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ASM
CHAPTER BEST PRACTICES NEW!!! Best Practices and Successes Newsletter The best of what ASM Chapters are doing! ASM International’s Chapter Council is proud to be able to showcase our chapter’s Best Practices and Successes for all to receive through our new Best Practices and Successes newsletter. During Leadership Days 2005, held in Cleveland, OH, many of our professional chapters were given the opportunity to provide a brief introduction about what programs and initiatives have proven successful for their chapter. Due to the overwhelming response from participants, Chapter Council would like to share this information with all of our members so these stories may provide opportunities for: networking, learning about what works and what doesn’t, program development, idea sharing, student programs, technical meetings/attendance, educational initiatives, collaborations/joint meetings, and to raise overall awareness of what other chapters are doing. The schedule for each release is as follows: November 30, 2005 (submissions due by November 1) If you have any additional questions, require further assistance, or to submit your chapters Best Practices and Successes please contact Candace Cunningham, Chapter Relations Administrator at Chapters@asminternational.org. The Metro NY-NJ Chapter of ASM is one of the larger chapters of the society with over 500 members. They were named a Five Star Chapter and a Chapter of Excellence winner for 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. The chapter has made a number of changes which produces better attended technical meetings. Some of these changes included varying meeting locations on different nights of the week and sometimes holding joint meetings with related organizations and the Long Island Chapter. Due to decreased participation in traditional MEI courses, educational activities have been refocused to meet changing needs. The first one day seminar was held at New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2004 with the topic, “The Entrepreneurial Engineer” and was a huge success and was repeated in 2005. Based on this seminar’s success, others are being written by chapter members. A one-day course on Wear and Corrosion was given this fall at a local University and a private company has expressed interest in having it taught in house. In addition to the one day seminars, longer MEI courses have been developed for the Picatinny Arsenal with a strong munitions focus and “Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist” was taught at a private company. The Metro NY-NJ Chapter maintains a strong focus on students by providing support to a number of educational initiatives. The newest to the chapter is the Metro NY-NJ Materials Camp, originally conceived by Princeton and Rutgers Universities. It was proposed by the chapter that the camp be co-sponsored by four universities: Princeton, Rutgers, NJIT and SUNY at Stonybrook. As a result of this proposal, the first camp was held at Princeton in 2005 and will move to the other colleges in successive years with financial support from all four schools. Two of these schools currently have Material Advantage student chapters, SUNY Stonybrook and NJIT. The Metro NY-NJ Chapter helped organize these student chapters and continues to provide support and encouragement. onsidering these and many other activities, the executive committee of the Metro NY-NJ Chapter considers the 2004-2005 chapter year to have been extremely productive. A breakeven financial position was achieved for the fourth straight year following years of deficit budgets. The chapter welcomed 78 new members, expanded their educational offerings, believes that their rebuilding and innovative efforts are a model for other chapters and exemplifies excellence within ASM International. Peoria Chapter . . . .Taking it to the Students! The Peoria Illinois Chapter began a new activity this year, to better support the student chapter at Bradley University. Past efforts to improve student participation were not as successful as we would have liked. We would designate one of our evening technical meetings as Student's Night, and offer special pricing. However, the meeting location was not always convenient for students that did not drive, and allocating 3 hours was difficult for students with jobs and homework. In addition, the more formal professional meeting may have been intimidating for some students. This year, we are taking technical education to the students, with a "Lunch and Learn" program. Once a month, we invite a local professional to speak to the students for 30 minutes, on the Bradley campus. We bring in lunch, and the students can eat and listen to the technical talk. This is a convenient time and location, and participation has averaged 28 students. Many professionals are happy to do this, and if they already have a talk that they can share (non-proprietary information), it is not much extra work. The only costs are an inexpensive lunch and a small gift certificate for the professional speaker. This is one of many new student outreach initiatives in the Peoria Chapter. For more information, please contact Kate Chen (309-675-7529). Just ten days before Leadership Days 2005, Melanie told us there would be an opportunity to share our chapter’s best practices/most successful programs, and discuss specific challenges the chapter is facing, and asked each of the attendees to put together a brief PowerPoint overview of their chapter. It was the first time I really thought about “what is my chapter” and it gave me a reason to reflect on who we are, what we do and why we do it. First, “who are we?” Well, we have a membership of about 750, with a committee of 6 executives, 6 directors and some 20 committee chairs. Most of our members and offices come from small companies. In fact we do not have any large “anchor” company. Philadelphia in general does not have a large corporate culture, and the few large companies that are represented are through small subsidiary or branch operations. This is both a strength, and a weakness. We certainly gain through diversity and have an impressive number of sustaining members (53 last year, with 4 having sustained our chapter for over 75 years), but fund-raising requires considerably more work than calling on one or two generous benefactors. Our 8 meetings per year draw about 70 on average. Is this good or bad? Before Leadership days I had no idea, as I had nothing to compare to. It was certainly enough to draw me in after I attended my first meeting in 2001, and I can imagine that new prospective members might find small meetings less attractive. At that first meeting I was also asked if I could help with the MEI course. After some arm twisting I volunteered, and I will be helping with my third MEI this year. This is just one of the 26 recognized activities we do that require volunteers – or more realistically, are “hooks” for getting new members involved. Communicating with members is a key element to success; our chapter has an “outstanding” yearbook (that is marginally profitable), a monthly newsletter (that is distributed in printed and email forms) and a website (that we struggle to keep up to date). We have a few members who are very good at keeping their network informed, but we certainly have many members who we probably fail to reach. Short of monthly phone calls to every member, we would appreciate ideas from other chapters to improve in this critical area. Committee meetings are held before each dinner meeting. These are usually attended by at least 20 officers and committee chairs (who are then captive for the technical meeting). We aim to have a stimulating program of speakers that is prepared months ahead. The deadline for the year book serves as a clear goal to have next year’s program planned and ready to publish by May. We are a large chapter. I understand that we are generally considered to be a successful chapter, and I know that in this situation it is easy for complacency to creep in. I believe that we have avoided this through solid chapter leadership and constantly trying new ideas. Some of our recent and current initiatives include:
We constantly invest in the future, with strong student programs (Young member’s night, poster competition, and scholarship awards) and have very strong ties with Drexel University and Williamson’s Trade Schoo . We also have an active officer from Villanova and are hoping to breakthrough to other schools and colleges in the area. Financially the chapter is sound, mainly due to a large number of sustaining members (over 40), one of the benefits of our broad base of small companies. However we do occasionally have to draw on our reserves to finance some programs. On the downside we do not have any large benefactor that we can easily go to for fundraising, and one of this years initiatives has been to recruit new sustaining members and find sponsors, especially for the Materials Camps SM that we hope to continue running. We take the Chapter of Excellence award very seriously. We cherish our 5-star award each year and seriously try to work on every suggested area . Nevertheless, we still have a number of challenges, but are taking initiatives to manage them. These are summarized in the following table:
The Inland Empire Chapter of ASM (ASMIE) has been serving the Eastern Washington and North Idaho (collectively known as the “ Inland Empire”) since the 1940s. The chapter was founded in support of the region’s Aluminum production and industrial interests. In the late 1980’s, the chapter suspended activity due to lack of member support and participation. In the early 1990s, the interest and involvement of several local professionals resurrected the chapter, and it has persisted to the present day. To concisely cover the “Best Practices” that have worked for ASMIE over the last 10+ years, I will cover our five most significant areas of activity; Meetings & Activities, Training, Student Outreach, Membership and The Executive Committee. Meetings and Activities: The chapter year of ASMIE runs from September through May and typically includes 3 technical meetings (including our annual trustee visit), 2 plant tours, our Annual Student paper Night, and 3 social events. The membership of ASMIE has a diverse materials background. In order to appeal to the Membership, we have found that technical meetings that present broad-based or experiential topics have the greatest draw. Examples of these include a recent presentation by an expert in Forensic Microanalysis and a presentation on the maintenance of military aircraft. Unfortunately, we have heard folks say that if a technical presentation doesn’t relate to their job, they’d just assume to skip it. We try to offer technical content without being “dry”. As most of you already know, plant tours tend to bring out the members in droves. We use our contacts around the region to locate and secure tours of interesting facilities or projects. Last year we visited a local airfield where an enthusiast/collector was in the process of restoring vintage bi-planes. Along with the restoration, we were able to view his collection of 15+ vintage aircraft in two hangers. Many members brought friends and family out for that one! The chapter typically provides pizza before tours for a nominal fee. Our social events are always a great success. The year begins with our Annual Golf Scramble, a fun event that allows old and new members to enjoy an afternoon together. For the Holidays, we reserve a block of seats at a home game of our local minor-league hockey team. Early on, we would put on a Holiday party, but found that the Hockey Night gave members the chance to bring the whole family out! Our Steak-Out and Awards Night brings the membership together at an outdoor venue to end the year on a happy note. Training: Our chapter has had great success with the training classes we have organized and presented. We have experimented with both long and short courses. Our topics for long courses have included “Aluminum and It’s Alloys” and “Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist”. Topics for the short course have included “Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist” and “Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing”. Our most successful course was “Aluminum and It’s Alloys” with 100+ students. We have tried partnering with the local community college in order to offer units/credit for a course, but that was not a successful venture. We have had success in partnering with other professional societies to host the class. Lately, we have been able to host the classes at a local university, offering a donation for the use of the facilities. We advertise the courses by word of mouth, our chapter website, newsletter and through other local professional societies such as SME and ASQ. We draw our instructors from volunteering members, and reward their efforts with certificates of appreciation, gift certificates and/or a hosted dinner. Student Outreach: The focus of our student outreach has been the two regional universities that offer a materials science. Five years ago, we hosted a seminar for grade school and high-school educators in an effort to promote materials based curriculum. Although the event was a success for the attendees, working with the local school districts proved difficult. We have not hosted a similar event since. Every April, ASMIE hosts a student paper competition and photo-microscopy contest between our two regional universities. Three students (usually seniors) from each school present a 15 minute presentation on their materials topic of choice. Students compete for scholarships from $500-150. The university with the highest overall point score receives a new “Aggregate Trophy” to keep for the year and the school’s name is added to the trophy. The trophy was created using donated materials from local businesses. Microscopy contest entrants compete for scholarships from $150-$50 in categories such as optical, electron and artistic microscopy. ASMIE typically awards roughly $2500 in scholarships at this event. The evening includes a sit-down dinner that is planned by the student chapter of the hosting university, which is alternated from year to year. As the two regional universities which offer a materials science curriculum are both roughly 80 miles from our core activity area (Spokane, WA), we have begun including a “Students’ Corner” in our monthly newsletter in an effort to relate the happenings of our student members. Our student members also receive a discount at all of our hosted meetings. Membership: Being a Category I Chapter (< 100 members), we are always on the lookout for new members. Most of our recruiting is done by word of mouth. Members are encouraged to bring interested friends and co-workers to meetings and events. The chapter appears to be very fortunate in that our average meeting attendance is between 30-40 members and guests. The difficulty in the last few years has been retaining members, as many employers are no longer paying for membership to ASM or reimbursing meeting attendance fees. Our best practice for membership retention and recruitment has been a varied training and meeting schedule with engaging content. Executive Committee: The executive committee of ASMIE meets every 1-2 months in order to keep all of the chapters’ events and activities on track. Meetings are either held on a weekday morning over a hosted breakfast, or just before a monthly technical meeting. Our executive volunteers typically “sign-on” for four years of service. New members will serve a year as secretary, then treasurer, vice-chair and finally chair. Past chairs are invited to participate in the executive committee as long as they desire. We had difficulty recruiting a new member last year and were forced to consolidate the treasurer and vice-chair into one position. All of our “core members” have circulated through the committee, and we are searching out ways to recruit new members. We have traditionally rewarded the committee members by helping to pay their way to the Northwest Regional ASM Meeting, which is an annual meeting of chapter executives from our neck of the woods. The meeting allows us to share our best practices, and have a good time! We also send our incoming chair to ASM Leadership Days to help them prepare for the coming chapter year. All outgoing chairs receive a plaque and gift certificate at our Awards Night as a thank-you for their four years of service to the chapter. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at cedric@hrlabs.com . |
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