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North Jersey Section of the ACS

2007 Annual Report Narrative

Diane Krone, 2007 Section Chair

 

The North Jersey Section is one of the largest and one of the most diverse sections of the American Chemical Society.  It meets the needs of its members with its varied planning.

Our major activities can be outlined as:

 

Development of a Leadership Pipeline with Volunteers and Mentors.   Volunteers are needed to provide successful community service programs such as NCW celebrations, Science Café activities, to judge Regional Science Fairs, to chaperone SEED students and to judge their poster presentations, to administer Chemistry Olympiad tests, and to prepare and judge events for our annual Chemistry Olympics.  About 390 volunteers offer their services for these activities.

Service to our Members.  The North Jersey Section of the American Chemical Society is collaborating with the Professional Programs subcommittee under the umbrella of The National ACS Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs (CEPA) with the goal of assessing member needs for new programs to be developed for career planning, development, management, and transitions. We will thus better prepare ACS members for the dynamic and ever changing economic climate.

Careers in Transition meetings, a monthly electronic newsletter, and the job search engine Indeed.com , assisted 120 our members in their job search last year. 

Our ammended Bylaws were approved by National ACS last year. The Section is interested in using technology to conduct its elections and the new Bylaws will allow for this process to occur.  This change will make voting more convenient for members and improve voter participation.

 

Planning meetings bring Topical Groups together.  Our goal is to program joint meetings between several of the TGs.   New Careers and Careers in Transition provide support to our members who are looking for jobs.  Monthly newsletters are sent to our members ewsletters are sent to job searchers and the website indeed.com assited 120 members this year.

 

Technical Programming.  The Section ran two planning meetings last year.  Leaders of the Topical Groups were involved in planning cross-boundary events. The result of the planning sessions was that each month there were nine division meetings.  More than one hundred dedicated volunteers are involved in planning relevant meetings.   A sampling of meetings: NJ ACS Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group is sponsored by 43 vendors.  Door prizes and the vendor sponsored dinner attracts more than 295 chemists who have the opportunity to network and socialize.  Professor Fred McLafferty, Peter Debey Professor of Chemistry, Cornell University and Member of the National Academy of Sciences was the 2007 NJ MSDG Distinguished Lecturer.  Dr. Ian Jardine, ThermoFisher Scientific, spoke about the latest improvements in instrumentation.  Successful symposia like this one are held regularly by our other topical groups. The Drug Metabolism Group sponsors an annual Fall Symposium.  This year’s topic was “Drug Metabolism Pharmacokinetics.” The North Jersey Chromatography Group sponsored their first annual symposium in May titled “Chromatographic Industrial Needs.”

 

Educational Outreach.  The Section provides many activities for chemistry students.  The Freddy and Ada Brown Scholarship recognizes high achieving African American and Native American students from Middle School.  Last year, 3 students were recognized at the annual Awards Dinner.  372 students  participated in the Chemistry Olympics at NJIT.   The section sponsored  a Chemagination contest and the winners competed at MARM.  A total of 127 high school students were nominated by their teachers to participate in the first level screening test for the Chemistry Olympiad.  Eleven students qualified for the second round and two students were qualified to attend the Olympiad Camp. Brian Lee won a silver metal at the Olympiad.  98 disadvantaged students were placed with mentors in our SEED Program. 

 

A one day workshop, “Success in the Chemistry Classroom” was offered to 35 New Jersey chemistry teachers.   Scholar Chemistry provided support.  Monthly ChemTAG and ChemCentral meetings provide further professional development opportunities to local teachers.

 

Outreach beyond North Jersey Section.  Our Project SEED Program supported 98 students from North Jersey, New York, and Trenton Sections.  The North Jersey Section coordinated all payments.  

 

In 2007 the Section formed a partnerhip with Liberty Science Center to conduct two outreach programs.  The Science Cafe and National Chemistry Week Activities involved Section members, teacher affiliates, and student affiliates along with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

 

Strengthening Ties with Industry  A joint dinner meeting between the North Jersey Group of Small Chemical Businesses and the North Jersey Section AICE focused on developing effective networks and utilizing networking tools. 

 

Past local section chairs Steve Waller and Bill Suits joined Tom Pacansky as the core team of a new Polymer Topical Group who recruited over 20 local industry and academia members including several former POLY & PMSE executives. This expanded planning group was asked to help select themes, organize events, recruit funding and nominate officers from the volunteers.  This resulted in the group’s very successful Green Polymers: Materials, Processes and Products Symposium held at Rutgers University on November 8, 2007, with 143 attendees from eleven states.

 

In October the Organic Topical Group organized a day-long symposium featured stimulating talks about a spectrum of drugs discovered in academia and how academia and the pharmaceutical industry are working together to successfully launch new medicines.

 

NJ ACS Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group November Symposium  was sponsored by Taylor Technology.

 

Recognizing Our Members

At our annual Awards recognition dinner in May, the following were honored for their service to NJACS and for their achievements: 

  • 11 High Scoring Chemistry Olympiad  Students
  • Freddie and Ada Brown Scholarship winners
  • Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: Roger Prince
  • Baekeland Award Recipient John Rogers
  • Edward Merril Award for Excellence in Teaching: Claire Miller
  • Harvey Russell Award for Supporting Chemistry Teaching: Stephen Waller
  • Pro Bono Award: Joseph Bozzelli
  • Burton Beldan Award for Service: Fred Dammont
  • 50 and 60 Year member recognition