Minutes of the October 2013 DLS Executive Committee Meeting
(from Anne Kelly, DLS Secretary-Treasurer)
Duval Room, Hilton Bonnet Creek
Oct. 8, 2013
Attending in person: Henry Kapteyn (chair), Anne Kelley (secretary-treasurer), John Fourkas (vice-chair), David Reitze, Anthony Johnson (councilor)
Attending remotely: Toni Taylor (chair-elect), Carlos Stroud (past chair)
Henry Kapteyn called the meeting to order at 9:07 am.
The EC voted to approve the minutes from the last EC meeting at CLEO.
Anne Kelley presented a Treasurer’s report. Mainly because of reduced revenues from investment income and from CLEO as well as the DLS share of the cancellation penalties associated with moving CLEO 2013 from Baltimore to San Jose ($3500), it appears likely that DLS will suffer a small net loss this year for the first time in recent history. The Division currently has a balance of about $440,000 so we can operate at a deficit for a long time, but we should start considering cost-saving measures.
Dan Gauthier, the co-chair for the current Laser Science meeting, reported on the meeting. The government shutdown has required some substitutes and a few cancellations. Registration numbers are holding about constant over the past 3 years. The distribution of contributed talks over the various topical areas is highly uneven, and suggestions were made for consolidating, adding, or removing categories. OSA has requested our list of invited speakers for next year’s meeting by Oct. 21. Dan and co-chair Peter Delfyett have not spent the full $12,000 appropriated for invited speaker support, and Dan believes that this appropriation could be reduced without harming our ability to get the speakers we want. The EC voted to reduce the allocation for invited speaker support to $10,000 for LS 2014.
Anne Kelley summarized the Student Travel Grant and Child Care Grant programs. Not all of the appropriated $5,000 for student travel grants was spent for LS 2014, and only one child care grant was requested for 2013. It was decided to leave these allocations as they are, but to use part of the LS allocation for the new dissertation award (see below). The EC voted to allocate $5,000 for student travel grants to each of CLEO and FiO/LS, with some of the FiO/LS allocation going to thesis award travel. The EC also voted to allocate $1,000 for child care grants for calendar year 2014.
In connection with the above discussion, it was suggested that we collaborate with other units to encourage APS to charge more for Divisional membership to improve our budgetary situations. The current $8 seems low.
Anne Kelley reported on the outcome of the recent DLS election, the first to be held entirely electronically. Participation was 21.8%, a record high. Roseanne Sension is the new vice-chair and Albert Stolow and Kristan Corwin are the new at-large members.
Hal Metcalf reported on the Symposium on Undergraduate Research. The symposium is going well; the students have been enthusiastic, their presentations have been of high quality, and a number of established investigators came to the lunch with the students and engaged in dialog. Unfortunately because of the location, this year there were large additional costs for hotel (mostly offset by a donation of $4,500 from UCF), airport transportation, breakfast, etc. that were never incurred before. The total cost will exceed the budgeted $8,000, but it is not yet clear by how much. Once the final accounting is in, we will have an e-mail vote of the EC to approve increasing the allocation. It is essential that OSA agree to continue the reduced registration fee of $140 for undergraduate students involved in the symposium, and also that a reasonably priced hotel be found for next year’s meeting in Tucson. Hal requests a volunteer with some local expertise to help with logistics. A suitable hotel must be identified by March if the symposium is to run. The EC discussed increasing the allocation for next year, but one member also noted that lodging costs are paid for some students who stay longer than needed to attend the symposium; while agreeing that this can be beneficial to the students’ professional development, it was also viewed as an extra that we may not wish to cover. The EC voted to appropriate $8,000 for next year and requests that no additional days of lodging be paid for unless the symposium is within budget. If that budget is exceeded, approval of additional funding will be discussed and voted on.
Dan Gauthier, chair of the New Laser Scientists Conference in 2014, requests an increase in the DLS allocation from $5,000 to $6,000 as costs continue to rise. In the past, federal agencies have been asked (with varied success) to support the conference, but apparently corporate support has not been sought. New faculty setting up labs would seem to be a choice audience for corporate sponsorship. The EC voted to allocate $5,000 for the 2014 conference and ask that the organizer seek corporate sponsorships. The EC will consider increasing the allocation if other fundraising is unsuccessful.
Toni Taylor provided an update on the DLS session (a single invited session) at the March meeting in Denver, including a list of the five invited speakers. Toni will not be allowed to travel to the meeting to chair the session, so several people in the Denver area were suggested as chairs. Toni will also get schedule preferences of the invited speakers. It is not clear whether DLS needs a representative at the sorters’ meeting with only one invited session, but we need to give a preference for day.
Henry Kapteyn reported on the DLS thesis award, which will be given for the first time at FiO/LS in 2014. We need to publicize the award, make sure a session is allocated at Tucson, and put together a committee to select winners. Henry agreed to take on these tasks this year and proposed that this be a standard task for the past chair in the future. He will also attempt fundraising to support the award as promised to APS. David Reitze volunteered to chair the selection committee. The EC discussed being certain to get the award included on the APS web page list of dissertation awards. There was discussion of naming the award in honor of Charles Townes. Henry will work with the APS development office on this.
The Distinguished Traveling Lecturer program was discussed. It was agreed that people who have been on the list of DTLs for a long time should be asked about their interest in continuing. The desirability of having more non-academic DTLs was also discussed.
Chad Stark, OSA meetings manager, met with the committee. The cancellation penalty for moving CLEO 2013 from Baltimore to San Jose will be assessed from the co-sponsors (DLS share, ~$3,500) but the much larger penalty for 2015 (DLS share, ~$16,000) will not yet be assessed while efforts continue to negotiate a reduction. For FiO/LS in Tucson in 2014 there will be two hotels, the JW Starr Marriott and a cheaper Marriott on the University of Arizona campus, with a shuttle bus running between them. Future FiO/LS dates: Tucson 19-23 Oct. 2014, San Jose 18-22 Oct. 2015, Rochester 16-20 Oct. 2016. Future CLEO dates in San Jose: 8-13 June 2014, 10-15 May 2015, 5-10 June 2016. Chad suggested having both program chairs and general chairs for Laser Science to maintain better continuity. The EC thought just two people, one general chair and one program chair, would suffice. We currently have one person (Galina Khitrova) and will seek a second person to serve a 2-year term, one as program chair and one as general chair. A representative was also requested for a long-range CLEO planning committee to represent DLS along with Kate Kirby.
EC members are needed to participate in the APS Leadership Convocation, Feb. 21-22. It was agreed that newly elected vice-chair Roseanne Sension should be encouraged to attend, along with one or more at-large EC members. Toni and/or John, who have attended previously, can fill them in.
DLS support has been requested, via John Fourkas, for a Coherent Multidimensional Spectroscopy conference to be held at the University of Oregon next summer. Very few members of the organizing committee are DLS members, so a decision was made not to fund it, and to give the organizers that feedback.
Anthony Johnson reported from Council that APS is starting a new journal, APS Applied, to compete head-to-head with Applied Physics Letters.
Gordon Drake is seeking Editorial Board members for Phys. Rev. A. Possibilities were discussed.
Two more DLS representatives for JCQE are still needed. Nick Bigelow previously volunteered, and is nominated to serve through CLEO 2015. Possibilities for the second person were discussed.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:11 pm.