Proceedings of the Sixty-first Annual Meeting of the Northeastern ...

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Executive Committee Report of the
NORTHEASTERN WEED SCIENCE SOCIETY
Presented at the 60 th Annual Meeting
The Westin Providence, Rhode Island
January 5, 2006
PRESIDENT
Timothy E. Dutt
The society started 2005 with a very successful annual meeting in Washington DC. Robin
Bellinder and Brian Manley did a great job working with the hotel, and Bill Curran put together
an excellent program. Total meeting attendance was up significantly from previous years due to
successful outreach efforts by member volunteers on invasive species and with the turfgrass
industry. These efforts produced two excellent symposiums that brought in over 100 nonmembers
to the meeting. We also met jointly for the seventh consecutive year with the
Northeast Branch of the American Society of Horticultural Science.
During the annual business meeting in 2005, a resolution and policy statement on glyphosate
stewardship was brought forth by the Herbicide Resistant Plant Committee. After much
discussion, a motion was adopted to send the resolution and policy statement back to the
committee for revision. Mark VanGessel and the committee worked during the year to revise
the policy statement to address concerns and comments by the membership. Members had the
opportunity to comment on the policy statement via the society website. This resulted in a
dramatically changed herbicide resistance stewardship policy statement and resolution to be
voted on at the 2006 annual business meeting.
After the annual business meeting in 2005, the new Executive Committee (EC) began work on
major objectives of organizing a successful joint meeting with the Northeast Aquatic Plant
Management Society (NEAPMS) in 2006, making necessary changes for a successful summer
Weed Contest in 2005, and addressing problems for an improved website for our membership.
New members to the EC were Renee Keese, Vice President and Program Chair, and Kathie
Kalmowitz, Research and Education Coordinator. Member changes also had to occur during
the year due to company transfers. Dave Spak was appointed to Sustaining Membership Chair
when Susan Rick was transferred to the Midwest with DuPont early in the year. Also, Brian
Manley, Secretary-Treasurer since 2004, was transferred with Syngenta to an international
assignment, and as a result would be unable to serve his full elected term of office. Acting
according to the articles of the NEWSS constitution, the EC appointed Chris Becker to work with
Brian during the year to transition into the Secretary-Treasurer role at the annual meeting in
2006. Chris attended EC meetings during the year as a non-voting member, and Brian
continued his dedicated service to the society while working out of Switzerland.
Functional problems with our website needed to be addressed with our new server, Host Depot.
The renovated NEWSS website launched in March 2004 was developed by Host Depot.
Difficulties working with Host Depot on development of the website rendered it inoperable for
title and abstract submissions during 2004. Although difficulties continued with Host Depot in
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