Board of Publications, Fall 2025

The Spring 2025 meeting was held in-person with virtual access. Standing reports were given by JCE EIC (Tom Holme), and ChemEd Xchange EIC (Jon Holmes). Meeting highlights include:

1. The Board welcomed new members Marcy Towns and Maureen Scharberg. 
2. The Board Associates program is back up and running after COVID. We had a slate of nine strong candidates for Board Associates. After discussion, the Board voted to make offers to Maia Popova and Jon-Marc Rodriguez to serve as Board Associates for the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 meetings. Both have accepted the nomination. 
3. The BoP has several people with terms ending in the next couple of years. Michelle Head and Frank Torre (Treasurer) December 2025 and Debbie Herrington (Chair) December 2026. Sally Hunnicutt has agreed to serve as Treasurer of the Board starting January 2026 and Marcy Towns has agreed to serve as Chair of the Board starting January 2027. 
4. The Board endorsed a search committee to begin the process for identifying a new Editor in Chief (EiC) for ChemEd Xchange. The search committee consists of: Ellen Yezierski, Aimee Modic, Erica Posthuma, and Maureen Scharberg. The Board took to ExComm the need to have a Division process for negotiating contracts for these types of positions. Maureen Scharberg agreed to chair the search committee. The search committee has posted a position announcement and is actively seeking candidates. 
5. Two sponsorship requests were received, considered, and approved. The Board approved sponsoring the Gordon Research Conference and co-sponsoring ChemEd 2025 with the Division. 
6. The Board discussed the GovPro proposal for restructuring of financing and approved a counter proposal to move a portion of the requested funds from the BoP investment to the Division. The remainer of the proposal will be revisited after renegotiation of the co-publishing agreement with ACS pubs has been finalized and the new EiC for ChemEd Xchange has been hired. As part of revisiting the proposal, the Board identified the need to include details about how the work with BlueSpark will be paid for and establishing a Division sponsorship policy.  
   1. A motion for a budget amendment to increase the 2025 BlueSpark line by $22,000 was made (FT) and seconded (MS) and a vote was taken via email. 
   2. The Board made a request to GovPro to split the costs of the BlueSpark maintenance fees for 2026. It was agreed that for 2026 the Board would budget for $35K of the estimated $50K for maintenance and GovPro would budget the additional $15K. This cost sharing will be revisited for the 2027 budget year. 
7. The Board discussed the need to be proactive and immediately provide additional funds for the JCE EiC and Editorial team to provide targeted outreach for the Journal. An additional travel line for the EiC to use to support travel for themselves or the Associate Editors for the purpose of promoting the Journal would be added to the annual budget. 
8. A task force of Tom Holme, Marcy Towns, and Debbie Herrington was formed to review the current joint publishing agreement with ACS Publications and work with the ACS Publications team on a revised agreement. The task force had its initial meeting after reviewing the current co-publishing agreement and then met with ACS Publications Assistant Director & Publisher for Partners (Emma Hennessey) and JCE managing editor (John Sanders) to discuss the renegotiation process and pose initial questions that came up in reviewing the current agreement.