Member Login  | Logout | Contact Us  | Site Map     

SWST

Society of Wood Science and Technology

1997 Annual Meeting
June 21, 1998
Fiesta Americana Hotel
Merida, Mexico

Minutes

The SWST Technical Session was held from 8:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. The topic was "Distance Learning and Technology Transfer for the 21st Century". Speakers were: Ian Franks, University of B.C.; Jim Bowyer and Joe Massey, University of Minnesota; Bill Holland, Weyerhaeuser Company; Fred Lamb, Virginia Tech; and Greg Foliente, CSIRO. Fred Kamke was moderator.

The Awards Presentations were held from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Awards that were presented were:

--Student Poster Competition participants each received a certificate. Those people were: Stefan Zauscher, Anthony Lukindo, Jason Dubois, Brian Tucker, Jianxiong Lu, Tim Weigel, Fatima Moore Warsi, Wenlong Wang, Chris Heine, Alexander Salenikovich, Congjin Lu, Urs Buehlmann, Jong-Nam Lee, and Hong-mei Gu.

--The First Place Student Poster Award of $250 was presented to Stefan Zauscher. The Second Place Student Poster Award of $125 was presented to Anthony Lukindo. Plaques will be sent out later.

--Two International Visiting Scientist Awards were presented for $2000 each to John Wang and Elvin Choong.

--The George Marra Awards were presented to:
First Place - $1000 and a plaque to Laurence Mott, Stephen M. Shaler, and Leslie H. Groom,
Second Place - a plaque to Greg C. Foliente, Mahendra P. Singh, and J. Daniel Dolan,
Honorable Mention - a certificate to Barbara L. Gartner

--The Distinguished Service Award was presented to Warren Thompson.


The Annual Business Meeting was called to order by President Duane Lyon at 11:45 a.m. Approximately 115 people attended.

Minutes of 1996 Meeting

A motion was made, seconded, and passed to accept the minutes of the 1996 Annual Meeting as printed in the July-August 1996 Newsletter.

Executive Director's Report - Vicki Herian

A motion was made, seconded and passed to accept the following report.

Members as of June 1, 1997	Members as of June 1996
Full members 291	Full Members 308
Student members 87	Student Members 85
Retired Members 52	Retired Members 48
Affiliate members 1	Associate Members 6
TOTAL 431	TOTAL 447

USA members 335
Canada members 37
Mexico members 3
Overseas members 56
TOTAL 431

Subscribers as of June 1, 1997 - 280

USA 120
Canada 14
Mexico 2
Overseas 144
TOTAL 280

Subscribers as of June 1996 - 302
Delinquent members as of June 1, 1997 - 85
Delinquent subscribers as of June 1, 1996 - 67

Fidelity Spartan Money Market Fund

The most recent dividend paid was from January to March 1997 and was $479.12. The total is now $58,539.11.

Checking Account

The balance in the checking account as of June 1, 1997 is $39,952.02.

Miscellaneous

There were 93 ballots for the Constitution and Bylaw changes on "affiliate" membership returned to the Executive Office - 87 yes and 6 no. Howard Rosen presented the first affiliate membership to Valentin Shalaev in September 1996 in Russia where he gave Valentin a wooden plaque. We also shipped a complete set of back issues of Wood and Fiber Science to their University.

We have a new web site!

http://www.swst.org

Everything has been transferred from the LSU site and I am adding and updating as much as I can. I have added a search engine so that you could search documents. I still have to get the Membership Directory on so that you could search for member's addresses. Please visit the site and send me your comments and suggestions.

We have been allowing the use of Mastercard and Visa to our members and subscribers to pay for their dues and/or annual meeting registration fees for 1 year now. We have a low volume of use, but it certainly seems like an asset to some of our members, especially those not in the U.S. We will be continuing it on a trial basis for another year and then evaluate the cost effectiveness versus the ease of use. We decided not to charge our members an extra charge to use this service.

I now have a database program called FileMaker Pro on my computer. This is more flexible and powerful than the program we had before. With this program I was able to design and send the new invoices and the membership directory. Be sure to send in your "Change of Address Form" from the back of your directory if you have any additions or corrections.

The Renewable Natural Resource Foundation has offered to send each of our members a copy of their quarterly journal. You should be receiving one soon, if you haven't already. We are a dues-paying member of this Society and have several representatives on their Board and Committees.

An Addendum to the Accreditation Standards has been printed. If you would like a copy of it, and the Standards, please contact the Executive Office.

The Executive Office has received approximately 140 requests for information on careers since January 1997.

We have a new SWST Poster Display that will preview for the first time this year in Vancouver. This is a portable unit that we can use to promote SWST to both people in our industry, and to encourage students into the profession. Look for it during this week.

The white paper "Environmental Implications of the Use of Wood Based-Products has been printed and mailed to Congress, state foresters, environmental agencies, our school contacts, and some miscellaneous contacts. Please contact the Executive Office if you would like a copy.

Auditor's Report - Barb Wolfe

Per your request, I reviewed the SWST bank statements for the period June 1, 1996 through May 30, 1997. Checks; deposits; Visa, Mastercard, and American Express charges; interest charges; and bank charges were verified against the statements. The checkbook balance and the bank statements were in agreement for all months reviewed. The checkbook balance of $39,952.02 agrees with the checking account balance on the May, 1997 Balance Sheet.

I also verified the savings account balance with the Fidelity statement. The $58,539.11 on the May, 1997 Balance Sheet agrees with the latest statement (12/19/96 - 3/20/97) received from Fidelity.

A motion was made, seconded and passed to accept the Auditor's Report.

1998 SWST Budget

CATEGORY	INCOME	EXPENSES	NET
Wood and Fiber Science	$83,230	$68,980	$14,250
General	$28,025	$39,942	($-11,917)
Symposium	$108	$50	$58
TOTAL	$111,363	$108,972	$2,391

A motion was made, seconded and passed to accept the 1998 budget.

Wood and Fiber Science - Bob Youngs

Bob introduced Carol Ovens, our Editorial Assistant, and Earl Kline, our Assistant Editor.

The last four issues of Wood and Fiber Science have had approximately 100 pages each. Four book reviews have been printed. 53 papers have been received in the past year. Most are well written and organized. Some problems exist, however. Authors need to read the information on the inside of the back cover of the journal to avoid unnecessary work and delay. In some cases, it appeared to Bob that the professor had never read the student's paper and needed to preview it much better. The other problem arose in using incorrect technical English.

Bob thanked the reviewers and announced that there was a "Reviewer's Sign-Up Sheet" in their meeting packet. He also announced his proposal to have "Letters to the Editor" in each issue (at no charge to the writer), and that the

Executive Office would be publishing the Table of Contents on the WWW. Bob indicated to the members that we are currently investigating our journal publishing practice and procedure and would be accepting proposals from CABI and Allen Press at this time.

Committees

Accreditation : Terry Sellers' report will be published in the next Newsletter.

Book Review : Published in the Newsletter

Constitution and Bylaws : Myron Kelly's report will be published in the next Newsletter. The problem of succession of the President-Elect/Vice President in case of vacancies needs to be addressed next year.

Critical Issues : Published in the Newsletter. The committee will be working on a 1-page summary brochure of the Environmental paper.

Education : The Student Poster Competition was held Saturday evening and the awards presented this morning. 13 students participated. Duane Lyon announced that he will be sending a letter to Department Heads requesting a donation to continue funding this Competition.

George Marra Award : The winners for 1997 were:

Laurence Mott, Stephen M. Shaler, and Leslie H. Groom,
"A Technique to measure strain distributions in single wood pulp fibers"
28(4)--First Place

Greg C. Foliente, Mahendra P. Singh, and J. Daniel Dolan,
"Response analysis of wood structures under natural hazard dynamic loads"
28(1)--Second Place

Barbara L. Gartner,
"Does photosynthetic bark have a role in the production of core vs. outer wood?" 28(1)--Honorable Mention

Stavros Avramidis is the chair for Volume 29, which his committee is already reading.

International Relations : Published in the Newsletter. Guidelines are needed for continuing this committee. They need to find places that have a need for back issues of Wood and Fiber Science.

Membership : This committee will have much to do next year. The membership numbers are holding, but need to increase in order for the Society to remain strong. Next year's committee will be preparing a demographic and service survey.

Past Presidents' Council : We currently have 3 fully documented nominees for the Distinguished Service Award. More nominations are solicited. This year we had 35 of the past presidents vote on the recipient of the award - almost all of them!

Public Liaison : Plans are underway to form an organization called International Association of Wood Products Societies (IAWPS). This is being organized by Dr. Takeshi Okano, of the Japan Wood Research Society. SWST has expressed our interest in becoming a member of this Association. More information will be shared in our Newsletter when it is available.

Publication Policy Committee : They have been given the task of developing guidelines for the WWW.

Visiting Scientist Program : Published in the Newsletter.

Teller's Report - Vicki Herian

The new Vice President is Tom Mclain. The new Directors are Audrey Zink and Daryle Layton. Total ballots returned was 155.

Closing Comments by Duane Lyon

The two most important accomplishments that he felt the Society experienced this year while he was President was the publication and distribution of the "Environmental Implications" paper and the Student Poster Competition. Duane thanked the Directors going off the Board, Sue Willits and Mike Wolcott, and also thanked the current Past President, Geza Ifju. He then welcomed the new President, Fred Kamke.

Past President's Award

Fred's first duty as President was to award Duane Lyon with the Past President's Award and to thank him for his work during the past year.

New Business

--Fred asked people to fill out the Committee Sign-Up form and give it to either Tom McLain or Vicki Herian, or to put it on the SWST table.

--Anne Datko was holding a Grantsmanship Workshop at 7:00 p.m. that evening.

--The member survey will be a demographic and society service survey. It will be sent to all dues-paying members and delinquent members. It will also be sent to a small portion of FPS members who are not SWST members.

--One possible society service that will be surveyed is a "Certified Professional Wood Technologist", similar to the Certified Forester Program in SAF.

The meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.

1:00 - 4:00 Joint SWST/FPS Plenary Sessions

Session 1: Wood Surface Chemistry and Adhesive Interactions (Waterfront Ballroom B)
Session 2: Improved Drying Through the Understanding of Wood Physics
(Waterfront Ballroom A)
Session 3: Wood Quality and Fiber Requirements for High Speed Paper
Machines and Fine Quality Printing Papers (Cheakamus Room)

4:00-5:30 Joint SWST/FPS Technical Forum

Last updated: 9/2/97
For further information, please contact Vicki Herian at vicki@swst.org