Report of the President
for the Year ending June 30, 2005
My year as President of Sigma Xi might be characterized as one of optimism for the Society, yet somewhat tempered with a fundamental problem that the Society still faces. I will outline only a few of the items I view as significant; others are conveyed in the excellent Report of the Executive Director.
Sigma Xi has recently made considerable progress with respect to three important items.
First: the hiring of an enthusiastic and energetic leader and effective manager as Executive Director of Sigma Xi, Dr. Patrick Sculley. In his short tenure with the Society, Dr. Sculley has demonstrated leadership and management abilities and has devoted unbound energy to the Society in an effort to impel Sigma Xi towards the fulfillment of its lofty goals.
Second: the headquarters building of the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina was completed in a short time, ahead of schedule, and within a moderate budget. The final building incorporated much additional space beyond what had been originally planned, without increasing the budget. This beautiful building, dedicated in April 2004, is a credit to the Society and its membership. Every Sigma Xi member should take the opportunity to visit the Center and share the pride of other members of the Society as they tour the building. The completion of the Center ahead of time and within budget demonstrates Dr. Sculley's leadership and effective management.
Third: the formulation of the Strategic Plan for Sigma Xi, which points the Society forward and aggressively in a direction the Society clearly needs and wants to follow. The Strategic Plan, initially adopted by the Sigma Xi Board in November 2002, has nine clearly defined goals for the Society. Since the adoption of the Strategic Plan, the Society's leadership, committees, and administrative staff have added supplementary objectives and initiatives to each goal, in order to formulate an operational plan that will measure Sigma Xi's progress towards the Plan's goals. The Strategic Plan is a continuing "work in progress," as the Committee on Strategic Planning annually reviews the Plan, reviews the Society's progress toward achieving its goals, and makes recommendations to the Board of Directors for changes in the Plan seeking to accommodate and ameliorate the changing conditions in which Sigma Xi exists and operates.
The first goal of the Strategic Plan is critical: to increase the Society's membership and reverse a membership decline of two decades that has severely impacted the Society. At the November 2004 and May 2005 meetings of the Board of Directors, I advanced my view that we need to perceive Sigma Xi as a Society in crisis concerning its declining membership and that Sigma Xi cannot remain effective, not even survive as a leading scientific organization, if it continues to lose members. As the Society's fiscal year came to a close on 30 June, as did my Presidency, I remain very concerned, and will be concerned about the Society's membership until the trend is reversed. Nevertheless, there may be reasons for optimism concerning the Society's membership at the beginning of the new year on 1 July 2005. The Society's membership declined 3.5% during the previous year, but the number of initiates increased: Sigma Xi had 5,000 initiates for the year. In addition, the Society has installed, or will install shortly, several new chapters that bring more members into the Society.
In the Executive Director's Report, Dr. Sculley summarizes well the Society's current membership situation. I ask every member to read his report and take Sigma Xi's membership decline very seriously. I believe that reversing the Society's membership decline will take the sustained effort of the Board of Directors and its committees, the Society's leadership, the administrative staff, and each chapter and member of the Society. During the past two years I have learned first hand how much a limited effort on the part of a few individuals can do to assist the Society in addressing its membership problem. With the help of a few faculty and other members, we managed to expand significantly the membership of the Irvine Chapter of the University of California by adding during the year ending 30 June 2005, 80 new initiates (one of whom, Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, became President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on July 1, 2005). Perhaps more importantly, Dr. Ana Barahona of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City and Dr. Marlene de la Cruz at the University of California, Irvine undertook an initiative over the past 18 months to create new chapters and bring in new members in Mexico. Under their initiative, I sent letters to accomplished scientists I knew in Mexico inviting them to submit their resumes for review to become members of Sigma Xi; over 80% of those invited have applied and were ultimately elected as members of the Society. We'll continue this process with additional invitations.
This effort has so far resulted in 200 new Sigma Xi members in Mexico. In addition, we have identified one or two individuals in academic and research institutions from ten regions in Mexico to lead the effort to prepare chapter petitions for each region and to identify new qualified Sigma Xi members within the region. The Board of Directors has already approved the establishment of two new Sigma Xi chapters: one at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México): Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Instituto de Matemáticas, Instituto de Ecología, and Instituto de Fisiología; the other at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV). These two new chapters should be installed shortly. Petitions from four additional potential chapters in Mexico are in process: Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Optica, y Electrónica (INOAE); Centro de Investigación Científica y Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE); Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), Ensenada; and Institute of Neurobiology UNAM, Querataro, Campus Juriquilla, Querétaro, Mexico. The initiatives in Mexico and at the University of California, Irvine have been very reassuring because they manifest how willing qualified individuals are to accept membership in Sigma Xi if they are invited. I firmly believe that, if Sigma Xi pursues a sustained initiative to invite individuals to membership in Sigma Xi, many will indeed accept the honor. What is needed is the dedication of our members; just a modest effort from everyone in the Society to nominate one or a few qualified individuals to membership would soon reverse the declining trend in membership. Some members might want to pursue larger objectives, campaigns seeking major membership increases in their institutions or in other national or international sites.
It is clear that the programs of the Society are a major factor in getting members to retain their membership and in attracting new members to the Society. In his Report of the Executive Director, Dr. Sculley has reviewed the outstanding progress that Sigma Xi has made in creating a portfolio of programs for the Society's chapters, as well as programs that enhance the image and visibility of the Society. These programs will assist Sigma Xi in reversing its membership decline and make the Society an increasingly relevant scientific organization impacting all research scientists and engineers and embracing many of them.
The Society has made in recent years great strides towards addressing problems of membership and others by developing a viable strategic plan, creating an organizational structure to implement the plan, training its staff and volunteers, and providing its volunteers and staff with the necessary tools to carry out the strategic plan. I am pleased to have played a small role in that effort as President of the Society, 2005-2005. I would like to thank Dr. Sculley, the members of the Board of Directors, the Chairs and members of our committees, and others in the Society's leadership, as well as the Sigma Xi staff, for their contribution to make my term as President of Sigma Xi enjoyable and rewarding. I look forward to a promising future for our Society.
Francisco J. Ayala
President 2004-2005
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