executive committe meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division was held on June 9,
1997, at the Winston-Salem AAS meeting. Present were Neil Gehrels, Gordon Garmire, Martin
Elvis, Alan Marscher, Paula Szkody, Nicholas White, Belinda Wilkes, and Robert Milkey, the
AAS Executive Officer.
Bob Milkey reviewed the services to HEAD supplied by the AAS: IRS filings, insurance,
and finanical oversight. Barbara Cannon is the financial officer, who will provide
financial reports routinely. For meetings, AAS needs to review any contracts; Diana
Alexander is the AAS meeting coordinator. HEAD can use the AAS Newsletter and electronic
exploder. The AAS electronic newsletter deadline is about the 10th of each month.
For the November 1997 HEAD meeting at Estes Park, Colorado, abstracts will be published
separately from the BAAS. 200-300 abstracts are expected. Bob Milkey stated that, if HEAD
wishes to publish divisional meeting abstracts in the BAAS, the AAS needs to be notified
near the beginning of the calendar year in order to set the publication cost rate
(currently $30 per abstract). There is no charge for a few extra informational pages about
the meeting.
In response to a question about the amount of the Rossi Prize compared with other
divisional prizes, Milkey stated that the figure (now $1500) is comparable, and the fact
that it does not include travel costs is consistent with other prizes (except for the
Russell Lectureship).
Alan Marscher presented the HEAD Secretary-Treasurer's report. The division is healthy
in terms of both membership (now over 700) and finances (of order $16-18K total balance).
Division records are still being updated and the annual financial report from the AAS is
awaited. The May newsletter is being sent out a month late because of the changeover in
secretary-treasurers.
Gordon Garmire led a discussion of possible topics and speakers for the January 1998
AAS meeting in Washington, DC. A number of ideas and names were suggested. Someone from
HEAD needs to volunteer to sort papers for the AAS meeting to ensure that there are no
simultaneous sessions with more than one topic of interest to many HEAD members.
Neil Gehrels led a discussion of invited speakers for the HEAD meeting in November
1997. It was decided that the lengths of the talks would be 20+5 mins. for invited talks
and 10+2 mins. for contributed talks. A list of invited speakers and alternates was
compiled.
A discussion of the site of the spring 1999 HEAD meeting did not lead to a final
decision. There was a discussion on whether to subsidize the travel and registration fees
for students and other "needy" cases at HEAD meetings. This was considered a
good idea considering the healthy state of the treasury, but no definite plan was drawn up
either to advertise the availability of funds or to figure out the dollar amount of and in
what manner to disburse the travel awards.
The meeting was adjourned.
