ACS News
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March 20, 2006
2005 Progress Report For ACS
Madeleine Jacobs, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer
This report highlights some of the significant accomplishments that the American Chemical Society achieved in 2005 through the partnership of members, ACS volunteer governance, and staff.
In the membership area, I am especially pleased to report that we ended 2005 with our membership slightly ahead of last year—158,422 members. This is an increase of 293 members over 2004 and is a reversal in the three-year downward trend the society experienced in 2002???04. The membership retention number remains stable at an industry-setting standard of 92.4%. While one year does not make a trend, this turnaround is in part due to our continuing emphasis on marketing the member value proposition to a wide array of chemical professionals, both within the traditional chemical fields and on the multidisciplinary edge of the chemical enterprise.
Also in the membership area, ACS served as the conference manager for the largest ever Pacifichem meeting, with over 11,000 participants. Staff provided support to ACS President William F. Carroll???s Extreme National Chemistry Week Tour, which took place Oct. 14???23, 2005. The tour, covering over 13,000 miles, was documented through stories in Chemical & Engineering News, the chemistry.org newsletter, Leading Together, the Community Coordinator News, a blog, podcasts, video, and various photographic media. As a noncritical way of testing new media vectors for electronic communications, the tour served as a proving ground for blogs, streaming audio, and streaming video for the society. Preliminary responses to the blog and to the podcasts have been favorable.
ACS continues to transform itself to be more welcoming to chemists working at the exciting interface areas of chemistry. In October, during the ACS Division Summit, the Divisional Activities Committee identified three important multidisciplinary themes for the 231st ACS national meeting in Atlanta; those themes are drug discovery, energy, and nanotechnology. The theme for the fall ACS national meeting in San Francisco is ???Collaboration in Chemistry: Recovery from and Prevention of Natural Disasters.??? Thematic programming is a new initiative that challenges a group of division representatives to create a program around the theme or themes, coordinate that program so that it is in an attractive location, and attempt to minimize any conflict among related sessions.
The Office of Industry Member Programs hosted the third annual ACS Pharmaceutical Leaders Meeting at the research campus of Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, N.J. Twenty-six senior leaders of discovery research from the pharmaceutical industry participated. The meeting provided a discussion forum on issues of common interest for industry leaders and ACS, such as off-shoring of R&D, the public image of pharmaceutical chemistry, future funding for R&D in academe, and how the role of chemistry within pharmaceutical companies is changing. Pfizer will host the 2006 meeting.
In continuing efforts to provide the best career services to members, Chemical & Engineering News Chemjobs and the Department of Career Services collaborated to implement Chemjobs Regional Employment Center, an online service offered in conjunction with the ACS regional Meetings for employers and job seekers.
Our Membership Division and the Education Division are also committed to preparing a future generation of chemists through the ACS Scholars Program and Project SEED. Last year, the ACS Scholars Program celebrated its 10-year anniversary. The total number of former ACS Scholars with Ph.D.s rose to 26 at the end of 2005. To help support these programs, the newly expanded Development Office went all out. As of Dec. 31, 2005, the society had received gifts and pledges from nongovernmental sources totaling $2.86 million. This figure is more than double the comparable 2004 year-end result of $1.36 million. Corporate support for the ACS Scholars Program was $1.17 million or 42% of the total; gifts and pledges to Project SEED totaled $716,000, or 25% of the total.
Also serving our members, the Member Insurance Program introduced two new life insurance products, the 10- and 20-Year Level Term Life Insurance plans. At up to $2 million in coverage, these plans offer members fully portable insurance, even when they change jobs or careers.
ACS held four ProSpectives Conferences, increasing overall attendance by more than 90% (from 60 registrants per conference in 2004 to 115 per conference in 2005.) The society also expanded its e-learning program from 12 webcast courses in 2004 to 21 webcast courses in 2005.
With funding approved by the board of directors, the ACS Education Division initiated a new pilot program of high school chemistry clubs, which is proving to be very successful and was oversubscribed as soon as it was announced. The division's involvement with student affiliates and other undergraduates—the future members of ACS—continued to grow significantly. The society hosted more than 2,300 undergraduates at technical sessions and workshops at the ACS national meetings in 2005, a record number. The division also organized with the ACS Green Chemistry Institute the third Summer School on Green Chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
The Division of External Affairs encompasses the Communications Office, the Office of Legislative & Government Affairs, the Green Chemistry Institute, the International Activities Office, and the Petroleum Research Fund (PRF). In 2005, the Communications Office reported more than 7,200 news reports on ACS-related work. The majority of this coverage came from ACS journals (43%) and the two national meetings (41%). The remaining 16% of ACS news coverage highlighted ACS programs and activities, such as awards, the chemistry Olympiad, the Green Chemistry Institute, PRF, Project SEED, and the ACS Scholars Program.
OLGA actively advocated on behalf of ACS???s 34 public policy priorities, most successfully on those dealing with scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematics and R&D funding. Advocacy in these areas resulted most notably in increases in the 2006 fiscal-year budgets for the National Science Foundation (3.3%), the National Institute of Standards & Technology (9.0%), and the Department of Education???s Math & Science Partnership (2.8%), a remarkable achievement considering the extremely difficult budget year.
Building on the April 2005 delegation to China, the International Activities Office and Committee on International Activities developed a short list of key priorities for future development, including exchanges for young career chemical scientists and publications workshops. Also as a result of the April visit, the deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has accepted an invitation to speak at the open session of the board of directors meeting in Atlanta on Sunday, March 26.
The ACS Green Chemistry Institute made enormous strides in 2005. In addition to its highly successful International Conference on Green & Sustainable Chemistry and the 9th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference in Washington last summer, the ACS Green Chemistry Institute launched the Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable with the active participation and financial support of the leading pharmaceutical houses in the U.S.
As the year ended, the Petroleum Research Fund improved the efficiency of grant submissions and peer review by implementing an all-electronic workflow. PRF is one of the world???s largest private philanthropies devoted to funding chemical research.
The ACS Web Presence Initiative, with funding approved by the board of directors, is well under way and on schedule. A detailed analysis of ACS websites and high-level technical analysis of the IT infrastructure are completed. The first phase of the information architecture initiative is complete, and a concept model for the new Web presence has been developed. A Web community for local section, division, and committee webmasters is being piloted at this time, and new website templates have been provided to these groups
The initiative has entered its second phase. During the next six months, the project will examine and select new search and analytics tools, evaluate content management applications, and develop Web content migration strategies. A board of directors advisory group has been named to provide input and counsel; to ensure development of appropriate content, products, and services to advance the society???s strategic plan; and to ensure that local sections and technical divisions are integral components of the society???s Web presence.
The ACS Publications Division completed another highly successful year. Growth in manuscripts submitted and pages published has soared, fueled in part by more manuscripts from Chinese scientists. The editing and composition staffs have done a wonderful job of keeping pace with the flow of manuscripts. The division successfully launched the Journal of Chemical Theory & Computation and prepared for the launch of ACS Chemical Biology in January 2006. The division also reorganized the journals program and made major strides toward achieving a fully digital, end-to-end publishing system. The division also had a strong net contribution.
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) achieved another record year in revenues and net contribution. CAS is seeing increases in both volume and usage worldwide, with particularly strong growth in Asian markets. CAS accelerated its innovation pace in 2005, launching CAS Mobile, the first industry example of transmission of structure information to handheld devices; AnaVist for STN; and similarity searching in SciFinder.
CAS Editorial Operations added the highest number of indexed records to the CAS database in its history, 980,000. CAS also added 1.8 million reactions, bringing CASREACT to a total of 10 million reactions. This represents an extraordinary achievement in database building for CAS. Science IP, the information service business launched two years ago, experienced 54% revenue growth in 2005.
The net contributions from CAS and the Publications Division fund the vast majority of ACS member services and also contribute to the advancement of public understanding of chemistry and of the chemical profession in general. These contributions also make possible the critical investments in our IT infrastructure for our membership databases, Web presence platforms, credit card security, and disaster recovery. Major advances were achieved in all of these IT areas in 2005.
During 2005, ACS staff provided critical support for governance initiatives in financial planning, vision statement development, governance structure and operations review, program review, contingency planning, and hurricane relief. In particular, the Secretary???s Office supported the Board Task Force on the Hurricanes Response, which was assembled to help the society respond in a meaningful way to the devastation wrought upon chemical practitioners and others in the Gulf Coast areas. The Committee on Nominations & Elections, with the support of the Office of the Secretary and the Membership Division, conducted the society???s first paper/electronic hybrid election. In the fall national election, about half of those voting opted to cast their ballots via the Internet. Overall, the percentage of members voting in the election was the highest in several years. The Office of the Secretary also supported President William F. Carroll's ???Chemistry Enterprise 2015.??? The final document, posted on chemistry.org, is the outcome of what was learned from a situation analysis and the robust dialogue among ACS committees, technical divisions, and local sections on the future of the chemistry discipline.
In summary, 2005 was an exhilarating year, full of numerous achievements for ACS. ACS staff members and I look forward this year to our continued successful partnership with ACS members, the ACS Board of Directors, and our thousands of governance volunteers.
- Chemical & Engineering News
- ISSN 0009-2347
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