408A Volume 55, Number 12, 2001

S O C IETY FO R

PRESIDENTIAL REFLECTIONS

I was very pleased and proud to assume the presidency ofthe Society in the beginning of 2001. I had speci� c goals thatwe needed to accomplish when we started, and I am happy toreport signi� cant progress on many fronts. In addition, I amalso very pleased to be the � rst international president of theSociety, since I moved back to Greece in 2000. In light of thehorrible terrorism act of September 11th, I want to emphasizeour commitment to grow the Society internationally and con-tinue with our way of life.

MEMBERSHIPOur � rst priority was to assure that membership in the So-

ciety has signi� cant value. I am very happy to report that ourmembership numbers have been stabilized after ten years ofcontinuous decline. Our goal is not only to stop the erosion,but also to increase membership and surpass the high levels wehad during the early nineties; I urge every member to contributetowards this goal. PCG Communications was also contracted tohelp grow the Journal subscriber base. We are instituting a veryserious effort in the recruitment of international and studentmembers, since we believe that the majority of new recruitswill come from these groups. Regarding student membership,we are exploring several options including student nominationsby faculty, active solicitation of student member resumes in adirect mail campaign, and the formation of a student councilthat handles student issues, and in general to associate valueand honor with these memberships. The fact of the matter isthat student membership remains relatively low and the studentsection on the web site has attracted few resumes so far.

INTERNATIONAL MEMBERSHIPThis is a very important area for the Society and we pay sig-

ni� cant attention to it. An ad hoc committee has been formed,headed by Dr. Tony Davies of the Institut fur Spektrochemie undAngewante Spektroskopie at the Universitat Dortmund to lookinto this matter. Rina Dukor, our immediate past President is alsoheavily involved in this project. The committee has made somesigni� cant recommendations to the Executive Committee and theGoverning Board on how to increase the visibility and the mem-bership level in places outside the United States. Our � rst stepis to start a campaign in which we are reaching out to the inter-national community, and in particular to those colleagues in low-income countries. We allow each regular SAS member the op-portunity to recommend one deserving individual for the onlineversion of the Journal. It is my belief that it is only a matter oftime till we become a truly international Society with signi� cantparticipation from outside the United States.

WEB SITEOur vision is to make our web site an international spectro-

scopic portal (www.s-a-s.org). This vision is becoming a realityday by day, and I personally feel that we are on the right trackregarding the goals that we set earlier in the year. The portaleventually will contain an array of employment postings, tech-nical chat rooms, short courses, and educational spectroscopy

links. Traf� c on the site has increased signi� cantly and we shouldexpect this trend to continue as more content is added to the site.One particular area of the portal with increased importance toour members is the employment section, where a variety of in-dustrial, and soon to be added, academic, postings are presented.

APPLIED SPECTROSCOPYEvery survey that we have conducted reveals that our Jour-

nal, Applied Spectroscopy, is the society’s most tangible anduseful product. Joel Harris, Paul Farnsworth, and the rest of theeditors have done an outstanding job with the Journal. Its qual-ity and prestige increases year by year and this trend has ade� nite positive re� ection on the Society and its membership.In particular, the Journal’s citation impact factor went up byalmost 10% in the past year. The Journal now ranks numberone among all instrumentation publications. The article citationhalf-life is about 6 years. We are featuring new topics in theJournal’s A-pages and one of them is focusing on careers.

In addition, the electronic version of the Journal is gainingnew users, and we believe that it is one of the vehicles that willdrive membership expansion, particularly with students and in-ternational members. Speci� cally, the Journal is currently re-ceiving 1500 hits per month, and initial registration problemsaccessing the Journal electronically have been alleviated.

MEMBERSHIP EDUCATIONThis is another very important service that we offer to our

members and a potential high revenue source for the Society.Web-based courses are the future, but until the arrival of broad-band Internet capability to the majority of the membership basewe cannot hope that this will be our major offering. Steve Bar-nett is taking over for Chris Hassell, and I would like to thankChris for an outstanding job during his tenure in this post. Weoffered an integrated Educational Program this year at FACSS,unfortunately with limited success due mostly to the tragic Sep-tember 11th events. Work has already started for the next year’sEducational Program at FACSS, and our goal is to tailor coursesof particular interest to the pharmaceutical and biotechnologycompanies in the Providence area. Our hope is that we willachieve better course offerings, increased attendance, reducedoperational costs, and smoother operation of the meeting.

Finally, I would like to thank publically all the people thathave made my time as President a very enjoyable one. Theirhelp and guidance were invaluable and in return I hope that Iserved the Society well. First of all, I would like to thank Bon-nie Saylor, our Executive Director, and everyone at the NationalSAS of� ce for all their help during my tenure. I would not havebeen able to accomplish a fraction of what I have without them.I would also like to thank Joel Harris, Pete Poston, Jon Car-nahan, Rina Dukor, Robin Garrell, Chris Hassell, Marvin Mar-goshes, Way Fountain, Paul Farnsworth, Marry Carraba, AlexScheeline, John Chalmers, Clara Craver, Peter Grif� ths, andNancy Miller-Ihli, just to name a few. Also, a big thanks to ourtwenty-three corporate sponsors that support our efforts to makethe Society for Applied Spectroscopy the premiere vehicle inthe world for the dissemination of spectroscopic information.

VASILIS GREGORIOU

SAS PRESIDENT