Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. (Divisional Reports).

The Division of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences met for a one-day session on Thursday February 13, 2003 as part of the 67th annual meeting of the Mississippi Academy of Sciences. There were twelve oral and four poster presentations; regardless of format, most of the presentations included student co-authors and student presenters. Although total participation by long-term full members was reduced somewhat from previous years because of conflicts with at least two national meetings, the sessions were well-attended overall. As is typical at most meetings, there was somewhat sparse attendance (~1 0 persons) for the first couple of presentations in the morning, but business picked up as time went on. There was literally standing room only during the afternoon session.

Noticeably, but pleasantly, absent this year was the unfortunate practice of a group storming in to hear one of their colleagues present and then leaving as a group as soon as the talk was over. I would like to thank the attendees for their politeness and professionalism in this regard.

All but one of the oral presentations was in PowerPoint. I am happy to report that there were no major problems with the segue between successive talks. The week before the meeting, I sent an email message to every presenter and many co-authors telling them that a laptop, with a CD-ROM drive and an external zip-drive, and a computer projector would be available at the meeting. I asked that each presenter come early, before his/her session was scheduled to start, so that we could upload the presentation to the computer desktop. Most presenters complied with this request and we were able to preview their presentations and correct any problems associated with the different versions of PowerPoint used. This strategy successfully eliminated the time delays between talks which we experienced during some of the previous annual meetings. I strongly recommend that this practice become standard for our Division, if not for every Division of MAS.

Although the Division has not recently given awards for the best student presentation, I would like to suggest that we explore the possibility of doing so at future MAS meetings. When one of the student presenters asked me "when will the judges be stopping by?" during the poster session, I had to sad duty to inform him that our division was not going to present awards. The quality of our student presentations, both oral and poster, was excellent and the students deserve some sort of recognition. Whether we can establish a small endowment for a monetary award or a plaque or whether we could regularly present a simple paper certificate for best student presentation is something that we full members should discuss. Of course, this also brings up the issue of judges and scoring, etc.

The Divisional Business Meeting was held immediately following the morning oral session. The current Vice-chair, Dr. Chet F. Rakocinski (The University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory), will assume the duties of Chair for 2003-20 04. Dr. Charlotte A. Brunner (The University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Marine Science) was elected Vice-chair for 2003-2004 and will assume the duties of Chair for 2004-2005.--Patricia M. Biesiot