C&EN: ACS COMMENT - CORPORATION ASSOCIATES' 50TH

ROBERT CORAOR, CHAIR, ACS COMMITTEE ON CORPORATION ASSOCIATES

I am honored to be serving as the chair of the ACS Committee on Corporation Associates (CA) during this time of celebration. CA has been serving the society and its industrial membership for 50 years. Achieving this milestone has given the committee both time for reflection and a call for action.

As we look back on CA history, we can see that it played a vital role in stabilizing, revitalizing, and growing the publishing efforts of the society. CA was formed in 1952 to serve as an interface between the society and the chemical industry. The challenge then was to find ways of managing the explosive growth of technical literature while dealing with soaring publication costs. Under CA's direction, the society instituted new and innovative changes, which stabilized journal operations. CA's member companies contributed more than $780,000 to Chemical Abstracts Service to seed its growth to the world's leader in chemical information management and distribution.

With ACS publications on solid footing, CA was restructured in 1956 to help ensure the continuity of the society's essential publications. Nearly 300 companies became members, serving as an important link between ACS and the chemical and allied industries. To increase their impact, the ACS Board then charged CA with the responsibility for maintaining the official relationship between corporations and the society, advising the board on matters related to industry and developing recommendations on sources and uses of income from CA. A formal set of objectives and a dues scale based on the number of professional chemists and chemical engineers were developed. Those original objectives included contributing financial assistance to and guidance for selected ACS activities that involve industry; functioning as a forum for deliberation on questions involving industry and the chemical profession; communicating ideas, suggestions, and opinions between ACS and industry management; and promoting public understanding and appreciation of the contributions of chemists, chemical engineers, and the chemical industry.

As we look forward, CA's mission remains similar to the founding objectives; we will "advise and influence the ACS to ensure that ACS provides products and services that are of value to industrial members and their companies." As we begin our second 50 years, CA reaffirms its commitment to our mission and has developed strategies to help us achieve it. Our strategic planning session, held in January 2002, allowed us to prioritize our activities into four strategic thrusts:

Government affairs and public policy programs.
Industry/academia interaction and relationships.
Diversity programs.
Awareness of CA in ACS and companies.

CA's Public Policy Subcommittee, chaired by Joseph E. Sundeen of Bristol-Myers Squibb, has accepted the challenge of the first focus area and is active in increasing industry involvement in legislative initiatives with the ACS Office of Legislative & Government Affairs and networking with company government-affairs personnel to provide input on issues of interest to ACS. The subcommittee also works to identify topics and speakers for the Science & the Congress Project, a series of briefings to Congress.

The Education Subcommittee, which is chaired by Lawrence B. Friedman of Bayer Corp., has had a long-standing partnership with ACS undergraduate programs and is now working with the Graduate Education Advisory Board and others in ACS to better prepare our young graduate students for positions in the industrial workplace. The subcommittee's stated mission is "breaking down the wall between industry and academe." An exciting new effort of the subcommittee is coordination and information sharing with universities that do an exceptional job of preparing young scientists for careers in industry.

Seeking opportunities to increase the diversity of the chemical workforce is a major new thrust of our Programs Subcommittee, chaired by Stanley W. Polichnowski of Eastman Chemical. The subcommittee is working with the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs on joint activities and will be cosponsoring events with other ACS groups focused on diversity issues and topics. The group also administers CA's Industrial Grants Program to support division programming of interest to industry.

Increased awareness of and participation in CA is the role of the Membership Subcommittee, and I am pleased to note that four new members have joined us in the past six months. In other ongoing areas, the Finance & Grants Subcommittee, chaired by Frankie K. Wood-Black of Phillips Petroleum, manages our Seed Grants Program, which helps provide seed funding for worthy projects of industrial interest, and our Awards Subcommittee, chaired by Thomas H. Lane of Dow Corning, encourages industrial nominations and participation in ACS national awards. CA is also very pleased to sponsor two ACS awards, the Award for Creative Invention and the Award for Team Innovation.

In addition, CA is partnering with the ACS Office of Industry Member Programs in the Industry Pavilion in order to address some of our strategic thrusts. Recent workshop topics include graduate student preparedness, patent strategy, and paths to success in industry for women and minorities. We are also inviting distinguished speakers to CA meetings to brief the members on recent trends that shape the business and science of chemistry.

I encourage you to learn more about joining CA and contributing an important voice in our society. Visit http://www.chemistry.org/industry/ca or e-mail us at ca@acs.org.