As you may have heard, January 2002 will mark the first issue of the new and improved Bulletin (BAMS). Both the structure and content of many sections of BAMS will be changing, including the Chapter News. Our goal is to do as much as possible to highlight the people of AMS, their activities, projects, and interests. Making the Chapter News as appealing as possible is an important part of this goal. Each issue we will select a few of the most interesting submissions to feature prominently. We will condense others to publish as short summaries.

With this in mind, we ask that when submitting chapter news, you use the following guideline:

We request only 1 meeting summary per submission. Because we want the content of the chapter news in BAMS to be as fresh as possible, we are unlikely to publish submissions made about meetings and events more than a month old.

We want the section to feature the "buzz" in your chapter--weather concerns, special projects, community outreach, and educational activities---topics that your local meteorological community is talking about. Please do not include treasurer's reports, business meeting information, chapter elections, or any other routine chapter details with your Bulletin news submission. This information is welcome, however, we ask that it be sent separately.

If available, please provide transcripts of speakers' presentations and/or photographs. Photographs of special ceremonies, tours, projects, events, and awards are welcome. We ask that photographs be in TIFF format if they are sent as an e-mail attachment.

We also suggest that news summaries be reviewed by guest speakers before they are submitted for publication, especially if the discussion was very technical. It is necessary to provide first and last names of officers and speakers (plus their titles) mentioned in news. It is also requested that any acronyms used be defined and that news is complete and easily understandable.

In addition, please include a contact name and phone number. We prefer news to be e-mailed to the manager of marketing/special programs at chapnews@ametsoc.org. Please indicate that the message is chapter news on the subject line of the e-mail. We reserve the right to make stylistic changes in the submission prior to publication.