Business Meeting Minutes
In attendance: Birgitta Whaley, Don Truhlar, Jim Skinner, Gil Nathanson, David Nesbitt, David Jonas, Bob Continetti, Nancy Levinger, David Leitner, three APS Fellows elected in 2011, one DCP student travel award winner, four poster prize winners and several others.
Birgitta announces the new DCP Executive Committee members, recognizes new APS Fellows, recipients of 2012 student travel awards, 2012 DCP Poster Prize winners, and APS DCP Awards.
No awardees again this year for dependent child care award.
Sorters for 2012 Meeting acknowledged.
Discussion of 2012 Focus Sessions. Nancy points out success of Lasers Focus Session. There is discussion about holding this kind of session regularly, perhaps alternating with Ultrafast meeting.
DCP will be awarding the Broida Prize in addition to the Plyler Prize in 2013. DCP will also be awarding the Langmuir Prize. Birgitta announced other APS Awards of interest to DCP: Beller and Marshak Endowed Lectureships, Lilienfeld Prize, Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach.
Don thanked for putting together 2012 March Meeting program.
Suggestions for Jim in planning 2013 Focus Session topics? Advantages to co-organizing sessions with other divisions discussed, since this can attract students in other divisions to DCP.
Membership: Trend of lower membership in DCP continues: % of APS membership is declining, though the number of DCP members in 2012 is almost the same as in 2011. DCP is currently near 3.3% of APS membership, approaching the 3.0% threshold required for division status. Relatively low student membership in DCP compared to other divisions is discussed and importance of growing student membership. DCP Travel Awards program for students should be more widely known, and possibly available to postdocs.
Expenses and deficits: DCP had a three thousand eight hundred (3,800) surplus in 2011, the first time DCP has posted a surplus since 2005. This follows 5 years of growing deficits, which reached almost thirteen thousand (13,000) in 2010. Reasons for the surplus discussed. These included lower travel expenses to the 2011 March Meeting, increase in share of APS March Meeting revenue due to new formula used by APS (which APS plans to continue to use), and fundraising for the Lasers Session held at the 2012 March Meeting. DCP will, however, continue paying travel expenses for the Plyler Prize, which it began doing in 2010, but will be saving about $3000 annually in 2012 and later by not participating in the Awards Banquet, which offsets that cost.
Executive Committee Minutes
(Following Business Meeting)
In attendance: Birgitta Whaley, Don Truhlar, Jim Skinner, Gil Nathanson, David Nesbitt, David Jonas, Bob Continetti, Nancy Levinger, David Leitner
Nancy hands out and discusses new APS strategic plan. Discussion of relevance to DCP, mainly emphasis on attracting students. Executive Committee members should contact Nancy with any comments on APS strategic plan.
Limitations of 12 minute contributed talks at March Meeting discussed. Gil points out that in the past speakers have been able to get around this, presenting 24 minute talks by submitting two abstracts on a very similar topic for the same focus session. Sorters then arranged these talks back-to-back in one session.
Approaches to increase membership discussed. One possibility that had a lot of support would be the possibility of joint APS-ACS membership.
Jim goes over the list of DCP focus sessions since 2009, then presents possible topics for 2013. The Executive Committee discusses preferences among these topics.
Birgitta suggests that Focus Session Chairs report estimates of the attendance, information that could be useful in planning future sessions.