Newsletter - Sep 2001

The Minnesota Chromatography Forum (MCF) is seeking nominations for the Palmer Award to be presented at the 2001 Spring Symposium. The Palmer Award has been given out by the MCF for the past 21 years The award recognizes individuals for their contributions to the art and science of chromatography. The award can also be given to an individual for his or her service to the MCF or the chromatography community. Past recipients have included internationally recognized chromatographers as well as long-term MCF volunteers. For listing of the past recipients of the Palmer Award please visit the MCF web site at www.minnchrom.org. A committee chaired by the MCF Past Prseident reads and discusses all individuals nominated for the award, and then selects a winner. The Past President of the MCF heads the committee. The nomination form can be found on the MCF web site at www.minnchrom.org

Welcome to the MCF. The new membership year began with the Spring Symposium in May, and the membership list has now been updated. Membership in the MCF is renewed annually at the time of the Spring Symposium. If you had not registered for the Spring Symposium or renewed your membership at that time, you may now notice a renewal message on your mailing label for this newsletter. The membership dues is $15. Please use the PEEL OFF address label, make any necessary changes or corrections, and include a middle initial.

The MCF exists solely for the benefit of its members. We are always interested in receiving your comments regarding MCF activities and ways in which the MCF can more closely meet your needs and interests. To improve our member outreach, we ask you to encourage your colleagues to consider membership as well. Please photocopy the membership form as necessary. The MCF also maintains a website at www.minnchrom.org. Please take the time to visit, we think you will be pleased. Thank you very much for your interest in the MCF.

Present: W. Swanson, G. Paul, G Baillie, J. Jopke, Michelle Iverson, D Eikens, T. Robison, B. Leafblad, S. Cherney

Education Committee: The committee is putting the final touches on the two upcoming HPLC courses. The information has been sent to Jan and fliers will go out soon. The beginning HPLC course will be held November 6-8, 2001. The advanced HPLC course will be held November 27-28, 2001. Both courses will be at the Earle Brown Continuing Learning Center on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota. Vendors have also started signing up. Additionally two additional courses are in the works, Beginning GC and Use of Designed Experiments in Chromatography. All registrations will go through Jan Jopke.

Symposium Committee: Ward is in the process of putting together attendance figures and survey results.

Newsletter: The deadline of submissions for the September newsletter is August 17, 2001. All information should be directed to Ravi Ravichandran. The printer has recommended a mailing house and further discussion was held by the board to ensure that there were no problems, it was recommended that labels be used for the next issue. Tom needs the latest membership roster and Jan will be forwarding this information to him. The deadline for the labels is August 24 to Ravi. The total cost of the newsletter is down over the past year when compared to previous years.

Website: David has been going through the sponsorship and adding those that have paid for advertising and reviewing those that are past due. David has re-formatted and made available some of the forms used by the membership.

Quarterly Meeting: Gibbes indicated that the next quarterly meeting will be held in October. Although he has some ideas for speakers, he is always looking for ideas and discussion ensued around some possible topics and candidates. Grant, being the new guy on the block, had many questions as well.

Old Business: The credit card machine is up and working. We have used it quite a bit so far and it was noted that some companies are moving to credit card transactions only.

All correspondence with the treasurer, Sharon Dahl should not go to her place of business and should go through either Jan or Ward, who will forward it to the correct address.

With the departure of Pat Sackett and Kim Grandprey, a hole has been left and we are all trying to fill those shoes. We would like to thank both of them again for all there hard work in the past years and, perhaps, for the assistance in the future.

The next meeting will be help October 16, 2001 at Pace Analytical in Minneapolis.

I hope you all had a great summer. Perhaps you are trying to recover from the gastronomic assault offered by Taste of Minnesota, Minnesota State fair and county fairs. It is time to get back to the routine- back to school shopping etc.

It is time to start thinking about MCF. This is the first issue for the year 2001-2002.

It has been a great year as far as the newsletter goes. We managed to publish at least three guest columns. I hope we can increase that number this year. I am always open to such guest columns. This is a great medium to publish some review articles or introduce that great separation technique you have been working on to the members of MCF. If you happen to come across good articles (reviews included) on HPLC, GC, CE or for that matter any unique sample preparation technique, please drop in a line to me and I will definitely find room for it in the newsletter. I hope some of you attended the HPLC 2001. If you did, please consider writing a short column reflecting what appealed to you at the meeting. I encourage all our readers to consider writing guest columns- they could be meeting reviews or course reviews.

Month / year of the Issue	Submission Deadline
October 2001	September 21, 2001
November 2001	October 19, 2001
December 2001- January 2002	December 14, 2001
February 2002	January 18, 2002
March 2002	February 15, 2002
April 2002	March 15, 2002
May 2002	April 19, 2002
June 2002	May 31, 2002