Tag Archive for: AAAS

AAAS Pacific Division meets this week at SOU

SOU to host 100th annual meeting of the AAAS Pacific Division

(Ashland, Ore.) — Leading West Coast scientists with gather in Ashland Tuesday through Saturday, June 18 to 22, when Southern Oregon University hosts the 100th annual Pacific Division Meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Organizers are putting a unique, grassroots spin on the conference by encouraging visiting scientists to enjoy the area’s cultural and recreational amenities, and by offering opportunities for community members to be involved in the event. The public is welcome to attend the meeting’s opening reception and plenary session on Tuesday afternoon and evening, and everyone is invited to a “science pub” event on Wednesday evening at three Ashland pubs and restaurants.

Anyone may attend the full, four-day schedule of lectures, workshops and presentations by signing up for the conference and paying a $35 registration fee. Membership in the AAAS is not required.

The program for this year’s meeting is intended to mix scientists with the interested public in discussions about science, with an emphasis on the environment and climate change. There will be an invitation-only symposium at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Room 161 of the SOU Science Building on the role of scientists in advocating for local and regional climate policy; a talk at 8:45 a.m. Thursday in the SOU Music Building on “The Honey Bee as a Model for Reverse-Engineering a Brain;” and a town hall-style meeting from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday in Room 207 of the Science Building on the climate future for Oregon wineries.

Tuesday’s public opening reception, from 4 to 6 p.m. in SOU’s Schneider Museum of Art, will feature an exhibit of works from various artists that are “inspired by science.” The opening talk that follows at 6 p.m. in the adjacent Art Building’s Meese Auditorium will be about “Freeing the Klamath River.”

Topics for the “science pub crawl” from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday will include the social, economic and political impacts of climate change at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant; “Fires!” at Harvey’s Place Restaurant & Bar; and a “Climate Change Poetry Jam” at Oberon’s. About 10 to 20 scientists participating in the AAAS conference will be present at each of the Ashland pubs to engage with the public in informal conversations.

A full schedule of the meeting’s events is available online.

The four-day AAAS conference is expected to draw between 250 and 350 participants, with a fifth day on Saturday reserved for educational field trips and visits to various local venues or attractions.

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, with about 120,000 members in more than 91 countries. It publishes the journal “Science.”

The organization’s Pacific Division serves more than 30,000 members in California, Hawaii, Idaho, western Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, and most other Pacific Basin countries.

The division was recognized by the AAAS in 1912, and has held annual meetings almost year since 1915 – meetings were not held in 1918 because of World War I, or in 1943-45 because of World War II. The group has met three times previously in Ashland, most recently in 2010.

The AAAS Pacific Division is led by Executive Director James Bower, in an arrangement with SOU. Bower, a computational biologist who has served as a faculty member at Cal Tech and University of Texas, moved to Ashland four years go and accepted the AAAS post following the retirement of former executive director Roger Christianson, an emeritus biology professor at SOU.

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SOU’s Christianson honored as AAAS Fellow


NEWS BRIEF
(Ashland, Ore.) — Roger Christianson, an emeritus professor of biology at Southern Oregon University, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – a prestigious honor that is bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
He was recognized for his “exemplary service as the AAAS Pacific Division leader since 2002.” Christianson was originally elected to a three-year term as the Pacific Division’s executive director and has served in that role for the past 15 years.
“It has been an honor to represent SOU to AAAS members in the Western United States while serving as executive director of the Pacific Division,” he said. “I was truly humbled upon finding out that my name had been put forward for election to AAAS Fellow.
“I share this honor with all of my colleagues at SOU and trust that this reflects well on the quality of faculty, staff and programs at SOU.”
Christianson is one of 396 AAAS members nationwide who were honored this year as Fellows. He is one of just nine 2017 AAAS Fellows in Oregon, and the only one outside of the University of Oregon (with six) and Oregon State University (with two).
Christianson coordinated and taught in SOU’s General Biology Program for non-majors from 1980 until he took emeritus status (retirement from active teaching) in 2014. He served as chair of the Biology Department from 1996 to 2003.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in cellular and organismal biology, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in biology, all from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, which has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science publication. The AAAS was founded in 1848 and currently has more than 120,000 members.
Those who were named as Fellows this year will be presented official certificates and gold-and-blue rosette pins during the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting on Feb. 17 in Austin, Texas. They will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the Nov. 24 issue of the journal Science.
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