We are back to the usual 8 page Newsletter after the "excitement" of the 12 page November Issue. There have been several important recent developments for the Society. Diane Beauchemin reports excellent progress on the Journal on page 3. The SSC Website has been redesigned (see below) and preliminary arrangements have been made for ICASS 2003.

Your "retired" Editor is busier than ever these days. I have been appointed Adjunct Professor in the Art Conservation Program at Queen's University. I give lectures on vibrational spect-roscopy to the students and show them how to use the recently purchased Nicolet Avatar 360 spectrometer and accessories.

Tina Mann, the SSC student representative on the NEC is the co-author of a paper published in the November issue of Laboratory Focus. The paper is entitled "The use of ultrasound for rapid preparation of fragments from genomic DNA". Tina is a graduate student in analytical chemistry at the University of Toronto. Her co-authors are Sara Dicks and Ulrich Krull.

Michel Pézolet, Chair of the Quebec City Local Section, recently gave a talk entitled "Study of the dynamics of orientation and relaxation of polymers by polarization modulation infrared spectroscopy" at the Department of Chemistry, Queen's University.

NOMINATIONS TO THE NEC
Nominations for all positions on the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Society are invited. (Please see the Society By-Laws for information on duties associated with these positions). Nomination(s) should be sent in writing to the Secretary, Richard Denis, at PerkinElmer, 20 Thelma Avenue, Toronto, ON, M4V 1X9. Nominations must be from SSC members in good standing. Nominations will close on May 15, 2002.

48th ICASS (2002)
The 2002 ICASS Conference will be held in Toronto in partnership with EnviroAnalysis-2002. Please see the announcement on Page 1 for further details.

49th ICASS (2003)
Nimal DeSilva is Chairman of the 49th ICASS to be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, June. 4-7, 2003. Please see page 4 of this Newsletter for a progress report.

50th ICASS (2004)
Marc Lamoureux will be the Chairman of the 50th ICASS to be held in Halifax in 2004.

51st ICASS (2005)
The 51st ICASS will be held in conjunction with the FACSS meeting in Quebec City in 2005. Denis Boudreau will be the ICASS chairman.

SOCIETY AWARDS
Jim McLaren, Chair of the Awards Committee reported that The 2002 Gerhard Herzberg Award will be presented to Dr. Ralph Sturgeon (Institute for National Measurement standards) and the Barringer Spectroscopy Award to Dr. Michèle Auger (Département de Chimie, Université Laval.

SSC WEBSITE
The SSC Web manager is Alison Holliday of the Department of Chemistry, Queen's University. Alison has completely redesigned the SSC site (www.s-s-c.ca). In addition to information that was on the previous site, there are now links to upcoming analytical conferences, major certified reference material sources, and the (continuously updated) program for the upcoming ICASS. In addition, the home page contains a bilingual explanation of why the society exists. Information for the Website should be sent by email to: holliday@chem.queensu.ca

STUDENT CHAPTERS
Student representative Tina Mann has been working very hard on proposals for student involvement in the SSC. Tina submitted a detailed report to the March NEC meeting. A summary of Tina's report is given on Page 5.