The Program Committee’s main goal is to oversee the division’s technical program, start-to-finish, at the fall and spring national meetings. In working toward this goal, we interact cordially and professionally with the many people involved in programming, respond to their diverse requests in a timely manner and have to follow the protocols and enforce the rules by which all who contribute to the program must play.
In the reporting period, we had a successful Spring 2025 meeting in San Diego, CA. We wanted to especially acknowledge the work by CHED co-chairs Pamela Clevenger and Faith Yarberry with support by Ryan Sweeder. For each of the two co-chairs, this was the first meeting that they helped organized (recently). The program was quite diverse and very well attended. It included symposia for 2 ACS award winners and the Chemistry Teacher Day, where a third ACS address took place.
We have also been planning for the Fall 2025 CHED program which offers a much smaller footprint. We continued to employ a division-sourced approach to identifying symposia, which has led to the wide range of options. In this meeting, CHED continues to offer joint programming with several other units and we are meeting the ACS target for such programming. For this fall meeting, it includes the GSSPC symposium, "Chemistry in High Gear" that will explore high throughput chemistry techniques. The Fall 2025 meeting will be the first that will have no Sunday technical programming. Through advocacy, there is an exception that CHED may have the ability to do some programming (for Teachers) in the future. We expect to be pursuing this for the Fall 2026 meeting. Special acknowledgement to the hard work of the co-chairs Aimee Miller and Cary Supalo.
The program committee has also moved to a co-chair model. Pam Clevenger, who is anticipated to take the mantel of lead co-chair in 2026, has been working with current lead chair Ryan Sweeder to learn the expectations of the position. They are expected to swap in 2026 with Pam taking the lead and Ryan providing support.
In moving forward, the Program Committee has been adjusting responsibilities to ensure greater participation in the meeting planning. In the Spring, we identified several new roles that will be associated with the Program Committee. The organizers for the General Paper and Posters will now come from the committee (Steve Fleming has done this for many meetings, and we are excited that he joined the committee and will continue this work. Cathy MacGowan has been working with him on the Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 meetings). We will also have committee members take over ensuring that the CER and chemistry education innovation poster sessions are appropriately split. In Spring 2026, Sonja Underwood and Ryan Sweeder will take this on. Lastly Michael Mury has been taking the lead from the Program Committee side for the Chemistry Teacher Day. Having these multiple roles, will hopefully continue to ensure active engagement by the program committee and share the workload.
Working on behalf of the division requires interaction with many others: presenters, organizers, program chairs from other divisions, and ACS staff. A number of committee members and ACS staff members have been especially helpful in the planning of this meeting. Sincere thanks go out to:
- Co-chairs Faith Yarberry and Craig Teague for their support and efforts in planning the Spring 2026 CHED program.
- the ACS in the Undergraduate Program Office, who worked with the undergraduate students and us to address their needs and questions
- Robin Green, Warren Lin, and Josh Blair and others from ACS, for managing and guiding the entire Society’s program changes .
Heather Johnson, for the countless ways she supports each program and our communication with members of the division
We are continuing to broaden the participation of the Program Committee. As such, we have developed assignments for the next year to engage more committee members and share the workload including for those unable to attend the national meetings. We anticipate this will help make the committee more rewarding for the committee members and also provide a stepping stone toward co-organizing a national meeting, as these positions will help people gain familiarity with the organization processes and using MAPS,