What We Do

The primary purpose of the Committee on Nominations and Elections is to oversee the nomination and elections process for selecting ACS Officers.  ACS Members submit names to the committee that should be considered for potential nominees for President, the Board of Directors, and members of the Council’s elected committees. The committee is committed to selecting from among the broad diversity of the membership candidates who can provide quality leadership.

Who We Are

The committee is composed of fifteen voting Councilors elected by Council, and is responsible for the following:

• Receiving suggestions of persons who should be considered when selecting proposed nominees for Society offices; receiving proposals for nomination by Councilor petition; and receiving nominating petitions from ACS members.
• Preparing slates of nominees for District Directors and President-Elect, and of candidates for Director-at-Large, together with a summary of the qualifications of those named.
• Supervising all Society elections.
• Receiving and reviewing credentials of Councilors and determining eligibility for admittance to Council meetings, and conducting elections in the Council.
• Serving as an election appeals board for all Local Section or Division elections when there is reason to believe that significant election procedure violations have occurred.

As the need arises N&E will form subcommittees or working groups to facilitate the work of the committee. Currently, in addition to the subcommittees responsible for developing ranked slates of nominees/candidates for elected committees: Council Policy Committee (CPC) and Committee on Committees (ConC), President-Elect 2025, Directors-at-Large, Director District I and Director District V; there are two.

• 2023 Hybrid/Virtual Meetings and Events Working Group. This working group will be tasked with proposing methods and principles for holding future N&E events and activities with modality optimized for quality, broadest participants, participant safety (particularly during the pandemic), and fair, transparent processes (especially voting processes); for example town halls, voting during Council meetings, and relevent Candidate meet and greets. Consideration will be given to questions including moving events outside of the time footprint of technical meetings, best accomodating the schedules of all who would like to participate.
  
• Subcommittee on N&E Standing Rules. This subcommittee is tasked with reviewing the N&E Standing Rules on Elections Functions, based on the recent approval by Society members to modify the ACS Bylaws structure. The review should include verbiage, content and structure or locale of the current N&E Standing Rules. The subcommittee targeted implementation of verbiage and structure changes in 2020, with any substantial content or process changes to be implemented in 2023, with endorsement of the committee.
  

2023 Nominations & Elections Roster

The members of the Committee on Nominations & Elections are as follows:

Chair

• Julianne M.D. Smist, 2023

Vice-Chair

• Kevin J. Edgar, 2023

Secretary

• Silvia Ronco, 2023

Members

• Allison Alridge
• Michelle V. Buchanan
• Alan B. Cooper
• Holly L. Davis
• Peter K. Dorhout
• Jetty L. Duffy-Metzner
• Kelly M. Elkins
• Neil D. Jespersen
  
• Martin D. Rudd
  
• Ellene Tratras Contis
• Kathryn Uhrich
• Linette M. Watkins

Liaisons

Flint Lewis

Staff Liaison, American Chemical Society

Tiffany Hoerter

Assistant Staff Liaison, American Chemical Society

Jo Ann Rhodes

Committee Administrator