American Chemical Society emerges from 2009 financially healthy
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2010 ― The 2009 American Chemical Society Annual Report is now available online at www.acs.org/annualreport. The report stresses that the Society remains financially healthy and committed to providing its more than 161,000 members with the best programs, products and services to further their careers and advance their science.
While acknowledging that 2009 was one of the most economically difficult years in decades, the report emphasizes that ACS successfully rose to this challenge, launching several new initiatives and reinventing or reinvigorating others to help its members and other scientists and engineers continue to improve people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Among the many achievements mentioned in the report are:
- The successful launch of three new journals — ACS Chemical Neuroscience, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, and ACS Medicinal Letters.
- The Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) assigning its 50 millionth CAS Registry Number® for organic and inorganic substances.
- The launch of Career Caffeine video series to help members plan job searches, develop résumés and interview successfully. The Society also began offering Webinars on career and professional issues.
- The ACS Network ─ the premier online forum for chemists and other scientists to find colleagues and share ideas as well as content with them ─ continued to grow, exceeding 22,000 participants by year-end 2009.
- ACS worked with the Obama Administration to help organize National Lab Day, a new, innovative effort to connect thousands of teachers, educators and students with science and technology professionals across the country to improve hands-on science leaning.
- ACS also helped lead a comprehensive campaign on Capitol Hill to advocate for increased funding of federal science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education initiatives. The Society leads the STEM Education Coalition, a nationwide alliance of more than 1,000 organizations and individuals that successfully advocated for the inclusion of STEM subjects as a top priority in the Administration's $4 billion Race to the Top initiative.
- ACS worked closely with Congressional leaders and Administration officials to push for an increased appropriation for the Department of Education's Math and Science Partnership, the first such funding increase in four years.
- In early 2009, ACS received a gift of approximately $33 million from the Hach Scientific Foundation to support high school chemistry teaching. The Hach family chose ACS because the "Society represents permanence and stability on a national level."
In addition to these highlights, the 2009 ACS annual report has all of the traditional features of an ACS annual report including the Society's financial information, ACS-by-the-Numbers, and the Officers' Message.
In their Officers' Message, ACS Board Chair Judith L Benham, ACS President Thomas H. Lane and ACS Executive Director & CEO Madeleine Jacobs concluded, "We will continue to deliver products and services that our current and future members and other stakeholders value. We will continue to provide them with the tools they need to enhance their skills, further their research and advance their careers. That's been our pledge for more than 130 years. And we remain committed to it."
Provided by American Chemical Society