NZMSS Newsletter November 2005
Council activities …
With this year’s conference already a distant
memory, albeit a pleasant one, your Council is getting down to business.
Council meetings (by telephone conference calls) in September and October have
attempted to address matters raised at the Society’s AGM, which was held during
the Conference in August.
* The financial operations of the Society are
up and running again, assisted by a cash injection in the form of some of the
profit from the conference. The full set of accounts for the conference has yet
to be completed to show how much profit was actually made. We are also unable
as yet to provide the membership with the audited financial
report for 2004-05, which the incoming Council was asked to attend to
expeditiously – soon we hope!
* A
re-vamped and revitalised NZMSS website is now active, thanks entirely to the
efforts of Brian Paavo. If you haven’t been there recently, go to it at http://nzmss.rsnz.org, check it out, use it
(it includes a chat room), and let us know what you think of it, how useful is
it and how it can be made more useful.
* We now have a five year conference plan,
well almost, with future conferences scheduled for Hamilton in 2007,
Christchurch in 2008 (as a joint meeting with AMSA), Auckland in 2009 and a
return to Wellington in 2010 for the Society’s 50th anniversary.
Only the venue for 2006, admittedly the most urgent, is yet to be finalised –
again, soon we hope!
* We are pleased to have another student rep
on the Council – Anna Wood from Otago joins Kate Steger (VUW) and Kareen
Schnabel (also Otago) to work on upping the profile and activity of students in
the Society. So you have plenty of conduits for airing student concerns, and
with the spread of Council members across the country there should be no
difficulty for any of the membership to communicate with the Society. Contact
details for all Council members can be found on the website.
* Some marine protection issues, as potential
submission topics, and possible uses for our accumulated funds have been on the
Council’s agenda but have not been actioned or resolved.
* Being aware of some infiltration of spam
into our list server, we are looking into actions we might take to nip it in
the bud before it becomes a nuisance.
…
and other matters.
Do
you know that NZMSS is a “Constituent Organisation” of the Royal Society of New
Zealand? Have you any idea what this entails? Do you realise that as a member
of a constituent organisation you are covered by the RSNZ Code of Professional
Standards and Ethics? Maybe after checking out our own website you should move
on to browsing the RSNZ site (www.rsnz.org)
to find out more about this major player in the science field, which currently
has initiatives on matters as diverse as an independent National Strategic
Science Panel “to provide strong science leadership and advocacy”, a science
and technology job search programme called ‘Fusionz”, and the problem of
bullying in the scientific workplace.
The next
Council ‘meeting’ will take place on Tuesday 22nd November, so if
you’ve got something you want the Council to consider or take action on, please
contact the Secretary, Alison MacDiarmid (a.macdiarmid@niwa.co.nz) poste haste.
*******************Contact
your Council if you want to know more********************