Minority Affairs (Joint with Council)

The Committee on Minority Affairs (CMA) met in Anaheim, and its Awards & Recognition Subcommittee discussed ways to improve the nomination process for targeted national ACS awards. One outcome is to come up with a list of 15 exemplary candidates every year across all the awards. CMA will also use contacts with sister organizations (the Society for Advancement of Chicanos & Native Americans in Science, the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, and the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers) to identify strong candidates. A ChemLuminary Award will be presented in Denver. CMA is developing a list of excellent editorial candidates to submit when future searches are initiated, and is also reviewing nominations for the ACS Central Regional Meeting’s Stanley C. Israel Regional Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences.

The Membership Subcommittee is working on getting the first year of ACS membership dues waived for Project SEED students. CMA feels that the students are a strong pool for future members. In 2010, there were 450 students, of which 30% were chemistry majors. ACS Scholars receive their first year free, so their program will be used as a model. A recruitment mixer is planned for the ACS national meeting in Denver, and CMA will attend Sci-Mix to recruit student members into ACS. The minority-serving institutions previously identified—Howard University (Washington, D.C.), Morehouse College (Atlanta), Fisk University (Nashville), Texas A&M International University (Laredo), Dine College (Tsaile, Ariz.), and Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, Kan.)—will be contacted through the student chapter advisers to inquire about their chapters.

The Marie Daly Task Force has identified four speakers for a Marie Daly Symposium, and we are still seeking more content for a film about her life. We would like to present the symposium and film after Jeanette Brown’s book on African American women chemists is released this fall.