2012 Assembly of Delegates:
Northwest Regional Representative for Committee on Nominations

Name: Scott Burns

Present Position: Professor of Geology
Organization: Portland State University

Biographical Information: Scott Burns is a Professor of Geology at Portland State University in Oregon. He has been teaching at the university level for 42 years, the last 22 at Portland State. He has been involved in Sigma Xi for the last 27 years, serving many roles. He has been the president of two chapters: Louisiana Tech and the Columbia Willamette in Portland. For the past 21 years he been on the board in one role or another of the Columbia Willamette Chapter. He loves the outreach the Sigma Xi has to further science.

Name: John Kelley

Present Position: Professor Emeritus, Marine Science
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks

Chapter Affiliation: Alaska

Candidate's Statement: Seeking election to the nominating committee will provide an opportunity to apply the experience gained during my long career in science and science administration to recommend candidates who will be future visionary and effective leaders of Sigma Xi. I have served on this Sigma Xi committee in the past as well as the regional nominating committee. Our society's strength is its being international and diverse with respect to discipline and affiliation. From its membership will emerge the leadership to effectively address new challenges and future direction of the society.

Sigma Xi and Other Activities: I am an active member of the Alaska Chapter of Sigma Xi and currently serve as Secretary/Treasurer. I have held the held the position of President twice since my election to the society in the early 1980s. I have been active at the national level on several committees including the nominating committee, Board of Directors, Executive Committee of the Board , recent Strategic Planning Committee and NW Regional Director. Other relevant professional society activities include: American Geophysical Union, Fellow and Executive Secretary of the U.S. corporation of the Arctic Institute of North America and Fellow of AAAS .

Biographical Information: I have recently retired after forty years as a tenured Professor of Marine Science in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Upon retirement I was appointed Professor Emeritus. I received my B.S. in Geophysics and Geochemistry at the Pennsylvania State University (1958) and Ph.D. in Marine Science at the University of Nagoya (1974). I have been conducting research in the polar regions since 1960. My professional training is in the fields of geophysics, geochemistry and the marine sciences. My research has been related primarily to the polar regions particularly with respect to trace gases including carbon dioxide in the air and sea, trace elements, radioactivity and marine acoustics and marine science education. I have taught numerous marine related courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Although retired I teach a basic web-delivered oceanography core course each semester including summer in collaboration with the American Meteorological Society. I have served as the Director of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory and Director of the National Science Foundation's Polar Ice Coring Office and have served as program manager for meteorology and oceanography in the NSF Office of Polar Programs. I have also served as Chairman of the North Slope Borough's Science Advisory Committee since 1981 and was recently appointed the first Chair of the joint federal-state Science Technical Advisory Panel of the North Slope Science Initiative.

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