2006 Business meeting of the
International Natural Zeolite Association
AGENDA
By-law discussion, approval
Prof. Bish as
President of the INZA introduced the relevant points of the Agenda, beginning
with the discussion concerning the approval of the by-laws which had been
deeply discussed by the Councilors of INZA in the past two years. The INZA by-laws were crafted using the
by-laws of The Clay Minerals Society as a guide. The most important Articles of the by-laws were
carefully discussed, as well as the Article V - Section 6 concerning the
institution of a new Committee for the Frederick Mumpton Award for Outstanding
Contributions to Natural Zeolites.
The President reported to the assembly that we already have had
interesting suggestions from some INZA members aimed at improving the by-laws.
However, he suggested that as a starting point, we consider approving the
by-laws as is, as crafting a final set of by-laws by the entire assembly would
prove difficult. Improvements and/or modifications will be done by the new
slate of INZA officers and councillors, using the procedure contained in the
by-laws for amendment.
W. MILES
moved that we approve the new by-laws and
Nomination of new officers and councillors
The President informed the assembly about the proposal of new officers
in agreement with the Article IV - Section 1 of the
By-law: Election and Appointment of Officers and Council Members
President
Vice-president
Secretary/Treasurer
W. WISE moved
and W. MILES seconded a motion to approve the slate of new Officers. There was
no discussion and the assembly approved unanimously.
The slate
of proposed new councillors was given by Prof. Bish as follows. Bish emphasized that the Nominations
Committee experienced some difficulty in finding members willing to serve on
the Council. An effort was made to have
representation from a variety of countries, a variety of disciplines, and from
industry, academia, and government. He
commended the excellent efforts of Dr. Guido Cerri, chair of the Nominations
Committee.
Prof. A. R.
Ruiz-Salvador (
Prof. P. Neuhoff (
Prof. P.
Cappelletti (
Mr. John
Bokich (
Prof. P. Zalba
(
Mr. S.
Chipera (
Prof. M.
Okamoto (
Prof. P.
Leggo (
Ex
officio councillors:
Chair of 2010 meeting, Dr.
O. Petrov (
IZA
representative, Prof. C. Colella (
R. BOWMAN moved
and R. PABALAN seconded a motion to approve the slate of the six new Councillors.
There was no discussion and the assembly approved unanimously.
Publications, electronic communication
Prof. Bish gave a
brief summary of INZA publications, noting that our publications have been
transferred to The Clay Minerals Society (CMS), who will sell these for
INZA. INZA has negotiated an agreement
with the CMS to receive half of the sales proceeds in return for having CMS
handle all sales and shipping. In
addition, the CMS has facilities for accepting credit card orders and can also
handle web orders. S. Chipera provided
some specific information on the INZA website hosted by the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, inviting all the INZA members to use it and to submit any question
concerning natural zeolites. Mr. Chipera
also is in charge of the INZA list server and commented on efforts made to
eliminate spam from the list. Prof. Bish
commended Mr. Chipera on his efforts to maintain the INZA web site and list
server. He also encouraged all INZA
members to subscribe to the INZA list server.
Program Development, 2010 meeting
The
President discussed that the INZA Committee on program development received one
formal proposal to host the next Zeolite 2010 meeting. This proposal arrived
from
Dr. O.
Petrov presented a very interesting detailed summary of the Bulgarian plans for
the next meeting, including information on costs, venue, field trips, and
technical program. Prof. Bish thanked
Dr. Petrov for his thorough presentation and for his willingness to host our
next international meeting.
A. LANGELLA
moved and P. NEUHOFF seconded a motion to accept this proposal for the 2010
meeting in
Input from Membership
R. ANDREWS expressed
his opinion concerning the destiny of the so many papers submitted to the
current Congress. He is afraid that what happened in the last Meeting in
He wishes that
everybody might have further interactions with the submitted arguments,
interaction that at this moment is only possible during the meeting. Therefore,
he suggests to share in someway all the presentations,
for example making them available as Powerpoint files on the website or on a
CD.
D. MING is in total
agreement with R. ANDREWS but he still believes that the publications must
continue to undergo peer reviews. The
lack of publication in the peer-reviewed journals reflects primarily a lack of
submissions, i.e., insufficient interest on the part of attendees in having
their contributions published in this form.
R. ANDREWS expressed again
his frustration based on the fact that at the end of the Congress only scant
summarizes of many interesting works remain.
R. BRATHWAITE agrees
with the possibility of publishing a CD with all the presentations and posters.
P. NEUHOFF proposed to
explore the hypothesis of joining up the contributions to the GEO-REF database. A discussion ensued that suggested that we
have our abstract volume cited in the searchable literature.
R. ANDREWS aims at having in the near future something
published concerning all presentations of the Congress, but these contributions
would simply be submitted by attendees and would not be peer reviewed. They would not be published but would instead
be put onto a CD by Andrews.
D. MING asked R. ANDREWS
if he agrees to take upon himself the task of collecting from the authors of
each contribution all the submitted papers in order to arrange a CD.
R. ANDREWS agrees.
D. BISH summarized
all. Everybody is invited to provide to R. ANDREWS their own contributions
either as abstract or summary of the paper or as Power Point presentation.
D. TCHERNEV asks if
this new procedure could influence the submission of the papers to the two
Journals already chosen for publication.
D. BISH assures that
it definitely will not, as the proposal by Andrews is an ad hoc procedure involving unreviewed contributions that would not
normally be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
R. ANDREWS
moves and R. BRATHWAITE seconds that the assembly votes on the proposal by
Andrews. The assembly approves with the exception of Chipera and Ming.
E. LEWIS
about the Fred Mumpton Award. He suggested that candidates for this Award should
not necessarily be required to be long time researchers. He believes that this
prize should be open to all-age candidates. Research contribution in the last
four years could be the right period to consider for this evaluation.
Adjourn
P. NEUHOFF moved
and S. CHIPERA seconded a motion to adjourn. There was no discussion and the
assembly approved unanimously.
Respectfully
submitted
Prof.
Alessio Langella
July 20,
2006