The following committees have been established, with the members and tasks listed. The current by-laws say all committee members must be from the Council. At the Seattle meetings we hope to change this to have at least two Council members on each committee, with the other members from the membership (An exception will be the membership of the Executive Committee, all of whose members are drawn from the Council). In the meantime, non-Council members of committees are technically advisers to the committees.
Mailing addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers for Council members and for all committee chairs are here.
The Chair will receive and count ballots, which will be distributed with the spring newsletter.
The nominating process will get going in the fall. Send committee members your suggestions. Prospective Council nominees should be aware that, if elected, they will have to serve on 1-3 committees and volunteer for jobs such as newsletter editor.
The Program Officer and Local Arrangements Co-ordinator will be members of this committee. The committee will be the backup for (and, if needed, watchdog over) the Local Arrangements Co-ordinator.
Michoacan, Mexico is the intended site for the 1999 meeting. Local arrangements co-ordinator is Ana Barahona Echeverria (email: abe@hp.fciencias.unam.mx). The 2001 meeting is currently being scheduled for Europe; the initial co-ordinator (to get the ball rolling) is Werner Callebaut (email: calleb@kla.univie.ac.at or callebaut@philosophy.rulimburg.nl) Antipodeans point out that Mexico is more expensive than a USA site, indeed as expensive a meeting site as Europe. Some Europeans, on the other hand, consider Mexico to be a North American site. So, it's hard to say that we are or are not meeting outside North America 1 time in 3. In any case, we are living up to the "I" in ISHPSSB if we go ahead as planned.
The 1997 meeting of ISHPSSB will be held in Seattle, Washington. The conference dates are Wednesday July 16 through Sunday July 20, as originally scheduled. Anyone anticipating a clash with the Biosemiotics meeting before ISHPPSB or the International History of Science meeting after ISHPSSB should inform the 1997 Program Co-ordinator, Bob Richardson. Bob will try to schedule your session to avoid conflicts.
Marjorie Grene has graciously agreed to allow the Society's prize named after her. Please alert eligible people and encourage them to enter. The postmark deadline for submissions for the first competition is February 1, 1997. The winning entry will be announced by April 15, 1997. Guidelines for submissions appear below.
The Secretary will be on this committee and might serve as the chair, but will be spared the job of newsletter production.
The following are areas in which we might implement formal changes or motions for such at the next annual meeting of the Society:
I. Committees are currently supposed to be made up of Council members. I plan to propose a change to ensure that two members of any committee are from the Council (again, the exception is the Executive Committee), but the rest can be from the membership at large. (The President appoints committees, with the Council's approval.)
II. The by-laws specify that the Society must have a general meeting annually. I propose to use the Society's email list for a virtual annual meeting, spread over a few days in the early fall of the in-between years. This would be launched with reports and then followed by a ruling from the chair that all motions formulated would be tabled, that is, they could be discussed but not voted upon until the next actual meeting. A virtual Council meeting would then follow this general meeting (the Council is more or less operating this way at the moment).
II. The Past-President, as chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee, would handle the elections, so that no-one standing for office would be doing that job. Members of that committee wanting to stand for office should arrange for a nomination from the membership at large, not from the committee itself.
IV. At the end of every quarter, the local arrangements co-ordinator should report to the Executive Committee, as well as to the Local Arrangements & Site Committee, on plans, progress or lack thereof.
V. At the end of every quarter, the program officer should report to the Executive Committee, as well as to the Program Committee, on plans, progress or lack thereof.
Reactions, favorable or otherwise, requested,
Peter Taylor
CCACC
8 Bishop Place
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Phone: 908-932-8678 (o); 8683 (fax)
Email: pjt1@rci.rutgers.edu OR pjt1@cornell.edu
This page is maintained by Valerie Gray Hardcastle.