MSA SecretaryÕs Report at 2009 Business meeting:
The 89th annual business meeting of the Mineralogical Society of America was held on October 20, 2009 at 4:30 PM in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. What follows is a brief overview of the main actions taken by council and the executive committee, society election results, and other actions since the last business meeting that was on October 7, 2008.
Membership
Our current membership is 2,755, the highest since 1987 when it was 2,760. Our recent increase in membership is due in large part to students joining to receive the member discount in the Dyar & Gunter textbook; current student membership is at its all-time highest of 854.
New Fellows
The society honored the following thirteen members by elevating them to fellow status based on their scientific contributions:
Thomas Duffy
David Kohlstedt
Sergey Krivovichev
Bruno Lanson
William McDonough
Peggy O'Day
Aral Okay
Terry Ann Plank
Mihaly Posfai
Nita Sahai
Renata Wentzcovitch
Richard Wirth
Youxue Zhang
Medalists / award winners
It is a pleasure to officially announce the 2010 medalists. They are:
Roebling Medal: Robert Newton
Distinguished Public Service Medal: N/A
Dana Medal (for 2011): Ross Angel
MSA Award: Benjamin Gilbert
The 2009/2010 Kraus Crystallographic research grant recipient is: Hsiu-Wen Wang, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA - "Investigation of phase transition mechanisms for NAT-type natural zeolites: natrolite, mesolite and scolecite"
The 2009/2010 Mineralogy / Petrology recipients are:
Neil Robert Bennett, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada - "The Metal-Silicate Partitioning Behaviour of Re and Pt: Implications for Terrestrial Accretion and Core Formation"
Jessica Lynn Till, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN - "Rutherford backscattering spectrometry studies of Fe chemical diffusion in plagioclase"
MSA congratulates the medalists and award winners, and encourages our members to nominate worthy candidates.
Short Courses
There were two short courses in 2009: ÒThermodynamics and kinetics of water-rock interaction,Ó which was held before the Goldschmidt Meeting in Davos, Switzerland and ÒTheoretical and computational methods in mineral physics,Ó held before the fall AGU meeting in San Francisco, California. There is one course planned for 2010, ÒDiffusion in minerals and melts,Ó to be held in association with the fall AGU meeting in San Francisco, California, and two short courses planned for 2011: ÒSulfur in silicate magmas and melts and its importance for natural and technical processes,Ó and ÒApplied mineralogy of cement and concrete.Ó
RiMG publications
Jodi Rosso continues as editor of this very successful serious. This year we published the 70th volume: ÒThermodynamics and kinetics of water-rock interaction.Ó Jodi is also exploring the possibility of how to take advantages in on-line publishing by exploring the possibility of e-versions of RiMG volumes.
American Mineralogist
We welcome Martin Kunz as a new editor of the American Mineralogist and thank Dana Griffen for his service in that role. Jenny Thompson continues as does Bryan Chakoumakos as the other two editors. The decision to use GeoScienceWorld (GSW) for electronic publishing of the American Mineralogist, as well as RiMG volumes, and Elements, continues to be well founded for many reasons. As an example, as we have lost revenue from direct institutional subscribers to the American Mineralogist, those funds have more than been recovered by those accessing the American Mineralogist through the GSW portal.
Monographs / textbooks
The Dyar & Gunter textbook sold 2354 in the past couple of years, and will need to be reprinted in 2010. Currently the book has been used in approximately 20% of the colleges and universities in the United States that teach a ÒmineralogyÓ course.
Elements
Element continues to be, by all measures, a glowing success. In 2009 the following six new issues appeared:
ÒScientific Exploration of the moon,Ó ÒBentonites – Versatile clays,Ó ÒGems,Ó ÒMinerals Magnetism: From Microbes to Meteorites,Ó ÒGold,Ó ÒLow-temperature metal stable isotope geochemistryÓ
MSA Lecture Program
The following three lecturers, along with their talk titles, have been selected for the 2009/2010 MSA lecture series:
Katharine Cashman
Bubbles and bangs: When are volcanic eruptions explosive?
A tale of two eruptions: Mount St. Helens 1980-1986 and 2004-2008
Hill of fire: A modern look at the 1943-1952 eruption of Paricutin volcano
David London
Gem-bearing pegmatiteÕs: NatureÕs ÒfancyÓ rocks
The experimental foundations of igneous petrology
Bruce Yardley
Mineral-fluid interactions and their consequences for the rheology of continents
What controls the chemistry of crystal fluids?
Meetings
The big news here is the on-going efforts to ÒmergeÓ ourselves back in with GSA as MPGV division (we need a cooler name). And the fact we are looking ahead to the 2018 IMA meeting which is close to 2019 and the 100th anniversary of MSA. There is on-going discussion of merging these two events with MSA sponsoring the 2018 IMA.
Deaths
The following members of our society have recently passed away. Anyone wishing to write a memorial for submission to the American Mineralogist, please contact one of the editors.
Shohei Banno (Fellow – 1968)
Ivan Bonev (member – 1993)
Benjamin Leonard (Senior Fellow – 1945)
Akhio Miyashiro (Life fellow – 1947)
Joseph Orosz (member – 2005)
Willis Richey (member – 1985)
Edward Woermann (Fellow – 1965)
Kenzo Yagi (Life fellow – 1940)
Committees
Much of MSAÕs work is done by our committees and those who volunteer to serve on them. Details of the MSA committees can be found at our web site <http:www.minsocam.org/MSA/Committees.html> and those wishing to serve should contact Dave Bish (bish@indiana.edu); as Vice President of MSA, Dave is this yearÕs chair of the committee on committees.
New Developments
MSA developed a Facebook page this year, thanks mainly to Marc Hirschmann. Nancy Ross is working on establishing MSA reps at colleges, universities, government labs, museums, and industry to help spread the word about MSA. At this fallÕs council meeting we decided to add ÒmoderationÓ to the MSA listserve. What this means is all emails submitted to it, will be pre-screened and those determined not to met the intent of the listserve, will not be posted.
As usual we try to predict how to keep MSA a vibrant, active society, and then follow though on these ideas. There is no doubt that we have been very successful with the RiMG series dating back now several decades, and more recently Elements and the move to GSW. However well we are doing, the status quo will not work and we all must thing of ways to make MSA even more successful as we approach our 100th birthday in 2018.
2009 Election Results
It is a pleasure to announce the results of the 2009 elections that were held on the web for the fifth time. John Brady was elected as president, Dave Bish as vice president, Mickey Gunter as secretary and Wendy Bohrson and Sumit Chakraborty as councilors. Nancy Ross moves from president to past president, and Darrell Henry remains as Treasurer.
Finally we owe a debt of gratitude for those who are stepping off council. Klaus Mezger and Jean Morrison are leaving after serving three-year terms as councilors. And especially to Peter Heaney who leaves council after serving as vice president, president, and past president, along with previous service as a councilor, distinguished lecturer and all around good guy.
Mickey E. Gunter
Secretary, Mineralogical Society of America