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[Fwd: Commission responsibilities]

The content of this communication may well be of some interest to you.

Title:
To:            Chairs and Secretaries of Commissions
               Members and consultants of Commissions (for information)
               Members of Executive Committee (for information)

From:          The IUCr President and Immediate Past President

Subject:       Commission responsibilities


When the Commission Chairs met with the Executive Committee in Florence, ways in which Commissions could interact and work with each other, with the Executive Committee, with the Chester office and with standing Committees of the IUCr were discussed.  A list of ten Commission responsibilities was developed (see attached file) and the Executive Committee recommends that the Commission Chairs assign specific responsibilities to members or consultants of their Commissions.  This will allow for a distribution of responsibilities and make it possible to identify those members and consultants who are most active and likely to be suitable candidates to remain on the Commission or chair the Commission in the future.  For instance, it would be in a Commission's best interest to replace inactive Commission members with active Commission consultants.  It is desirable that there be international and gender balance in the composition of each Commission.  Representatives from the same dozen countries make up the composition of most Commissions.  Several Commissions have more than one US or UK representative.  Some are almost entirely composed of people from countries in Europe.  Occasionally, Chairs retain the position for extended periods of time with little justification.

It is often easy to identify several candidates for Commission membership from countries with the most highly developed and advanced level of crystallography.  However,  it is essential to the future of the IUCr to identify potential leaders in smaller or less advanced member countries.  It is also desirable to identify crystallographers in non-member countries that may well qualify to be consultants if not full members.  If the current leaders in the areas of some Commissions are disproportionately male, it may be harder to identify suitable female candidates.  For this reason a database of women crystallographers qualified and willing to serve on IUCr Commissions and Committees is being developed.

Commission Chairs, members and consultants should be crystallographers who regularly attend the IUCr Congresses, the annual meetings of the Regional Associates (AsCA, ECA and ACA) and Commission-sponsored schools.  Commission Chairs should monitor such involvement to help evaluate performance.  Meetings of subsets of the Commission members at the annual meetings of AsCA, ECA and ACA will provide an opportunity to discuss the interests, goals and plans of the Commission. 

At least six months before the XXI Congress, Commission members and consultants should send the Chairs a brief summary of their Commission-related activities during the triennium including details of which Regional Associate and Commission-sponsored meetings or workshops they attended.

This circular has been copied to all members and consultants of the Commissions for which we have email addresses. We therefore request you either to ask for volunteers to take responsibility for the various tasks or alternatively assign the tasks to members or consultants on your Commission. 

Yours sincerely

Yuji Ohashi (President)
Bill Duax (Immediate Past President)

-- 

************************
Michael H. Dacombe
Executive Secretary
IUCr
2 Abbey Square
Chester CH1 2HU
UK

Telephone     44 1244 345 431
Fax          44 1244 344 843
Email          execsec@iucr.org

Commission tasks.pdf


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