in focus

Signing Ceremony of a collaboration MOU between TMS and METSOC during the 2009 TMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA

Seated (left to right): Mahesh Chaturvedi, 2008-09 MetSoc President - Diran Apelian, 2008-09 TMS President

Standing (left to right): Ray Peterson, 2009-10 TMS President; Rusty Grey, 2009-10 TMS Vice-President; Warren Hunt, TMS Executive Director; Greg Richards, MetSoc 2nd Vice-President; Joel Kapusta, MetSoc Immediate Past-President; Robert Shull, TMS Past-President; and Garry Warren, TMS Financial Planning Officer

Dear Fellow Members and Friends of MetSoc:

A year ago, as I was preparing myself to assume the role of m-Link Editor-in-Chief, our industry was booming and METSOC was financially healthy. A year later, we find ourselves amidst a global recession triggered by a worldwide financial crisis. Following years of high metal prices and continued growth and development, our industry has been particularly affected by this crisis. As cash preservation became one of the new directives for companies and individuals alike, the demand for manufactured goods has dropped considerably, causing a major shift in the commodity markets and a rapid tumble of metal prices. When banks reacted to protect themselves, capital became inaccessible to both junior and major mining companies who could no longer finance their cash-intensive mining and metallurgical projects. This resulted in the slowing down, the postponement or the outright cancellation of a great number of those major projects, including mines, smelters, refineries and downstream processing plants. As for the mines, plants and projects remaining active, the new motto has been "do more, do better, do with less".

METSOC is not immune to this situation! In fact, our Society's well being is greatly dependant on the health and wealth of the mining, metallurgical and material industries that provide the core of our membership and sustain R&D in our universities. Our Board of Directors is now faced with the challenge to continue our Society's operations and to provide the expected highest standards of services to our members while controlling (reducing) its costs.

You all have your personal views on how to successfully overcome such challenge, and I, as a humble representative of your Society's Board of Directors, am genuinely interested in hearing your ideas and opinions! So if you do feel strongly about the future of METSOC, I dearly encourage you to put your thoughts in writing and to send them my way at jkapusta@cim.org. On my end, I am committed to bringing them to the attention of our Board of Directors. Your views could eventually be implemented into our Society's modus operandi. That's our version of "power to the members"!

In my first m-Link editorial in 2008, I had explained that nurturing students and convincing them to become active members of our Society was the theme I had chosen for my METSOC presidency. I have actually carried that theme into my past-presidency tenure and I would like to share with you some of our Society's achievements with student membership and our Student Task Force.

Back in late 2007 and early 2008, one of the first actions of the METSOC Student Task Force was to put forward a motion at the Board of Directors meeting to make it free for students to join METSOC. The original idea was that METSOC would absorb the CIM student fee for each and every student joining CIM and selecting METSOC as his or hers affiliation. The concept was presented to the Executive Members of CIM who brought it to the CIM Council. The motion of free student membership was subsequently unanimously approved by the CIM Council, and as of January 2009, student membership in CIM, and therefore in METSOC, is now completely free. Membership drives with pizza and soft drinks are planned for this year at most Canadian universities with a metals and materials program!

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