in focus

Dear Fellow Members and Friends of MetSoc:

  Joel Kapusta (left),   MetSoc President and Editor, Air Liquide
  Alejandro Bustos, Air Liquide Colleague and Mentor
 

As new Editor, I have the challenging task of following in the footsteps of George Demopoulos, our Past-President and the Founding Editor of mlink. First of all, I wish to congratulate George and the MetSoc staff for achieving the feat of bringing this MetSoc e-newsletter from its early stages of conception to an already established communication tool between MetSoc and its more than 1,700 members ...in barely a year! Hats off to you!

In his past editorials, George had discussed several key characteristics of MetSoc that I wish to reiterate and expand upon:
1) our Society is a member-driven organization,
2) our Society has a key role to play in addressing an emerging rift between our strong mining, extraction and processing industry support and the shift of university programs towards a material focus, and
3) our Society's future depends on our success in attracting and nurturing current and future students to our profession and in convincing them to become and remain actively involved in MetSoc.

The first point simply means that MetSoc activities and programming are entirely the fruit of membership involvement and dedication. Any one member wishing for changes or new programs can make it happen by becoming active in a section, a committee or a Board of Directors position.

As for the second point, our Talk-Back feature, which was initiated in the April 2008 issue of mlink, has attempted to probe what, in your opinion, defines MetSoc, by asking you to choose between "Metallurgical Engineering" and "Materials Engineering". So far, the tally of all votes is about 60% Metallurgical versus 40% Materials, while the tally amongst the posted votes (those with a comment) is 88% Metallurgical versus 12% Materials. The limited number of expressed views does not yet allow for any conclusion about MetSoc membership to be drawn. It must be noted that a large proportion of MetSoc members has traditionally been either employed by extraction and processing divisions of mining companies, or by engineering, service providers or commodity suppliers that serve the mining and processing industry. Those members have certainly found a home in MetSoc over the years. Yet more and more university programs in Canada (and abroad) are focusing on advanced materials and are attracting numerous science and engineering students who work in this field of study upon graduation. Have those materials professionals found a home at MetSoc too? One of the great challenges ahead for MetSoc is to continue serving its current core membership, who define or associate themselves with Metallurgical Engineering, while exploring and preparing itself to better serve the Materials professionals and graduates of Materials Engineering university programs. To better guide us in defining our path for this journey forward, your votes and views, whether Metallurgical or Materials do matter to me! I therefore strongly encourage you to spare a bit of time from your busy daily workload to cast your vote, and most importantly, to express the reasons of your choice and have it posted for a debate to occur. Alternatively, you can send me an email at jkapusta@cim.org.

The third point, nurturing students and convincing them to be active members of our Society is in fact the theme I chose to embrace during my presidency. Nurturing and convincing......page 2 - continue >