New Classes of Membership Now Available

The General Assembly of the International Union of Materials Research Societies recently approved two new classes of membership in the Union. At its June 11, 2002, meeting in Xi'an, China, the General Assembly unanimously approved amendments to the IUMRS Statutes that create "Professional Associate" and "Affiliated Organization" as new avenues for a variety of organizations to become a part of Union activities. Heretofore, since the formal founding of IUMRS a dozen years ago and for many years before that as a less formal international committee, the Union had restricted its membership to a single society representing a given geographical region and whose meetings and other programs were explicitly multidisciplinary (i.e., emulating the first such society, MRS, founded in the USA in the early 1970s).

Now there are 12 member societies (see the masthead on page 2) with only a few regions of the world yet to be represented. IUMRS leaders had long recognized that the mission of IUMRS to promote communication, collaboration, and education in the field of advanced materials R&D globally could only be pursued in concert with the wide variety of very important contributing organizations in the materials field. Many professional societies emphasize particular sectors of the field to great effect. Independent and government laboratories prosecute R&D across the whole spectrum of materials. And, many corporate laboratories innovate and bring advanced materials along the difficult path from the laboratory to ultimate useful applications. About two years ago, the IUMRS Executive Council asked the IUMRS Commission on Membership Affairs to study how the Union might embrace this broad and diverse community in a way that advanced the missions of the Union while helping other organizations with their own programs.

The new member classes proposed by the Commission on Membership Affairs and approved in Xi'an are the first step toward broadening and deepening the value of IUMRS activities to the full materials community worldwide. Why two classes instead of one? According to Dr. John E. E. Baglin, Chair of the Commission, "there are various types of materials research related organizations. Some are professional membership societies that serve the communication needs of researchers, in that respect like the MRS-style societies. These will fall naturally into the 'professional associate' classification. Others are the research institutes and agencies that support, or are home to, the researchers themselves as well as such organizations as suppliers of research tools, science publishers, and the like. These would fit into the more broadly construed 'organizational affiliate' classification."

Now that these new classes are available as the mechanism for working with colleague organizations, the IUMRS is developing a basic set of member benefits that Associates and Affiliates might receive. The following partial list of benefits are being considered:

• An institutional subscription to IUMRS Facets
  
• A number of individual subscriptions to IUMRS Facets
  
• Advance announcements and programs of IUMRS-sponsored conferences
  
• A discounted registration fee at IUMRS-sponsored conferences (not applicable to portions of fees that cover meals, lodging, publications, etc.)
  
• A discounted exhibit booth rental at IUMRS-sponsored conferences
  
• Discounts on advertisements placed in IUMRS Facets
  
• Free news announcements in and coverage of activities by IUMRS Facets (on a space-available basis)
  
• Attendance at IUMRS governance meetings
  
• The right to nominate candidates for the Somiya Award and other IUMRS awards
  
• Links to Affiliate/Associate Web sites at the IUMRS Web site