As I told you last quarter in my first communication as your president, I have made increasing the Accelerator Section's membership and participation a personal goal during my year as your president. As I previously mentioned the Accelerator Section is fairly well represented by the U.S. national labs and similar major accelerator facilities, but there are opportunities to improve our representation.
To meet this goal, I am requesting your assistance in contacting your colleagues at other accelerators or accelerator-related locations. These include medical, research, and commercial accelerator facilities including accelerator manufacturers. I have discussed my plan for increasing Accelerator Section participation with the Health Physics Society (HPS) secretariat staff. Based on the HPS staff input, I feel that the best time for us to conduct this effort is shortly after the HPS membership renewal notices are mailed.
This HPS membership renewal mailing is scheduled for early-to-mid-October, and I plan to start making contact shortly after that mailing. My plan is to contact each Accelerator Section member personally (either by telephone or e-mail, if you cannot be reached by phone).
My request will be for each of you to assist by making a personal contact with one colleague who is an HPS member but not a section member. Your request will be that they check the Accelerator Section box on the HPS membership renewal form and also forward the $5.00 annual section dues in addition to their normal dues.
President-elect Bob Casey and I were talking recently about the upcoming HPS annual meeting in San Diego (July 20-24, 2003). I was pleased to brief Bob about the quality and quantity of papers that were presented at the Accelerator Section session in Tampa. I hope that many of you are already thinking about potential paper or poster topics for the San Diego meeting.