Over 110 persons registered for the Rio Grande Branch ASM Annual Meeting, held at the
New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces, NM on February 27-28, 2009.
We warmly welcomed 25 students and faculty from FAZ-UJED in Mexico, who drove
800 miles in a bus to attend this meeting. Twelve members attended the ASM Branch
business meeting on February 28, 2009.
Our enthusiastic thanks go to our invited ASM Speaker Dr. Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY. He gave a provocative
impromptu talk at our Friday evening banquet, “Thoughts on antibiotic therapy, breast
cancer, and asthma”. His keynote address “New insights into the origin of virulence”
was one of the best ever heard at our Annual Meetings.
We are grateful to Dr. Geof Smith for organizing this meeting in Las Cruces and for all the student moderators and helpers for this event. We are also grateful to the four faculty members who judged the student presentations. They were Dr. Tom Kieft (NMT), Dr. John Gustafson (NMSU), Dr. Geof Smith (NMSU), and Dr. Adrian Unc (NMSU).
The winners of the $100 cash award prizes for student presentations were:
Undergraduate Poster: Amparo Hernandez (UTEP)
“Oleate Desaturase as DNA Vaccine for Chaga’s Disease”
Undergraduate Poster: Leonardo Estrada (UTEP)
“Comparative in vitro Assessment of Chronic and Acute Carbon Nanoparticle Exposure
on Macrophage Function”
Graduate Poster: Christine Delgado (UTEP)
“The Effect of Leptin on Murine Bone Marrow Derived DC Morphology and Function
in vitro”
Graduate Poster: Kalli Lambeth (NMSU)
“Competition is Asymmetric between Dengue Virus Serotypes but not Ecotypes
during Coinfection in vivo”
Graduate Oral: Jose Garcia-Rivera (UTEP)
“Evaluating the Role of Evolutionarily Conserved Regions of Ledgf/P75 in HIV-1 Infection”
Graduate Oral: Jasmine Pando (NMSU)
“The Staphylococcus aureus Etanol Stimulon”
All of the winners also were awarded ASM student memberships.
Congratulations to ALL of the students for their fine work in making oral and
poster presentations.
BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA
- Determination of Quorum
It was determined that however many members attend the business
meeting IS a quorum.
- Approval of Minutes from last year
- Treasurer’s Report
The Treasurer reported that at the end of 2009, the Branch held a
balance of $4415.45. After expenses for the 2009 annual meeting were
paid, we have $2181.45.
- President’s Report
Steve Aley addressed the following questions of Successes and Challenges:
- What does SUCCESS look like?
- Participation
- Annual meeting?
- Presentations (Students!) at Annual Meeting
- Members also ASM National?
- Institutions at Annual Meeting
- Outreach
- Student Chapters at Institutions
- Science Fair
- K-12 Teacher Education
- Where do we stand regarding SUCCESS?
- Participation
- Annual meeting is strong
- Range and number of presentations are excellent (especially students!)
- ASM sponsored speaker – always
- National ASM members meet the required number of 25 for voting
purposes
- Mixed reviews for participating institutions: traditionally strong
representation from some, weaker than expected from some and
missing from the table entirely by others. There have been excellent
additions from institutions in Mexico.
- Outreach
- We only have 1 Student Chapter (at UTEP).
- We used to support Science Fairs, but have not done so in several years.
- We support no teacher education at all.
- What can we do about the CHALLENGES we are facing?
- Is there a low turnout from your institution?
- Are there “missing” institutions near you?
- Are there “new” opportunities for membership, eg the clinical sciences?
- Could there be a Student Chapter at your institution?
- Can we become re-involved in supporting Science Fairs?
- Can there be involvement/support at the high school level?
- Business
- Election of Officers
President: Steve Young
President-Elect: Rosa Maldonado (UTEP)
Secretary Treasurer-Elect: Geof Smith (NMSU)
Councilor: Karen Little (Sul Ross)
Webmaster: still to be determined. We have $100 allotted from
our National funding to reimburse a student or web-geek
to maintain our site www.asm.org/branch/brrio
- Location and Host for next meeting
We took into consideration the traditional approach (of northern institutions
alternating with southern institutions) versus the practical approach
(where the southern institutions are the epicenter of student and faculty participation).
We decided that we would maintain the momentum of the southern institutions
and hold the next annual meeting in El Paso at either UTEP or EPCC.
- Answers to Challenges
Unfortunately, there were no answers forthcoming for the challenges defined earlier.
As RGASM members, each of us can and should make a commitment to improve
the Branch in whatever ways we can.
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