Greetings Sigma Xi North Central Presidents and Presidents-Elect - We would like to report on the Regional Assembly held at the Annual SX Meeting in New Orleans this March. The focus of our meetings were to share information about chapter activities in the region and to develop a focus for regional activities in the future. Many chapters in the Region have interesting activities as part of their program. The delegate from your chapter can tell you more about what they learned. To further share information we will be designing a regional web page that will connect to pages developed by the chapters describing their activities. We would encourage you to develop such a page and to share it with us.

Three themes emerged for activities of interest to the region: involvement in the political arena, K-12 education outreach, and subregional cooperation on topics of local interest. Our newly elected regional director, Loran Bieber, from Michigan State University Chapter (18399LLB@msu.edu) will lead our regional efforts to share information on activity in the political arena. The Michigan State University Chapter has an exciting program underway that you can learn more about from their web site (accessible from www.sigmaxi.org). We are also working to establish a list server for members interested in science and public policy. Cathy Manduca (cmanduca@carleton.edu) will head our efforts on K-12 education outreach. The current plan is to develop a place on the regional web page for sharing information and establish a list server for members interested in outreach.

Cooperation on subregional issues was envisioned by the assembly as naturally arising if good communications existed between chapters. We hope that the web pages and list-servers will help to improve communication. Tom Kvale (University of Toledo Chapter) is taking the initative for planning and hosting a forum on the Great Lakes Initiative to inform members in the region and encourage cooperation on issues related to the Great Lakes. For more information contact Tom at TJK@physics.utoledo.edu.

Two sub-regional groups already exist and can be used as models for cooperation. The Chicago Area SX Chapters have a group CASX that meets annually and hosts an environmental conference in the area. The Michigan chapters have organized as part of an effort to educate state and federal legislators about science relevant to policy decisions. More information is available at the SX web site or from Peter Lykos (lykos@charlie.cns.iit.edu) and Loran Bieber respectively.

Finally, we would like to use our web pages to share information about speakers and awards. If you would like to contribute to this information please e-mail Cathy Manduca (cmanduca@carleton.edu). Information on speakers should be in this format: Name, Institution, Topic, Contact Information. You need to make sure that the speaker is willing to have their name posted before you submit the information. If your chapter is making one or more awards this year, please send the information in the format: Award Title, Chapter Name, Awardee Name, Awardee Institution, Description of Work or Citation if desired.

Please let us know if you have questions, suggestions or ideas. We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours in zealous research,

Cathy Manduca, Kelly Williams, and Loran Bieber
Regional Directors