May 2001
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Inquiries/Information
info@aic.ca
Spring is here, and our annual meeting is just around the corner. I welcome this opportunity to update you on a couple of important issues for the Society.
The CSAS executive met in January and our first priority was to make
some tough decisions to sustain the long term financial viability of the
Society. As you may already know, the Society has been in a deficit situation
for the past couple of years and this is eating away our equity. We will
be putting forward a motion at the annual meeting to increase membership
fees ($20 for regular members, $10 for retired members, no change for
student members). We have also phased out the printed newsletter this
year in an attempt to decrease expenses. Information will be relayed to
you through our web site (www.csas.net)
and by direct email. There have been growing pains in terms of getting
the web site developed, and we appreciate your feedback on this. Hats
off to Tim McAllister for getting the site up and running. Another challenge
has been to develop an updated file of email addresses for all members.
If you are not receiving email communications from the Society and you
would like to be, please drop me a note (beauchemin@em.agr.ca)
As you know, this year's annual meeting is being held in conjuction with the Agricultural Institute of Canada (AIC) in Guelph from July 8-11 (for more information see www.AIC2001.com). Trevor Smith (tsmith@uoguelph.ca) is heading up the local organizing committee. We have a really terrific program this year with a number of invited symposia papers as well as almost 100 oral and poster presentations planned.
In 2002, we will be meeting in Quebec City with the American Society of Animal Science and the American Society of Dairy Science. Plans are well underway for this meeting thanks to the local organizing committee headed up by Robert Berthiaume. The CSAS executive has been giving a lot of thought about what to do for future meetings. Organization of annual meetings is a tremendous commitment and with the shrinking animal science community this task repeatedly falls on the same people. From the members' standpoint, time and financial constraints dictate that many of us have to choose between the CSAS annual meeting and other scientific meetings. The Society needs to decide whether it wants to continue meeting annually. Perhaps a bi-annual meeting may be more appropriate. We also need to give some thought to our meeting format so we continue to attract leading Canadian animal scientists. I have had preliminary discussions with representatives of the other AIC scientific societies, and it appears that most of the societies are also facing the same issues. Representatives from these societies will be meeting in July to discuss issues and activities of mutual interest. We need to determine whether there is interest among the scientific societies to hold a joint meeting (within or apart from the AIC conference framework), the type of meeting our members would want to participate in, and the optimal venue and format for a joint meeting. We should have more details for you in the near future.
With that, hope to see you in Guelph,
Karen Beauchemin
CSAS President