Board of Directors 2007

Chair:    Eugene Brown
Chair Elect:   David Sarno
Past Chair:   Richard Rosso
Secretary:   Joseph Landesberg
Treasure:   Philip Mark

Directors @ Large:
Ralph Stephani
Paris Svoronos
Soraya Svoronos
Luis Vargas
 

As I look back on my tenure as Chair of the Long Island Subsection of the New York Section of the American Chemical Society, I am reporting that I am pleased and somewhat disappointed.  My tenure was to start January 2007; however, because of an accident to Past Chair, Richard Rosso, I unofficially started to chair meetings and events in October 2006.  When my tenure became official, I sent a letter to the Indicator expressing an open invitation to all scientists at all levels to participate in LIACS.  My aspirations were to include academia, industry and high school science teachers.

We have accomplished many good things during 2007.  We have increased the number of seminars to seven.  Speakers have been from academia, industry and the medical and health fields.  We instituted our first even “Chem. Café.”  In addition, LIACS now does two mailing a year to notify all members of our spring and fall lecture series as well as all other ACS events.

Queensborough Community College has undertaken the tremendous task of all mailings.  The board meetings are all held at Hofstra University on the last Thursday of the month (January, April, September and November).  A brief meeting is also held in December at Nassau Community College before the Holiday Dinner and Seminar for board elections.

The attendance at our seminars has run from 45-84 people, the bulk of which are students primarily from Queensborough Community College and Nassau Community College with some representation from industry, high school teachers and the local colleges.

I am disappointed with the fact that some who become officers, past officers or committee members do not always attend meetings and some past officers do not lend the knowledge and support to the new, younger members.  Being a board member and/or committee chair or person is a responsibility.  My other disappointment is in myself, and it lies in the fact that I wanted to be able to get more industry, high school teachers and surrounding professors to be more involved with LIACS.  However, to that end, the ice has been cracked with a few high school teachers and professors and a commitment for financial support for the 2008 Chem. Challenge from Barnes and Noble.  Also, a local company will be attending meetings and getting involved with us and may provide financial support for one of our events.

For me, it was indeed a pleasure, honor, enjoyable and exciting to be able to serve as 2007 Chair of LIACS.  Meeting and working with so many outstanding people has made my membership in ACS more than just a “dues paying” member and follower.  I was able to do and be an active mover in this prestigious organization.  I want to thank all of the board members of LIACS and NYACS that made my tenure so pleasurable.

Sincerely,
Professor Eugene Brown
2007 Chair-LIACS

LIACS had a special event full year.  These were announced in the Indicator with an abstract of talks.  Those that involved the students were extremely well attended, enjoyable and sparked much interest and comradery among the students and faculty.  I think this is an area we should spend more time and money because it is the students’ further interest and exposure we want to “curry”.

Although not officially under my tenure as Chairman, I had to take charge and host the December 2006 Holiday dinner, elections, social and seminar because Dr. Richard Rosso, the official Chair, was incapacitated.  The Holiday dinner was held at Nassau Community College at 5:30 pm.  The speaker was Dr. Sasan Karimi of Queensborough Community College.  His presentation, “Chemistry and Art” was received very well by 75 people ? many there were from the art community.

The results of the board election were:  Chair Elect 2007, Dr. David Sarno; Secretary, Dr. Joseph Landesberg; Director at Large, Dr. Soraya Svoronos and Dr Luis Vargas.

During the social and buffet dinner, 14 door prizes were raffled off.
 

Chem Challenge

Sequentially, the second special event was the Seventh Annual Chemistry Challenge hosted by Queensborough Community College on April 19, 2007 at 5:30 pm.  A buffet dinner and social preceded the competition.  This year we had a greater number of colleges participating.  Tere were six in all: Queensborough Community College, Nassau Community College, Adelphi university, Hofstra University, St. John’s University and SUNY Farmingdale.  The competition involved three students per team and a school could field any number of teams depending upon the student interest from each school (it ran 103 teams).  The questions were submitted by professors from the surrounding colleges at the general chemistry level and the first half of organic chemistry.  Thirty questions were chosen by Dr. Soraya Svoronos and Mr. Frank Romano for the competition.  Gift certificates were presented to each participant and the winning team received a much larger gift certificate from Barnes and Noble.

The students loved the event as expressed in letters of appreciation.
 

Sterrett Symposium and Luncheon

The third special event for LIACS was the Eleventh Annual Francis S. Sterrett Environmental Chemistry Symposium.  It was held on May 4, 2007 from 8:30 to 1:00 pm. at Hofstra University.  The topic of the symposium was entitled “Liquefied Natural Gas: Safe-N-Sound?” and was chaired by Dr. Barbara Hillery.  She presented a very solid program with many excellent speakers, both pro and con; however, the program was poorly attended probably because it was at the end of the school year and many students had already left the area.  It was and is a pertinent question to those on Long Island and Connecticut because it is in the Sound where the liquefied gas may be stored from off shore tankers.
 

High School Achievement Awards

On June 4, 2007, we presented the 18th Annual Outstanding Scholastic Achievement Award in High School Chemistry.  It is another way to reach out and encourage the high school students in chemistry.  Each high school in our area is notified to select its outstanding chemistry student so he/she can be invited with parents to this affair to receive an ACS Chemistry plaque and to be recognized as outstanding in high school chemistry.

OSI Pharmaceutical hosted the entire event at their company dining hall.  It included a free buffet dinner, a tour of OSI, a talk on how drug research is done through chemical trials, followed by beautiful plaques that were presented to each of the awardees by the chair of LIACS.  In the dining room, we placed at least one member of LIACS at each table.  This brought about a dialogue with the professionals, students and parents.

We need to revisit how this program is run.  In my opinion, many signed up to attend, plaques were made for these attendees; however, only about 25% showed up.  We, therefore, had to mail these plaques  - which was very costly.  In the future, I think we should only have plaques made for individuals in attendance and the remaining participants will receive a certificate in the mail.  Photos and Program Booklet
 

Chem, Café

Our fifth special event and a first for LIACS was our “Chem. Café”  It was a resounding success; it was designed for the average “Mary” and “Joe” who are not involved in the area of science or technology and feel lost in the daily bombardment by the media of science and technology which many times can be erroneous.  It was held on November 30, 2007 at 6 p.m. in one of the community rooms at Nassau Community College.  We had members of LIACS strategically seated at the various tables so the public had free access to see that we are not ‘horned’ and easy to talk with.  The first 45 minutes was a social with free food and live soft background music conducive to a relaxed atmosphere and gentle conversation.  That was followed by a very interesting presentation by Dr. Susan Ettinger on the subject of nutrition at a level that our attendees could follow with ease; she has a very soft, easy presentation.

Information about the Chem. Café was distributed to the public by placing fliers at the local libraries, supermarkets and in community papers.  The turnout was better than expected with 68 people in attendance, that well exceeded the expected amount of 40 people.   Flyer
 

Holiday Dinner/Social December 2007

A week after our successful first Chem Café we held our 6th and my last program as Chair.  It was our traditional Holiday Party, Board Election, seminar and dinner.  This, like our December parties, was very well attended and much fun was had by all.  The brief Board Meeting was held to elect officers for 2008.  The results of the election were:  Chair Elect, Dr. Jun Shin; Treasurer, Dr. Philip Mark; Directors at Large: Dr. Paris Svoronos and Dr. Ralph Stephani; Dr. David Sarno moving from Chair Elect to Chair as of January 2008.  The guest speaker was Professor Peter Duaczuk, Director of Forensic Science Training Center for Modern Forensic Practice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.  His presentation entitled, ‘Case Studies in Forensic Science: the Evidence Tells the Story,” thoroughly interested all, especially our students.  After talk and discussion, the social and buffet dinner became the main event.  During that time, 15 door prizes were raffled off.