Resources

Operating Procedures

I. Purpose and Amendment Procedures

This document supplies many of the operating procedures of the Executive Committee of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics. It can be amended by a majority vote at any scheduled meeting of the Executive Committee.

II. Additional duties of the Executive Committee

1. The Executive Committee shall serve as the Program Committee of the Regular Meeting and shall select all of the Division's invited speakers for the Regular Meeting. The following principles shall guide the operation of the Program Committee.
   1. Invited speakers shall be selected from only those nominated by the members in response to a call for nominations by the Secretary-Treasurer. Traditionally, responses to that call are due in early September. However, the date will be chosen by the Secretary Treasurer so that it allows sufficient time for the following events:
      1. Nominations shall be sorted according to a method chosen by the Chair Elect, and reviewed and ranked by the Program Committee.
      2. Meeting of the Program Committee shall be scheduled so as to provide sufficient time to report the recommendations of the Program Committee to the APS prior to the fall meeting of the overall March Meeting Program Committee. This latter meeting typically occurs in October.
   2. No person who has given an invited talk at the previous Regular Meeting shall be selected.
   3. Exceptions to rules (a) and (b) above are permitted for special symposia on a topic of non-research interest to the Society, and invited talks of Prize winners, and on a limited basis (<2% of total invited speakers) at the discretion of the program committee at its meeting mentioned above (1.a.ii), or after that meeting at the discretion of the chair of the program committee in consultation with the elected officers.
2. Selection of site of Regular Meeting.
3. The elected officers shall provide advice to the Meetings Manager of the Society as to selection of sites for the Regular Meetings.
4. The Executive Committee shall serve as a committee of the whole on matters of broad interest to the Division.
5. The bylaws call for two meetings of the Executive Committee each year. One occurs usually on the Sunday before the start of the Regular Meeting. The second occurs in the fall and may be conducted by teleconference or video conference if a face-to-face meeting to select invited speakers proves unnecessary.

III. Additional Duties of the Officers

1. The Chair-Elect shall serve as the Chair of the Program Committee. The Chair-Elect shall assure that all invited speakers are notified, that symposia chairs are found, and make corrections and adjustments on the list of the invited symposium and invited speakers consistent with the principles in Section II.1.
2. The Vice-Chair shall organize the planning of short courses and tutorials for the Regular Meeting. The Vice-Chair recruits the "arm-twisters" for the Contact Congress campaign at the Regular Meeting.
3. The Divisional Councilor shall ensure that interests of both the Division and the whole Society are protected by the Council and the Executive Board. He or she shall arrange that a report of pertinent actions of each Council meeting either be made at the next meeting of the DCMP Executive Committee or, in special cases, be distributed to the Executive Committee by mail.
4. The immediate Past Chair of the Division organizes and runs the two-day sorting meeting that arranges the sessions for the Regular Meeting. Historically, most officers of the Division attend this two-day sorting session.
   1. The immediate Past Chair shall recruit 35-40 DCMP volunteers to sort the abstracts of the contributed papers into coherent sessions (this is usually done on the first day, with the other divisions providing sorters for their contributed sessions).
   2. On the second day, a few volunteers stay to help assemble the final program, along with representatives of the other interested divisions.

IV. Nominations and Elections

1. Central to the nomination procedure is that the members should play as large a role as possible. In particular, if one percent of membership as of June 30 of the previous year suggests the same person for any office, that individual will be included on the ballot.
2. The format and instructions, including deadline dates, for member nominations will be posted on the Web at all times and the membership will regularly be notified of its existence.
3. The complete slate, including any names produced by the procedure in items 1 and 2 above shall be supplied by the Nominations Committee to the Secretary-Treasurer ten weeks after the Regular Meeting.
4. The Secretary-Treasurer shall send a notice of the on-line ballot to all members by July 30 with a due date in September. Paper ballots will be supplied to members who do not have web access and to those who request them.
5. Electronic ballots are counted automatically by the balloting system. Paper ballots will be counted by a colleague of the Secretary-Treasurer who is not a member of the Division.
6. The Secretary-Treasurer shall report the results of the election in a regular communications to all members.

V. Additional Committees of the Division

1. The Program Committee is described in Section II.1 of the Operating Procedures.
2. The Nominations Committee is formed each year just before the Regular Meeting. It shall consist of four members: the Chair/Past Chair, the Divisional Councilor, one person not on the Executive Committee appointed by the Chair of the Division who serves as Chair of the Committee, and an additional member who is appointed by the Society. In consultation with the Secretary-Treasurer, the nomination committee shall rule on the validity of any nominating petitions. In addition to those names supplied by the petition process, they may supply additional names for any vacancy. There shall be at least two nominations for any vacancy.
3. Fellowship Committee.
   The Chair shall establish annually a Fellowship Committee, consisting of the Councilor, all Members-at-Large as members, with one of the three retiring members serving as Chair of the Committee. The Division Fellowship Committee shall review the qualifications of candidates for Fellowship and report its recommendations to the Executive Committee for submission via the Executive Officer to the Fellowship Committee of the Society.

Note: Operational procedures were adopted by a majority vote of the Executive Committee on 19 March 1997 and modified on 4 March 2007 by a majority vote of the Executive Committee.