Dear Fellow Members of the Northwest Section of the American Physical Society and Fellow Physicists,

As APSNW section chair for 2006-7, I like to highlight our section’s goals and urge you to consider helping with several of our priorities.

Naturally, our broadest goal is the support of science (please visit our News for more information on the annual interaction of section officers with legislators).

We also aim at facilitating exchange and discussion among physicists from the Northwest States and Western Canada. One of our priorities is to include students in our activities, both graduate and undergraduate, and to provide younger researchers in the Northwest with the opportunity to gain regional visibility. Our meetings have a tradition of high-quality scientific programs, featuring excellent speakers and state-of-the-art research.

How you can help:

MEMBERSHIP
I am pleased to report that the APS Northwest Section is now approximately 1,000 members strong! Yet, in spite of the fact that Section membership is free to all APS members, many of the members of the American Physical Society residing in the Pacific Northwest have still not signed on with APSNW. As word spreads about the high quality of our annual spring meetings, our hope is that all regional APS members will understand the advantages of membership in the Northwest Section. I ask for your help in encouraging your peers and collaborators to join us. Please bring our Section to the attention of new people in your department/unit. The Section benefits greatly from the increases in our membership roll, as we receive a small fixed amount of support ($4) for Section activities from the APS for each Section member. Almost all of this funding is used for Student Travel Awards and to subsidize student participation to our meetings.

It costs nothing to become a Northwest Section member and it is easy to sign up. Simply go to the APS Join APS Northwest Section FREE or send me an email request and I will get you signed up.

STUDENT PARTICIPATION
The future of physics depends on the energy, commitment and ambitions of young physicists. Please encourage the young physicists, especially students and postdocs in your group and at your institute or company, to consider joining the APS and getting involved with APS activities. Young physicists will benefit from networking for future job prospects, and will hopefully think of becoming science advocates themselves. Students (both undergraduate and graduate students) are entitled to a ONE-YEAR FREE APS MEMBERSHIP. Remember to also join our section for free. Undergraduate students also receive free registration at our Annual Meeting, and graduate students receive greatly subsidized registration. There is also a newly formed APS Forum on Graduate Students Affairs, which concerns itself with issues of importance to graduate students. Students are encouraged to join both our Northwest Section and the Graduate Student Affairs Forum - both are free.

PARTICIPATION FROM PHYSICISTS IN THE NON-ACADEMIC SECTOR
The Northwest region is home to many high-tech companies and industries employing physicists, yet we have relatively few physicists outside universities and government laboratories participating in our Section's activities. Please encourage your friends/colleagues in industry to consider participating in our Section's activities. From past annual meetings, it is clear that the invited talks delivered by physicists in industry are amongst the most popular with our student participants and very enlightening to the rest of us. The participation of industrial physicists also provides job-networking opportunities of benefit both to industrial employers and students who may soon be seeking jobs in the area.

ANNUAL MEETING PARTICIPATION
Our section is now nine years old, and our meetings have been well attended, with attendance in the range of 105 to over 200 at each of our past eight meetings. Consider coming to our Annual Northwest Section meeting, which this year will be held on the campus of Idaho State University on May 17-19, 2007. The local host is Dan Dale (dale@athena.physics.isu.edu). The Program chair is Ernest Henley (henley@physics.washington.edu). Meet physicists in our region, hear about the interesting research going on here in the Northwest - in industry, at government labs and at universities. If you are a student, come network, meet other students as well prospective employers in the area, consider presenting a poster or a contributed talk.

On behalf of the APSNW Executive Committee, I thank you for your support.

Francesca Sammarruca
Chair, Northwest Section
fsammarr@uidaho.edu