Students Enjoy the Sights and Sounds of Las Vegas

Another TMS Annual Meeting has come and gone, and once again students played an important role in the activities from February 12-16. Students served as monitors for the technical sessions, presented award winning papers in the poster session, were recognized as scholarship and Chapters of Excellence winners, participated in student activities scheduled by TMS, and enjoyed the atmosphere of glittering Las Vegas, Nevada (hopefully, most students were as lucky at the casinos as they were at the meeting).

Engineering Roundtables and the Student Mixer

On Sunday night, 156 students, faculty advisors, and industry professionals took part in the engineering roundtables and student mixer at the Top of the Riv in the Riviera Hotel/Casino. The roundtables enabled the students to talk with professionals from R&D, industry, and government in an informal setting over pizza and soft drinks. Among the organizations with representatives hosting tables were USX Corporation, M.E. Williams & Associates, Rockwell International, LTV Steel Company, Teledyne Allvac, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Vista Tech Partnership Limited, Alcoa, Motorola, Arco Aluminum Company, Sandia National Laboratories, Cabot Corporation, the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, and Alumax of South Carolina. In addition, James Robinson, editor of JOM, and Mark Munson, TMS OnLine supervisor, were on hand to discuss Professional Preface and TMS OnLine's new World Wide Web (WWW) interface.

After an hour of casual discussions, Student Affairs Director William A.T. Clark opened the mixer by recognizing the representatives present from the student chapter at Delft Institute of Technology for winning the TMS Student Member-Get-a-Member Campaign. He also asked the president from each chapter in attendance to introduce themselves and tell how many students from their chapter were attending the meeting.

The students were then challenged by Dr. Clark to prove wrong the rumor that the Annual Meeting students could not dance as well as the students at Materials Week. The music began and the students had a good time trying to meet Dr. Clark's challenge.

After the student mixer, some students returned to the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel/ Casino for a private party recognizing the University of Floridastudent chapter for 25 continuous years as a Chapter of Excellence. TMS President Lionel Kimerling presented a commemorative silver plate to Ray Rummel, the former faculty advisor of the chapter, in recognition of their achievement.

Technical Sessions

Students from 12 universities served as student monitors during the technical sessions. On a volunteer basis and for nominal compensation ($20), students were assigned to a session and met with the authors at the morning authors' planning session to ascertain what assistance the authors needed for their presentations. Generally, the students ran the audiovisual equipment and provided other necessary presentation assistance for the authors. They were also responsible for recording session/paper attendance.

Any student interested in serving as a student monitor for future TMS meetings should contact his or her faculty advisor or Peggy Weiss at TMS, 420 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, Pennsylvania 15086; (724) 776-9000, ext. 227; fax (724) 776-3770; or e-mail weissp@tms.org.

Poster Session

David Cook and Gregory Lewis, from Northwestern University, presented "High Performance Secondary-Hardening Gear Steel Design and Evaluation: the C2 Prototype" in the general poster session. The paper was the winning entry in the MaD '94 Undergraduate Materials Design Competition.

CIM-TMS Joint Student Membership and Chapter Agreement

As one of his final duties as the 1994 TMS president at the annual meeting, President Kimerling signed an agreement with Yvan Jacques, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum (CIM), for a joint student member and student chapter program between TMS and the Metallurgical Society of CIM (MetSoc-CIM). MetSoc-CIM will handle the administration of the program.

Under the agreement, students will be able to become joint members of TMS and MetSoc-CIM for one membership fee. Memberships will run from September 1 to August 31. As a joint member, students will be eligible for scholarships from both societies, be able to compete in both TMS and MetSoc-CIM paper and design contests, be eligible for employment opportunities offered by either society, will receive reduced student publication prices and reduced or complimentary meeting and short course fees, and will receive subscriptions to JOM from TMS and the CIM Bulletin from MetSoc-CIM.

Joint student chapters will be formed at the discretion of student chapter officers at universities and colleges and will be approved by the MetSoc-CIM and TMS Boards of Directors. Start-up monies awarded to new joint chapters will be shared by both societies.

Student Affairs Committee

The Student Affairs Committee met during the Annual Meeting and discussed several issues, including the revision of the Materials Design (MaD) contest and the development of a materials science and engineering career resource center.

The MaD contest has been revised to encourage creativity in the entries. Under the new guidelines, students will be asked to create a new material using only items purchased at a local hardware store. Authors of papers must be TMS student members. Flyers outlining the contest guidelines will be sent to students in August; the deadline for reports to be submitted to TMS is January 1. Testing and judging of finalists' designs will be done at the Annual Meeting. The new guidelines will go in effect for the next MaD contest.

The possibility of a multimedia CD-ROM on careers in materials science and engineering is being considered by an ad hoc committee. The project will be focused primarily at the high school level, where there is currently little promotion for the field. Students would also connect to WWW pages through links in TMS OnLine for further information on individual colleges and programs. An interactive e-mail question and answer area, involving approximately 20 professionals on a rotating basis, was also suggested. The development of a formal proposal to create an integrated system and approach is underway.

In a related issue, the committee established an ad hoc committee to focus on how TMS should assist students in reaching potential employers. The committee will review the issue and report back to the entire committee at Materials Week '95 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Two new student chapters were approved by the committee. A new TMS student chapter was approved at the Indian Institute of Technology and the first TMS/MetSoc-CIM joint student chapter was approved at the Technical University of Nova Scotia, pending approval by the MetSoc-CIM.

Lisa Allen, vice chair of the committee, agreed to work with a subcommittee to generate the programs for upcoming career forums at Materials Week and the TMS Annual Meeting.

See You Next Year!

Although the Annual Meeting is now just a memory, plans are well underway for next year's Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, on February 2-6, 1996. The meeting will mark TMS's 125th consecutive meeting and should be a memorable event. Remember to submit your entries for scholarships and paper contests by June 30, 1995, so you can be one of the honored guests at the meeting.

You won't want to miss next year's meeting!