Councilor's Corner - April 2008

April 6th - 10th are the dates for the next ACS National Meeting, which will be held in New Orleans

This is a very important meeting for me, as your Councilor, as this is where I begin my new role as Chair of the ACS Membership Affairs Committee. As we near this meeting, I thought I would give you a bit of insight into this Committee, what we do, what our charge is and what business we have coming up before the ACS Council.

The Membership Affairs Committee (MAC) is a Standing Committee of the Council. The other Committees under this umbrella include:

* Constitution and Bylaws (C&B)
* Divisional Activities (DAC)
* Economic and Professional Affairs (CEPA)
* Local Section Activities (LSAC)
* Meetings and Expositions (M&E)

MAC does what its name implies: it focuses on the needs of the membership of the whole Society....

To do this, the Committee is divided into three subcommittees:

* Dues and Categories
* Benefits and Services
* Member Recruitment and Retention

The Dues and Categories Subcommittee is mainly involved in reviewing the various categories available for membership and any dues levels that are separate from full dues. This Subcommittee does not determine the annual dues. That is brought forth to the Council by the Budget and Finance Committee. For your information, the proposal in New Orleans will be to raise the 2009 base membership dues, using the built in escalator, to $140.00. "Base" dues means that any other dues, such as Division or Local Section, is on top of that amount. However, the fact that there is a discount for student members, for retired chemists, etc. is under the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee. If there were to be a new category for dues, it would most likely also come out of this Subcommittee.

The Benefits and Services Subcommittee regularly reviews what discounts might be available to ACS members, ACS staff investigates what deals can be acquired, and if there is a solid benefit that can be acquired, it comes through this Subcommittee. This would include the discounts for rent-a-cars, Dell Computers, ACS credit cards, Membership Insurance Programs, etc. As the list of benefits might increase at this meeting, I will try to include a full list of benefits in one of my upcoming articles.

Finally, there is the Membership Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee. This Subcommittee has finalized a "toolkit" for membership recruitment that is available on the ACS web site for any Division or Local Section to use. We keep looking for new areas of chemical professional to target for membership and a lot of time in spent on funding ways to keep members once they join. This is tough in the first five years as it is proven that most members, who stay past five years, tend to stay for along time, but getting them to stay in those first five years takes a lot of cultivation.

As I wrote in an earlier article, MAC has two main items up before Council at this meeting in New Orleans. The first is the all-important Petition on Membership Categories and Requirements. Please refer to my January article that covered the high points about this all-important petition; the most drastic change in membership requirements ever considered by the Society. The second petition, only up for consideration and not for a vote (all petitions must come before Council at a National Meeting for "consideration" before it can come before Council at the following National Meeting for a vote) is a petition that would raise the dues of an Affiliate Member so that it matches the dues of a full Member. This proposal has been brought forth as it was realized that Affiliate Members receive about all of the same benefits of a Full Member. The biggest difference is only that an Affiliate Member cannot hold an office nor vote on races that are of national importance (Bylaw changes, Councilor, etc.).

Finally, being Chair of MAC is how this opportunity was presented to me, and it is an honor to be asked to serve in this high a position within the Society. Yet, I found out afterwards that being Chair of MAC also meant a few extra duties:

* Serving as a Member on the ACS Insurance Trust
* Chairing the Chemistry Advisory Board
* Serving as a non-voting member of the ACS Council Policy Committee

So you can see, I will be busy! However, I will not forget whom I serve and I will continue to hear your input and needs so that I can serve you, the grassroots members, from this new role. I am also happy to state that I join two other Councilors from the Northeast Region who are now Chairs of key Committees. They are Wayne Jones, Chair of the Local Section Activities Committee (from the Binghamton Section) and Willem Leenstra, Chair of Meetings and Expositions Committee (from the Green Mountain Section in Vermont).

Please remember that Jim Reynolds and I are your voices on the national level. Feel free to contact me at 477-4903, email me at:

d.richard.cobb@kodak.com
or write me at:
15-C Greenleaf Meadows, Rochester, NY 14612.
Thank you!

D. Richard Cobb