Spring Exec Meeting {Virtual}

Chair’s report

½ dozen attendees at the mentor lunch (Daniel Mainz & Dan Ortwine)

Sci-Mix poster session; COMP division had 10 posters & we had a virtual poster at the beginning of the row

-not very well attended (have heard the same thing from other divisions)

-there were breakout rooms for every poster

Went through Draft 2021 goals

- Social Media Coordinator (accomplished!)

- Would like to plan a retreat, maybe in Michigan (will plan on having one sometime in the Fall)

- Already time to start thinking about who to elect as next Chair-Elect

- Grad Student symposium

o We do have grad student awards….but they are for posters

o How are we going to differentiate between the posters & the oral symposium idea for grad students

§ Have grad students give short talks & then hold a mixer after (something like what they do at GNE)

§ Doesn’t have to be in conjunction with a National Meeting

COMP Website

- Send requests to Emilio for update and he will take care of the updates – need to provide Emilio with specific page that needs to be updated

- Emilio & Lee will work with Lauren & Heidi directly to update the website

o (maybe start with just Lauren)

§ Will apply mobile app development IPG funds to registration fees for Lauren & Heidi

Spring Newsletter

- Waiting for programming info, award recipients, and the Chair letter and then the newsletter will go out

Secretary’s Report

- Will attach report to minutes

- Original report was missing some data, will be added to final report

Treasurer’s Report

- No meetings last year, so we didn’t get any grants to fund symposium

- Budgetwise, assuming we would be in a hybrid model for the Fall, probably not going to get/need the funds

- We’re maxed out on project grants

- Our restricted investment fund is a rainy-day fund (run conservatively through Vanguard; Chris Harwell set up the fund when he was Treasurer)

- Much higher checking account balance because of the year we’ve had

o We have an opportunity to use that money wisely (and also aggressively) over the next few years

§ Ideas for use of money:

· Support of National Award?

· Kavil nominee? [ACS handles all of that]

· Speaker fund?

· Executive Retreat?

· Treasurer recommends against putting all that money in the Vanguard fund

MPPG

- Fall 2021 “Resilience of Chemistry”

- Spring 2022: most likely a hybrid or face-to-face meeting… Organizers have not been selected yet for the theme “Bonding through Chemistry”

o Lee suggests nominating Martin & Theresa Head-Gordon for 2022 meeting…. But we’re too close to that meeting (maybe?). Lee will follow-up with Luke. Possible the first organizer has other ideas in mind.

- Fall 2022: “Sustainability in a Changing World”

- Spring 2023: “Cross-Roads of Chemistry”

- For Fall 2023: “Harnessing the Power of Data (SF)” organized by Kennie Merz

- Should think about nominating someone for Spring 2024 “Many Flavors of Chemistry”

- TBD organizers for Fall 2024-Fall 2025

- Slides from April, 2021 meeting are here:

Awards

Katrina will reach out to William Ames to find out more about his Undergrad Award suggestion. What other divisions are doing this? Was there a specific award idea he had in mind? [can probably use some of the outsized account balance]

Karl Kirschner deserves a special shout-out for staying up until 3am to handle the virtual awards ceremony

JMGM

- impact factor this year is >2, which is exciting since it hasn’t been there since 2013!

- Would appreciate names of any junior people in the field who might be willing to review for the journal, please send to Emilio

Programming

- ACS hasn’t told us how many symposia we’re going to get (for Fall 2021 & Spring 2022), if they reduce drastically the number of sessions we have, contributed sessions will all have to get cut

o We have planned for 37 sessions for now

o Still haven’t finalized deadline dates

- Time to remind ACS COMP members of upcoming deadline [Katrina to do]

- Agreed to hold MolSSI workshop every year for students

IPGs

- Not sure what the status is with our current awards (see above under Website for Mobile app IPG funds decision)

Councilor & Committee Reports

- Current focus is on decreasing barriers to access/enter committees and increase diversity across all committee

Member outreach

How can we engage our members? Can we put something on the website to solicit volunteer’s [e.g., election will be running this summer, these are the current open positions, apply or nominate someone here]