Five ‘free and open to the public’ meetings were held at the NYU/Poly Graduate Center in Hawthorne , New York.

Each meeting was packed to capacity—25 people.  The audience consisted of professional, industrial chemists, graduate and undergraduate chemistry professors, graduate students, high school chemistry teachers, and on two occasion, high school students as well as some common lay people who wanted to listen to a talk involving the latest chemical research. These meetings started in March 2009 and ended in December 2009.

In May, 2009, the Westchester subsection held its annual Distinguished Scientist Award dinner at Pace University, Pleasantville, New York.  There was a spill over crowd of more than 150 attendees. Dr. Thomas Hintze from the New York Medical College was presented with the 2009 award. During the dinner he gave a power point presentation of his work concerning the chemistry of cardiovascular disease.  It was enlightening to the point that audience members asked poignant questions and Dr. Hintze answered them clearly to the satisfaction of all.

At that same meeting, awards were given to deserving undergraduate students who excelled in chemistry during the year. Each student was accompanied by their professor.

For the first time, a high school student was also presented an award because of her achievement in scoring a high grade on the Chemistry Olympiad exam.

In April 2009, the Chair, Dr. Sencen, trained 10 students from a local high school and had them perform science demonstrations and hands on experiments  for more than 2000 people at the Westchester Kids’ Fair at the White Plains County Center.  This event was sponsored by grants from Entergy, Texaco and the Westchester Chemical Society.

Joan Laredo-Liddell performed experiments at the New York Hall of  Science before large crowds of kids of all ages.  She has been doing this steadily for a number of seasons.

The board met in the summer to plan for future meetings in 2010 and to discuss the budget. The budget request for 2009 was approved by the New York section.  All expenditures were validated and the need for future funding is necessary in order to continue having a viable subsection.