HOW TO ORGANIZE A PMSE SYMPOSIUM
Anyone can organize a PMSE symposium at a national ACS meeting. To propose a topic, use the one-page Proposal Form below as a guide, and submit the completed form to any of the Technical Program Co-Chairs listed at the bottom. You may wish to discuss your idea with one of the Program Co-Chairs first; please do not hesitate to call or e-mail. In addition to traditional PMSE program areas, the Program Co-Chairs are especially interested in symposia devoted to new or emerging areas of polymer technology and science.
The Program Co-Chairs and the organizers of the proposed symposia will jointly decide on which national meeting would be most appropriate to hold the symposium. A listing for the symposium (title and organizers' contact information) will run twice annually in both Chemical & Engineering News and the PMSE Proceedings (preprint book) from the time the symposium is put on the program until the meeting in which it runs. Of course, additional advertising (by paper or e-mail, web pages, etc.) by the organizers would boost interest in both attending and presenting at the symposium.
The Technical Program Committee has prepared a comprehensive set of Guidelines for Symposium Organizers to assist you in planning your symposium. This 20+ page packet is available upon request from one of the Program Co-Chairs; it will automatically be sent to you and your co-organizers once your symposium is added to the PMSE program. In brief, the principal duties which fall upon a symposium organizer are:
1) Make sure key researchers in the area are invited to participate in the symposium. Often, getting commitments from a few key individuals early can help, through advertising, to generate even greater interest in the symposium.
2) Obtain any funds necessary to partially defray the costs of selected speakers (generally academics from overseas). Several sources of funding are described in the Guidelines for Symposium Organizers.
3) Assemble the program for the symposium, including the ACS Abstracts and PMSE Preprints from each participant, and forward these to the PMSE Vice-Chair for incorporation into the national meeting program.
The Guidelines for Symposium Organizers contains detailed checklists and timelines for the items generic to all symposia, which should be especially helpful to first-time organizers. In addition, the Guidelines contain application forms for funding from PMSE, and from the ACS Corporation Associates, as well as a sample application to the Petroleum Research Fund (none of these exceeds four pages). In addition, the Program Co-Chairs will be happy to discuss the organization of your symposium with you if you have any questions. Many PMSE symposia have resulted in books, typically in the ACS Symposium Series, and PMSE encourages such publication. Contact information for ACS Books is provided in the Guidelines.
Technical programs are truly the heart of the Division's activities, so we thank you for your interest!
Proposal Form for New PMSE Symposium
Thank you for your interest in organizing a symposium for the PMSE Division of the ACS. Please fill in this form as completely as you are able so that we can give your idea proper consideration.
Organizers' Names and Contact Information
(address, phone, email):___________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Symposium Title:______________________________________________________________________
Brief Description of Topics to be covered:_________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Proposed date/venue:_________________________________________________________________________
Potential invited speakers:_____________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Potential Cosponsors, if any (in and out of ACS):___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Other relevant information:____________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
For information of the planned symposia, please see PMSE Future Programs
Return form to any of the Technical Program Chairs:
PROGRAM CHAIRS
Timothy J. Bunning
Air Force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, AFRL/MLPJ 3005 P. St., Suite 1 WPAFB, OH
45433 Phone:
(937) 255-3808 x3167 Fax: (937)
255-1128
|
Richard R. RoesleBayer Corporation |
Vladimir TsukrukDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering |
Symposium Organizer Duties
In brief,
organizing a symposium sponsored by PMSE at an ACS National meeting requires
the following:
1. Submission
of a brief proposal to the Technical Program Committee (TPC) that describes the
intent, scope and length of the proposed symposium. A proposal form is
available on the Web at the following link: http://membership.acs.org/P/PMSE/meetings/symporg.html
feel free to append additional information as well, if desired, such as plans
for advertising the symposium and soliciting speakers. To ensure that the proposal
is acted upon at the next TPC meeting (scheduled twice a year at the two
National ACS meetings), the proposal should be submitted to one of the TPC
Chairs at least one month prior to the meeting. Proposals not submitted in
advance will be considered at the TPC meeting if time permits.
2. When
planning your symposium, start with a target of four half-day sessions. Past
experience has shown that technical symposia shorter than four sessions
generally do not encourage people to come out to the meeting, while symposia
longer than four sessions place an increased financial burden on the Division
through the cost of the preprint book. However, in some cases, it may be
desirable to have a five or six-session symposium (for example, to obtain
enough material for a book). If you feel that your symposium requires more than
four sessions to run properly, contact both the Division Vice-Chair for the
meeting and one of the Program Chairs to discuss the matter.
3. To boost
interest in (and attendance at) your symposium, you would most likely want to
do some sort of advertising. PMSE and ACS will provide basic advertising in the
form of: 1) a brief listing (title and organizer contact information) in the
"Call for Papers" in Chemical & Engineering News, which appears
biannually, 2) a listing in the biannual PMSE Proceedings (preprint book), and
3) a listing on the PMSE web page http://membership.acs.org/P/PMSE/meetings/future.html/
which is updated more frequently. Advertising to people in the field might
include: 1) preparing a flyer for distribution at the PMSE table at preceding
ACS meetings, 2) distribution of the same flyer at other appropriate
professional society meetings, and 3) creation of a symposium web page, which
can be linked to the listing on the PMSE web page (just provide the address to
the Program Chair).
4. Symposium
Organizers are responsible for raising financial support for a symposium (more
information about potential funding sources is provided below). Nominal funds
may be available from the Division. Other possible sources of support within
the ACS include the Petroleum Research Fund and the ACS Corporation Associates.
PRF funds are very helpful in providing travel funds for invited foreign
speakers, while CA funds support symposia with 60% industrial speakers. Of
course, Symposium Organizers are strongly encouraged to solicit funds from
non-ACS sources, such as companies with an interest in the symposium topic,
suitable defense agencies, NSF, NIH, etc.
The actual
disbursement of funds will be handled by the Division Treasurer. At least one
and one half months prior to the meeting, send
the Division Treasurer a list of the speakers who will receive payment and the
appropriate amount for each, so that the Treasurer can prepare the necessary
checks and have them available for disbursement at the meeting. It is also
possible for the Treasurer to request a Guest Registration for speakers; for
speakers coming from overseas, this will save them the cost of currency
exchange. The Guest Registration requests need to be submitted to the ACS by
the Division Treasurer one and one half months prior to the meeting. Contact
the Division Treasurer for more information.
5.
Submission of a final program on-line using the OASys system before the
deadline for the meeting. The time allocated to each speaker is up to the
Symposium Organizer, but should be in the range of 15-30 minutes unless there
are extraordinary and compelling circumstances. A standard schedule is to allot
25 minute slots (including time for discussion), with a total of eight
presentations per half-day session. (At four half-day sessions, 32 talks.) Do
not schedule breaks and schedule relatively few plenary lectures.
The final
program for each symposium is assembled into the final block program for the
meeting by the Vice-Chair of the Division. Organizers may request specific
dates for their symposia, but the final scheduling decision will be made by the
Vice-Chair of the Division. See below for Guidelines and Checklist for
Symposium Organizers.
6. Many PMSE
symposia result in the publication of a book, typically through the ACS Books
Department in the ACS Symposium Series or, occasionally, the Advances in
Chemistry Series. While the Division does not absolutely insist that all
publication be done through the ACS, it is our conviction that the ACS
Department does a professional and responsible job of publishing symposia and
is a mechanism for returning some much-needed money back to PMSE as the
sponsoring division. If you are interested in publishing your symposium, ACS
Books has put a good description of the procedure on the World Wide Web: http://pubs.acs.org/books/acq.htm
or you can
contact ACS Books directly at (202) 872-8726 for information. It is advisable
not to confuse the authors with too many manuscript demands at the same time.
The manuscripts for a book will be more detailed than the preprints, so it is
better if you already have the preprint manuscripts in hand before requesting
contributions to a book. Publishing a book is solely the responsibility of the
Symposium Organizer and is optional. However, the Division encourages
publication of symposium books, because the revenue which the Division derives
from this source forms the basis for Division support for future symposia. For
this reason, the Division expects to be acknowledged as the sponsoring body for
the symposium but will not be directly involved in the book preparation.
Remember,
symposium organizers are responsible for raising financial support for a
symposium. Some funds are available from PMSE (contact Richard Turner, srturner@eastman.com).
Timeline for
Symposium Chairs
Author Contacts (8-10 months before meeting)
Send to each
principal author:
1. Notice
that the author instructions for abstracts and preprints are available on the
Web at the following site: http://membership.acs.org/P/PMSE/meetings/authinst.html
All
abstracts and abstracts must be submitted electronically using the ACS OASys
system. A meeting-specific template (a new one must be downloaded for each
meeting) is available from the following site:
http://membership.acs.org/P/PMSE/meetings/template.html
2. Cover
letter indicating that you will be INFLEXIBLE in rejecting papers if the
authors do not comply with the requirements of submitting abstracts and
preprint manuscripts electronically by the deadline (usually on or about March
15 or November 1)listed on the PMSE site.
3. Send a
letter of endorsement to each author indicating acceptance of sthe author’s
paper. The author may need an official inviatation for certain countries. This
can be requested from the PMSE Program Chair.
4.
Re-contact each principal author with reminders as deadlines approach.
Organizing:
Most of what
you need to do with ACS for organizing your session will be done on-line using
the OASys system. Once the system opens up to organizers, regularly check the
status of your symposium on-line. Every abstract must have an associated
preprint in order for it to be accepted. It is up to you to make sure that
there is a preprint for every abstract.
Notify
Speakers (after Vice-Chair has arranged meeting)
Inform your
speakers as to the time and day of their talks or posters. The detailed
schedule in C&EN is published only one month before the meeting; your
speakers will appreciate earlier notice.
At least one
and one half months prior to the meeting,
contact the Division Treasurer with a list of the speakers who will receive
reimbursement checks, the appropriate amount for each, and any requests for
Guest Registrations. Obviously, the total amount expended on a symposium cannot
exceed the total amount that you as Organizer have raised from all sources, so
be sure not to promise more than you will have.
Doolittle Award (shortly before meeting)
The Doolittle
Award is presented once or twice each year for the "best"
presentation in a PMSE symposium. The Doolittle Award Chairman will contact you
for one or two nominations from your symposium. It is important that you
respond. Papers are judged on quality, originality, and presentation. It is
your responsibility to avoid a potential award paper being overlooked.
At the Meeting
Check that
the rooms and projection facilities are in proper order.
Check that all
Session Chairs are present. A continental breakfast for the Symposium
Organizers, Session Chairs and speakers occurs each morning. The Session Chairs
should confirm, to the best of their ability, that all speakers in their
session are present on the day of the session. Make certain all pre-arranged
checks are in order and ready for speakers to be picked up.
Remind each
Session Chair to complete the ACS Chairperson’s Attendance Report for their
session. A blank form should be provided with the Chair's packet (near the
podium in each session). These forms should be returned to the nearest on-site
ACS Operations Office, or mailed to the ACS immediately after the meeting. The
Division receives an allocation (part of the meeting registration fees
collected) based on the attendance at its symposia, so it is essential that
these forms be completed. Also, if the ACS does not receive a form for a
particular session, they will contact one of the Division Program Chairs, who
in turn will contact you or the Session Chair or both to submit a post-dated
form to the best of your recollection.
Funding
Information
PMSE Symposium Funding Procedures
Financial
support for symposia is available from the Division of Polymeric Materials:
Science and Engineering (PMSE). There are two categories of funding. One is
available to cover miscellaneous expenses up to a maximum of $200 and the other
to cover additional expenses up to a maximum of $2,000. Requests for such
support must be made through the Symposium Funding Committee Chairman (see
below) of the Division at least six months prior to the scheduled symposium.
Funds are limited, and requests must be made at least 6 months prior to the
National meeting. The following guidelines and timetable should be followed:
1. Symposium
Organizers should first seek funds from other available sources (industry,
government agencies, and other sources within the ACS).
2. A
completed application (the two pages following this one) must be submitted to
the PMSE Symposium Funding Committee Chair 6 months prior to the scheduled
Symposium.
3. If
approved and upon request a $200 advance will be made to the Symposium Chair to
be used to cover miscellaneous administrative expenses incurred in organizing
the symposium. Additional specific monies up to the approved amount will be
made through the treasurer of the Division at the time of the meeting or
shortly thereafter.
4.
Immediately after the symposium (within three weeks) a detailed voucher with
receipts must be submitted to the Division's treasurer and the Symposium
Funding Committee Chairman.
The
following general guidelines apply:
A. Priority
will be given to those Organizers who have sought other support, such as PRF
grants, etc.
B. Monies
should not be made available to U.S. citizens who are members of the ACS or to
U.S. chemists. Any deviation must be approved by the Symposium Funding
Committee.
C. Priority
will be given to those Organizers who publish the symposium with the American
Chemical Society Books Department. The monies provided to Symposium Organizers
are derived from royalty payments on previous books, and if the financial
support program is to continue, it is important to maintain the revenue stream
with royalties from new books.
Submit
completed application to the PMSE Symposium Funding Committee Chair (contact
Richard Turner, srturner@eastman.com).
National Institute of Health
Many PMSE
symposia are topical to certain NIH Institutes and Centers. It is possible to seek
funding through the NIH for these symposia. The details are found at: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not98-151.html
Petroleum Research Fund Scientific
Education (SE) Grants
1. ACS-PRF
Scientific Education (SE) grants may be sought for travel support of invited
non-industrial speakers from outside the US and Canada. Currently, these grants
carry a maximum of $1,200 per speaker and $3,600 per symposium. An application
may be obtained by calling PRF at (202) 872-4481 or by writing to:
The
Petroleum Research Fund
American
Chemical Society
1155 16th
Street N. W.
Washington,
DC 20036
Some basic
information is also available on the Web: http://www.acs.org/acsgen/prf/grant.htm
2. The
subject of the symposium is important and must be consistent with PRF
interests. If in doubt, the organizer should consult by telephone with PRF
staff in advance. The PRF's charter is to advance "scientific education
and fundamental research in the 'petroleum field', which may include any field
of pure science which... may afford a basis for subsequent research directly
connected with the petroleum field". In practice, this scope is quite
broad, and would cover most if not all of the symposia sponsored by PMSE.
3.
Twenty-nine copies of the SE proposal are required. The original copy must be
signed by an organizer and an officer of the Division (two signatures).
4. The PRF
Advisory Board meets three times per year, in February, May and November. SE
proposals should arrive in the PRF office at least four months before these
three meetings. For a spring National meeting, the absolute latest the Board
can consider a proposal is at their February meeting; for a fall National
meeting, at their May meeting. It is suggested that you aim for one meeting
prior to this deadline to ensure consideration. Early submission also allows
errors or weaknesses to be corrected if staff discovers same. At the same time,
a proposal submitted too early is likely to suffer, since a key element of a
successful proposal is knowing precisely how the funds will be spent (e.g.,
which celebrated international speakers will be participating in the
symposium).
5. The PRF
Advisory Board generally wants to see a financial contribution from other
sources towards the symposium: preferably by the sponsoring Division, and/or
from industrial source(s). This contribution is seen as an indication that the
Division really supports the symposium, and that the PRF funds will be
appropriately leveraged.
ACS Corporation Associates Grants for
Industrial Programming
To encourage
participation at national meetings by ACS members working in industry, and to
help make the ACS more responsive to the needs of industrial chemists,
Corporation Associates will subsidize programming of selected industrially
oriented symposia.
The
Committee on Corporation Associates established a pilot program beginning with
the Fall 1996 national meeting in Orlando, FL. Up to $20,000 will be available
to fund grants for each of the two national meetings in 1997. A division can
receive only one grant for each national meeting.
A
Corporation Associates Task Force will review and approve grant proposals and,
monitor and evaluate the pilot program.
Criteria
To qualify for
consideration for a grant, a symposium should meet the following criteria:
·
Preferably
symposia should be at least one full day in length.
·
Sixty
percent or more of the speakers should be industrial chemists.
·
Corporation
Associates funds should be used to enhance the programming of the symposia,
training or skills development, or to defray cost of speaker's travel expenses.
No monies will be granted for breaks, lunches or receptions.
·
Should
include papers relating to technology, and ideally these papers should address
topics such as problem resolution, scale-up manufacturing, or technical
marketing of products.
·
The
chairperson and/or organizer of the symposium should be from industry.
·
Acknowledge
and recognize Corporation Associates as a sponsor of the symposia.
Funding
Process
Symposium
Chairs will submit to Corporation Associates a proposal (form attached, two
pages hence) providing the Symposium Title, How the criteria will be met, and
How Corporation Associates funds will be used. This proposal must be delivered
to the ACS Headquarters, Office of Corporation Associates, by the deadlines
given on the next page.
Corporation
Associates will review the proposals prior to each national meeting and notify
Chairs of winning proposals that Corporation Associates will commit in
principle to support of the symposium with funds being released after the
symposium on receipt of a letter report validating that the criteria were met.
Chairs of non-winning proposals will be notified that their symposia will not
be supported.
Symposium
Chairs will submit a letter report to Corporation Associates validating that
the criteria were met and including the total number of attendees and the
number of industrial chemists. (This can be accomplished by counting the
audience once during each half-day session and asking for a show of hands of
industrial chemists.)
Upon
receiving the report and validating that the criteria were met funding will be
released.
The details
of the program can be found online at:
http://www.acs.org/industry/ca/grants/grants.html
Deadlines
Official
deadlines are set 7-8 months ahead of the meeting, but have generally been
extended for several months. To find out the deadline for your meeting, and to
obtain more information, contact Vanessa L. Johnson-Evans of the ACS Office of
Industry Relations at (202) 872-4475. At recent meetings, Corporation
Associates has relaxed the "60% industrial" rule for speakers, and
has explicitly stated "topics of particular interest are material
characterization, biotechnology, and materials science". Since at least
two of these three are clearly within PMSE's purview, obtaining support for
your symposium (provided you have strong industrial participation) should be
straightforward.
Send Request
to
American Chemical Society
Office of Corporation Associates
1155 Sixteenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
AT'TN: Vanessa L. Johnson-Evans
