APS Division of Astrophysics

2004 Executive Committee Meeting

Minutes

Sunday, 2 May 2004 at 6:30 –10:45 pm (dinner meeting)

Attending: Aprile, Beacom, Bildsten, Frieman, Holt, Kouveliotou, Lamb, Leising, Ryan, Sadoulet

Guests: Franz, McIlrath, Primack

Adams Mark Hotel, Director's Row I

1.                Welcome and Introductions: Kouveliotou

2.                APS Finances and Publications: Tom McIlrath

APS is financially healthy, with 1.6 years expenses ($62M) in reserve. Journals dominate income and expenses. He will send us the April meeting ledger for us to see for ourselves why this meeting is relatively expensive for participants. PRD moving to Beacon (as PRL did.) AIP press not keeping up with changing times?

3.                Secretary/Treasurer's Report: Leising

-            2003 Meeting Minutes

-            Election Results -- Online election for first time; 430 votes (25% of membership, compared to 18% last year, ~10% in prior years). Few complaints or problems. A few members noted that there were no women on the ballot (though certainly some were asked to run by the nominating committee.)

-            Financial Report – our balance continues to grow (presently $85k). Essentially all our expenses are associated with the April Meeting. We will try to spend more to attract younger members and keep them in astrophysics.

-            Membership Status – DAP membership is essentially unchanged since last year. We have not worked on increasing membership in the past year.

-            Newsletter – should we change the format, content (which has been very limited), or frequency of our newsletters? What would best serve our membership? (no discussion)

4.                Student Travel Grants:  Holt – only four total requested, all final year PhD students, all granted. We need to reach out directly to students themselves with offers of travel money.

5.                Fellowship Status:  Holt/Sadoulet – The nomination deadline is practically here. We have not yet solicited nominations this year; Bernard will begin that now from the list of non-fellow DAP members. All should review the list and suggest nominations to colleagues of deserving members asap.

6.                2004 APS April meeting -- status and lessons:  Holt – Steve has a list of recommendations to pass on for organizing plenary and invited sessions. Some very good DAP invited sessions here poorly attended.

7.               2005 APS April meeting: Sadoulet – Tampa. Will also be annual meeting of DPF. Bernard solicits input for speakers/sessions.

Lars Bildsten will contact March meeting program chair regarding organizing an astrophysics session there.

2006 April Meeting – will be joint with AAS HEAD in Dallas.

2006 DPF Meeing – Josh Frieman will investigate DAP initiated sessions there.

8.               Postdoctoral Lecture Series: Kouveliotou – idea is to send top recent PhD’s to top universities for colloquia. General discussion sentiment is that is useful only as an award. For more impact we should send them to “other” venues – universities not yet doing astronomy, or undergrad institutions where students have no astronomy exposure. Committee formed to study: Koveliotou, Holt, Bildsten, others to be named.

9.               POPA: Primack – APS POPA is organizing a committee of scientists to provide a report outlining the effects the President’s lunar-mars vision, as currently interpreted by NASA, will have on space science. As the initiative has not been mentioned again by the executive branch, is regarded suspiciously at best on Capitol Hill, and is favorably discussed only at the highest levels of NASA, it is expected that there will be great interest in this report. The committee is expected to emphasize that science planning has been very successfully conducted by consensus of scientists for decades, and that to abandon that model is dangerous. No action requested from DAP. Various acronymatic national committees are expected to feed into/from this report. (To summarize thousands of words with a few.)

10.             Long-range planning:  What should we be doing to make the APS DAP more relevant to our membership?: All – we failed to reach this topic specifically, yet it is the basic question that arose in almost every topic above. What is our purpose: to present astrophysics in the best light to other physicist?  To provide better access to physicists (through good review talks and personal interaction) at the April meeting? If the first, then why focus so much on the April meeting? If the second, why do so few of our members attend the April meeting? This is to be discussed.

General items, off-agenda:

It was suggested that email, which this committee uses almost exclusively, is an inadequate form of communication. No alternative was suggested.

Judy Franz – New April format: 3 invited (still 36 min) talks per session, 4 sessions per day, with one hour break for lunch. Meeting will last 4 full days. Plenary sessions with 3 talks 3 days only.

2005 is the World Year of Physics – no suggestions for DAP activity. Participate locally, with public, students, teachers, etc.

 

5 May 2004
Mark Leising