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President’s Message
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President
Jon C. Cook |
As I sit down to compose the President’s Message for the Winter Communiqué, it’s the last weekend in October, Halloween is on Monday and a Nor’easter is bringing New England an October snowstorm for the record books! The Annual Meeting is just around the corner and SOT received a total of 2,503 abstracts. This is a new record for us and suggests that San Francisco is a compelling location for our annual meeting. We are featuring two Regional Interest sessions, “Bridging the Green Chemistry Gap between Product Discovery and Availability,” and “What’s the Buzz? Bee Health and California’s Agricultural Industry.” There will be two Innovations in Applied Toxicology sessions: “New Visions in Toxicology: Lysosomes—Roles in Disease,” and “Toxicity, Drug Development, and Nonclinical Safety Assessment of Dual Targeting Biotherapeutics.” The Thursday Issues Session, “Building for the Future: Strategic Initiatives for the SOT Endowment,” will focus on the development of aspirational goals for our Endowment Fund. The Meet the Directors series has three confirmed speakers—Linda S. Birnbaum (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), Chris Portier (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry), and Paul Anastas (US Environmental Protection Agency). The SOT/Eurotox debate topic is “Comparative Hazards: Chemicals in the Environment Are the Largest Risk to Human Health.” We also are organizing a few special poster sessions including the Global Gallery of Toxicology to highlight toxicology societies outside the US, a possible Fukushima session to provide timely information from several Japanese scientists actively involved in risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication of radiation toxicity and treatment, and a Clinical and Translational Toxicology/Disease Prevention session to highlight our newest Specialty Section. The 2012 Annual Meeting has an amazing program and my hearty thanks go to the Scientific Program Committee and the leadership of the Chair, William Slikker Jr., and Co-Chair, Lois D. Lehman-McKeeman!
As I noted in my previous two President’s Messages, SOT Council has been hard at work on the Strategic Plan for 2012–2015. We have incorporated committee and membership comments since the last Communiqué. Council is pleased to report that the 2012–2015 Strategic Plan is now complete and provides the roadmap for our Society. Committees are now drafting tactic and metrics for the strategic objectives that they selected to address in the next three years. Council will review and approve these at our January meeting.
As part of strengthening our organizational effectiveness, Council has recommended an increase in the Council term from two to three years and this By-Laws change is now being voted on by the membership. Also included for vote, is a change in the Treasurer’s term on the Endowment Fund Board.
In October, I attended the Education Summit in Baltimore along with 55 other participants. This Summit was excellent and provides considerable substrate for focusing the future direction of the Education, Career Resource and Development, and Continuing Education Committees. The program included seven talks to set the stage for break-out groups: James S. Bus (The Making of a Toxicologist in the 21st Century: Learning from the Past while Building for the Future), Mary Beth Genter (Professional Needs Assessment Task Force: Moving from Data Collection to Analysis and Recommendations), Victoria McGovern (Training Graduate Students at the Interface between Population and Bench-Based Science), Mindy F. Reynolds (Integrating Toxicology into an Undergraduate Curriculum), William Slikker Jr. (Regulatory Science: Challenges and Opportunities), Sally Rockey (NIH: Interesting, Exciting, and Challenging Times, Trends in the Biomedical Research Workforce), and Carol Shreffler (NIEHS Training Programs: The Future of Environmental Health and Exposure Biology). Summit attendees in five breakout sessions tackled key issues, such as Building for the Future of Toxicology, Identifying Training Needs, Strengthening Toxicology Training, Training the Total Toxicologist, and Continuing and Midcareer Education. Organizing Committee members led the sessions and slides were prepared by the recorders: Lorrene A. Buckley, Vanessa A. Fitsanakis, Sue M. Ford, Teresa L. Leavens, and Lois D. Lehman-McKeeman. Two unique features of the meeting were dividing the breakout group members into new groups during lunch to vote on the top priority tactical idea from each break-out session and holding a Webex to enable over 100 members to participate in the discussion. I would like to congratulate and thank the Education Summit Organizing Team for creating a successful program that will guide the Society for many years: Aaron Barchowsky (Chair), Gary P. Carlson, Mary Beth Genter, Hisham K. Hamadeh, Stephen H. Safe, Courtney E.W. Sulentic, and Dori R. Germolec (Council Contact), as well as Betty Eidemiller, Marcia Lawson, and Matthew Price (SOT Staff Liaisons).
We are very fortunate to have a wealth of talented members who provide the sweat equity to drive our Society. My final thanks go to the Gulf Oil Spill Issue Statement writing team (Sol M. Bobst, Chair; Mark E. Hahn, Don W. Korte Jr., Andrew Maier, and Kristine L. Willett), the outside reviewing team (Daland R. Juberg, William H. Benson, Richard Thomas Di Giulio, and Bernard D. Goldstein) and the Council Issue Statement team (Matthew S. Bogdanffy, Donald A. Fox, and Peter L. Goering). This latter team defined the purpose and procedures of the new Issue Statements, helped identify the topic, and worked closely with the writing team to create the final document. Council unanimously approved the final draft, which is now on the policymaker page of the SOT website and on the homepage with a link to the full issue statement. Having a process to guide writing timely Issues Statements is a significant step forward for our Society.
Wishing you wonderful holidays (and skiing and riding)!
Jon C. Cook
2011–2012 SOT President
Past Presidents of the Society
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