Sunday, March 22, 2009

Salt Lake City Day 2

Day 2 of the meeting for me was spent at the Women Chemist Committee Meeting (WCC)over at the convention center. Since the meeting was not at the hotel where I am staying, I had to take TRAX to get there.
We now have three North Jersey women chemists besides myself who are members of that committee, Bettyanne Howson, Amber Charlebois, and Kelly George who works at Roche for my mentee Sherrie Cole. I will try to get Kelly more involved in the North Jersey local section activities. I serve as a consultant and WCC historian on that committee so I mostly sit back and observe and give the background information for current activities.
One of the members just had a baby so the baby came to the meeting and was picked up and cradled by some of the members, even the male members, during the meeting.
The highlights of the meeting were that because there are so many talks and symposia in which women are being honored or speaking, some of the members were assigned to cover the talks for the Women Chemist newsletter. I will be covering the talk by Dr. Shirley McBay who is receiving the award for Mentoring Minorities. I will also go to the award banquet in which she will receive the award. It was I that suggested that she be nominated for that award as a part of my African American women chemist project.
Speaking of the Women Chemist Newsletter, one of our North Jersey women chemists Dr. Kathryn E. Uhrich was featured in the current issue of the newsletter which is on line at http://membership.acs.org/W/WCC/newsletters/Winter09/index.html
The WCC selected a women to be nominated as an ACS fellow. The deadline for nominations for ACS fellows is April 15 and the nomination information can be found on the front page of the ACS web page.
Speaking of nominations and the promotion of women, the Committee on Nominations and Elections would like to receive the names and cv's of women who could be nominated for governance positions or be future nominees, rising stars. If you have such names you could send them to the wcc staff liaison at the link on the wcc home page.
The WCC has a number of awards that it manages here are the deadlines for two of them:

Spring Awards Deadline Reminders:


Priscilla Carney Jones Scholarship, supporting an undergraduate woman entering her junior or senior year in the study of chemistry or a chemically related area. APRIL 1


Overcoming Challenges Award, recognizing overcoming hardships to pursue a degree in chemistry at a 2-year or 4-year non-PhD granting institution. MAY 1


It is also good to remember that the ACS has national awards for which women can be nominated that deadline is November 1 and the details are on the ACS home page.


The day ended with the WCC reception and open meeting in which the Salt Lake City local women chemists committee explained what they do. They are an extention of the women in chemistry group at the University of Utah.


I was going to the WCC dinner afterwards but I got invited to the career councilors dinner in my hotel which was free!

I found out that the ACS would like more Career Councilors. Career Councilors are trained to review resumees, conduct mock interviews, and counsel other chemists who are seeking their first job or a new job. They are looking for a younger more diverse group of volunteers to join the ranks. For more information about career consultants, search for it on the ACS careers page.


I have a press pass for this meeting and I picked up my credentials. There are a lot of technical papers at this meeting that are currently embargoed. I will discuss some of them when I can


Jeannette Brown



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