Duties of the Chair-Elect

1. The first duty which the Chair-Elect must address is the appointment of a committee to nominate a slate of officers for the following year. A careful perusal of the elective offices of the Division is necessary to insure that the required nominations are made. Two candidates for the office of Chair-Elect are necessary every year. The secretary and treasurer serve for a periods of three years, or until a successor is notified of election. The offices of Secretary-Elect and Treasurer-Elect are one year offices, after which that person assumes the position of Secretary or Treasurer, respectively. The elections for Secretary-Elect and Treasurer-Elect are staggered.

One of the three at-large members of the Executive Committee is elected each year, so that two nominees for this office is required. The immediate past Chair is automatically placed as an at-large Executive Committee member for one year. The Division also has four councilors and four alternate councilors, each of whom serves three years. Every three years two of the Councilors, and the following year two of the Alternate Councilors retire. On these years four nominees are required for Councilor and Alternate Councilor, respectively.

The Nominating Committee is responsible for presenting the names of two members for each of the elective offices to be filled at the Annual Meeting of the Division, which normally occurs at the time of the Fall National ACS Meeting. In order to meet this deadline, the Nominating Committee should begin its deliberations probably sometime in the spring. It is often useful to identify a group in the Inorganic Division membership, who may be expected to attend some large conference in late spring or early summer, and who can therefore use the occasion of such a conference to carry on their business.

2. A second duty of the Chair-Elect is the formulation of a symposium program for the two national meetings which occur the year after the chair-elect will be chair of the Division. The timing of this is such that the Chair-Elect should be in a position to present a list of prospective symposium topics, possible organizers, etc., at the Executive Meeting of the Division at the Fall Meeting during the Chair-Elect’s term of office. If the symposia are then approved for the meetings which are to occur a year later, there is adequate time to have these projected symposia publicized, via listing in the Inorganic Division Newsletter, Chemical and Engineering News, etc. It may be helpful to the Chair-Elect to have the advice of a Symposium Planning Committee, which can be appointed for this purpose. The committee appointed for the purpose of selecting nominees may also serve this second function.

The Nominating Committee must exercise great care in the selection of candidates, in this respect: They should carefully scrutinize the list of officers and nominees for offices for the past several years, in order to insure that the same persons are not asked to run again for a particular office, or to insure that someone, who has just run unsuccessfully for an office, is not asked to do so again within a short time period. Similarly, the Symposium Planning Committee must carefully study the list of recent symposia to avoid undue duplication, and to identify areas which need attention.

Normally, three symposia are planned for each national meeting. There are various opinions regarding the optimal length, format, etc. for symposia and the question of whether only invited papers or all papers contributed should be accepted continually occurs. At the moment, the prevailing opinion seems to be that three symposia are adequate, that a length of about 1.5 days (three half day sessions) is optimal for each symposium, and that (in part because of this restricted length) a policy of invited papers only is most feasible, but is not a requirement.

In addition to planning the symposia at the national meeting, the Chair-Elect is responsible for planning a “summer” or “winter” symposium to be held in the year following his term of office as chair. This much advance planning is required in order to permit a proper organization and formulation of these special meetings. The selection of an appropriate place and organizing group is made by the executive committee, upon hearing petitions from interested parties, or possibly after making a request to a particular group of people to do the organizing and planning. In any case, once this decision has been made, the Chair-Elect is responsible for working with the parties involved in moving the planning along.

3. A third duty of the Chair-Elect is to plan the social activities of the Inorganic Division at the two National Meetings during the year in which he is Chair. This means that he must, in company with the Secretary and Treasurer, make decisions about whether there will be a social hour, a divisional dinner, etc. Furthermore, if there is to be a divisional dinner and the traditional after-dinner speaker, he must make arrangements for that.

Prepared by T.L. Brown
November, 1972
Revised November, 1976.