Thanks to those who responded last month to my Accelerator Section inquiry about accelerator radiation safety courses. Your responses will be helpful for assisting the Accelerator Section board of directors in determining what services we may provide to the section and to the Health Physics Society (HPS) in this area. Vashek Vylet and Jerry Fallon, both Accelerator Section members, are on the HPS Summer School Committee and have been lobbying for an accelerator summer school. Hopefully, we can provide them with the information they need to decide how to proceed.
Speaking of which, there is an accelerator radiation protection course in Erice, Sicily, in October on accelerator radiation safety, which is directed by Vashek Vylet and Graham Stevenson. The website for the course is http://www.safety.duke.edu/RadSafety/Accelerator_protection/Default.htm.
This course is a direct Accelerator Section effort, and we can all be proud of the final result! You will note that the course instructors consist largely of members of the Accelerator Section. We wish all the best to Vashek and the others involved in this project.
The Accelerator Section board of directors has agreed to cosponsor a session during the special focus section of next year's annual HPS meeting on medical health physics. It is likely that the Accelerator Section will still have its own special session, though, so please keep in mind papers that you could present.
As I mentioned in the last letter, I said that I would be asking each of you for input as to the direction of the section. As I thought about it, though, I realized that I need to ask opinions not only of the section members but also of those nonmembers who are interested. I don't want membership to be a goal in and of itself; rather, I would like membership to increase by providing what interests people. So, I'll ask in this forum: what interests you? What would you like the section to be doing that it isn't doing? What do you like that we are doing? What service can we (reasonably) provide? Please respond to me with any and all thoughts at my e-mail address, schwahn@jlab.org.