oversight Committee provided a written report. The call for nominations for the Fellows Program opened and nominations were due May 2.

The ACS AWIS/AWARDS Action Group reported that the group has finalized a “Selection Committee Best Practices” document and a PowerPoint presentation, “Establishing a Fair Process for Selecting ACS Award Winners,” based on the findings of a gender equity workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health. The documents will be shared with selection committees to educate members on implicit bias and gender equity.

G&A voted to recommend to the board that Board Regulation III, Section 13, of the Charter, Constitution, Bylaws & Regulations (Bulletin 5) of the American Chemical Society be amended because the ACS PRF no longer provides a 1% allocation to the ACS Green Chemistry Institute as of Jan. 1, 2011.

Acting under delegated authority, the committee voted to add the Department of Energy’s Ernest Orlando Lawrence Awards to the list of external awards for which ACS provides nominations, and to invite the Division of Physical Chemistry to select a nominee and draft the nomination documents for this award.

Acting under delegated authority, the committee voted to make a minor change to the eligibility statement for the Dreyfus Foundation-sponsored ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.

The committee discussed a possible new award with AkzoNobel, the AkzoNobel Science Award in the U.S., and the possibility of adding a cash award to the Priestley Medal. G&A reviewed a recommendation from the Program Review Advisory Group (PRAG) to include the Heroes of Chemistry award in the national awards ceremony and decided that industrial chemical scientists and their executives are better recognized in a stand-alone event that specifically focuses on the achievements of chemists in industry. Finally, the committee received an update on the ACS PRF patent issue.