Current News Archive

Nolan Hertel, PhD

As I begin the next 12 months as president of the Health Physics Society (HPS), I look forward to meeting more members than I did on my president-elect tour. President-elect Eric Goldin will follow me as the first two-year president. The two-year term represents a change in our rules that we hope will provide greater continuity for the Society to achieve its mission. Eric will be visiting as many local chapters as he can accommodate. It is a great time for local chapter members to talk informally to the president-elect and I hope chapters will make the most of this opportunity.

Past President Eric Abelquist is to be thanked for changes in the HPS governance structure that he led the charge to accomplish. Among the most significant of those, the two-year presidency aside, is increased responsibility of Board of Directors members for direct oversight of committees, chapters, and sections. There also will be a gradual reduction from nine to six board members. These changes, voted in by Society members, will provide a more efficient and streamlined governance of the HPS. A fair amount of the next year will be first-time implementation of the changes and will probably result in some modification of existing rules to achieve the desired results. I already see that we should look at the sizes of HPS committees to determine if they are optimal for accomplishing the committee's mission.

One of the items we will address in the upcoming months is the fate of the midyear meeting, which has provided challenges over the last few years, particularly in attendance. I am in the process of forming a task force to investigate options to the "traditional" midyear meeting. The task force will be charged with looking at a variety of formats and approaches because the Board feels the need to provide some midyear activity. I am happy to pass on any suggestions or comments to the task force, which I hope to appoint before summer is over. In addition, the task forces on radiation protection needs and HP title protection have been renewed to complete their charges over the next few months.

I believe that the HPS annual meeting in Cleveland was a success, with nearly 1,000 registrants. I was quite impressed with the number of vendors who came as exhibitors. There was a wide spectrum of equipment and services represented in the exhibition hall. We had a great opening plenary session and I heard good reports about the technical sessions.

Among the things to keep in mind for the coming year is that the 2019 HPS Midyear Meeting will be held 17–20 February in San Diego—a good venue for some of our members to get to a warmer climate for a few days while enhancing their technical knowledge. In July, we will have our annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. Now who would not like to bring the family down to Orlando while they earn continuing education credits and expand their professional expertise! I hope to see many of you at each of these meetings.

You might want to watch my short president's message video below since it is, as one of my friends would say, "vintage Nolan." I hope that we will make expanded use of short videos on our website to provide short and compact statements on a variety of things. I can see now that my office webcam is not the best way for me to record such messages, so I will work on that aspect for future messages.

So here is hoping that the HPS has a great next 12 months and each of you will have a great 12 months as well.