From the Past President
by Stephen Clarson, BA DPhill CChem FRSC

It was my pleasure to have served MVSPE as President for the 2010-2011 year.

As many of you know, I am Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Cincinnati and I am former Director of the Polymer Research Center at UC. I have also been the faculty advisor to the student UC SPE group since 1993.

I see this year as being one of re-building and re-energizing the group after what has been a couple of difficult years for our colleagues in the Plastics Industry and also for our students looking for careers in the Plastics Industry and in related research organizations - such as National Laboratories and in Higher Education.

To start the 2010-2011 year we met on September 9th at the Engineers Club in Dayton where Dr. Barry Farmer from AFRL / WAPFB joined us and he described some of the current activities in polymers, biopolymers, composites and nanotechnology in Dayton where the scientists and engineers in his organization are truly world leaders.

On October 7th Dr. Larry Miller hosted our visit to Shawnee State University in Portsmouth OH where we celebrated the 25th Anniversary of their student chapter of SPE.

On November 4th we had a fabulous plant tour at PPG in Milford OH that was kindly hosted by James Kinney and his PPG colleagues.

On December 1st we had a lecture at UC by Greg Anderson (TOTAL) and then on December 3rd there was the fabulous MVSPE holiday party at the Engineers Club in Dayton.

For our first event of the New Year, on Thursday January 6, 2011 we had a plant tour at RUMPKE Recycling facility on Spring Grove in Cincinnati at 9am. View Photos

Link: http://rumpkerecycling.com/education/videos.aspx

Our February 3rd meeting was hosted by Professor David Hicks for a MVSPE visit to the Cincinnati College Of Mortuary Science. Professor Hicks gave a lecture entitled "Materials, Methods and Mortuary Science" and this was followed by a tour of their facilities.

For the March 2nd meeting, we visited Miami University where Professor Steve Keller described their programs involving paper, polymers and other materials and we then toured their various laboratories.

Sincere best wishes,

Steve

Stephen J. Clarson BA DPhil CChem FRSC