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Responsibilities of Program Chairs

Call for Papers

  1. Develops the technical program with Symposium Organizers and enters it into the Call for Abstracts template workbook as oral and/or poster symposia.
  2. Designates symposia as accepting either contributed or invited papers.
  3. Submits the completed the Call for Abstracts workbook to ACS Staff for importing to MAPS prior to abstract submission opening.

Session Management (cooperatively with Symposium Organizers and ACS Staff)

  1. Assign abstracts to sessions
  2. Set presentation order for abstracts in sessions
  3. Assign presentation durations
  4. Add non-technical events to sessions (e.g., intermission, introductory remarks, etc.) with duruations
  5. Assign presiders for oral sessions
  6. Sci-Mix (optional): Schedule high-quality abstracts for division Sci-Mix session.  ACS Staff will provide a list of abstracts that opted for sci-mix consideration.  You may select up to 20 presentations, or 10% of total number  of accepted papers for your division, whichever is larger.

Finalize Technical Program

  1. Arranges sessions by Day, Time and Room within the pre-assigned technical session room allotment provided by ACS Staff.
  2. Submits preliminary program to ACS.
  3. Submits final program to ACS.

Other Responsibilities

  1. Arranges for non-technical events such as coffee breaks and social receptions associated with award presentations or poster sessions, and committee rooms.
    • Any member of the division executive committee has the authority to make non-technical event requests.
    • In most divisions, the program chair makes the arrangements associated with the technical program, and the division chair makes the committee room requests associated with governance functions.
    • Symposium organizers must always ask the acting program chair to make event requests pertaining to the technical sessions.
  2. Registers sponsored speakers—if the division wishes to pay for the sponsored speaker registration fees. Early and regular registration fees apply to division registrations.
    • At the time registration opens, MAPS staff administrators send current program chairs and division treasurers password access to the Division Guest Registration site.
    • Using the password they can register non-member sponsored speakers at a special one-day registration rate or member/non-member sponsored speakers at the prevailing member/non-member registration rate.
    • Symposium organizers must always ask the program chair to make these special registrations.