Announcements

Members of the North Central Branch giving oral presentations at the meeting in Louisville

PLEASE NOTE:

Due to technical restrictions, we are unable to accept PowerPoint presentations created in Office 2007 (.PPTX) format.

Please create and save your presentations as an Office 2003 (.PPT) file.

If you create your presentation as a PowerPoint 2007 file, it will NOT render properly on our presentation laptops.

If you have questions about the format of your presentation, please contact Ms. Hannah Draper-Burnett (hdburnett@uky.edu)

John J. Obrycki
President
ESA North Central Branch

February 2010 Message from John Obrycki

Members of the North Central Branch:
Our meeting in Louisville begins in 20 days. The final preparations for the meeting are underway. By the end of this week — the draft of the meeting program will be available on-line at the meeting website. Eight, very interesting, symposia have been organized for this meeting:

Over 30 student competition papers have been submitted, along with 23 student poster presentations. Another 50 submitted posters and presentations round out the scientific program.

A student lunch supported by our corporate sponsors will allow our students to hear about employment opportunities.

Don't miss out on meeting pre-registration - -which is available until February 28, 2010. The block of rooms held for the NCB meeting at the Brown Hotel will also be available until February 28.

Leave the cold and snow of the upper Midwest, For the Louisville NCB meeting spring fest...

John J. Obrycki
President
ESA North Central Branch

Message from John Obrycki

Members of the North Central Branch:
Our annual north central branch meeting starts in 68 days (March 14). I hope you will attend and participate in this meeting. You still have time to organize a symposium. For more information contact the program co-chairs (Drs. Janet Lensing (janet.lensing@uky.edu) and Susan Romero (susan.romero@uky.edu).

The meeting will be held at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, KY. Information about the Brown Hotel can be found at by clicking here.

To make your hotel reservation - please click here.

The NCB meeting rate is $119 plus tax per night for single OR double occupancy with a $15 additional charge above double occupancy. Reservations are guaranteed if made by 5:00PM, February 20, 2010, and then on a space-available basis until the conference date. Amenities at the Brown Hotel include complimentary high-speed wireless internet and van shuttle service to the Louisville International Airport.

To register for the meeting, please click here. Pre-registration is available until February 28, 2010.

Please visit our NCB meeting website for meeting updates.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee Don't miss out on the Louisville NCB

John J. Obrycki
President
ESA North Central Branch

2010 North Central Branch Meeting

Mark your calendars for the 2010 NCB Branch meeting at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, KY from March 14-17, 2010.

2009 NCB Insect Photo Salon Catalog

The 2009 NBC Insect Photo Salon Catalog including winning images, entrants and judges is now available online at "Photo Salon Winners" under the "Awards" tab. The direct link is: www.esancb.org/awards/photo_salon.php.

Message from Steve Yaninek

Dear ESA North Central Branch Members:
This will be my last message to members of the branch. My term as president comes to an end next week at the annual meeting where I'll pass the gavel to John Obrycki. It has been my honor to serve the members, and my privilege to work with the dedicated leadership provided by our hard working officers, committee chairs and members.

We're about to complete the cycle of branch activities with the annual meeting next week in St. Louis. We have a great meeting planned thanks to our Program co-chairs Tom Coudron and Holly Popham, and our Local Arrangements Chair Bruce Babbitt. Members have responded by exceeding our early registration goals. More information about the meeting will follow below, but first some important news about branch elections.

Election Results
The NCB elections results are in, and I am pleased to announce that the next President-Elect is Rick Foster, and the new Member-at-Large on the Executive Committee is Tiffany Heng-Moss. Congratulations to Rick and Tiffany!

Program Updates
The branch meeting is next week, and we now have the final program posted on the web here. If you need to upload a presentation or plan to present a poster, please review the equipment specifications and guidelines outlined in the program and presented at the bottom of this message for your convenience. For additional information about the meeting go to our website here.

Meeting Volunteers
The Local Arrangement Committee could still use a handful of volunteers to help with registration, the AV preview room, and symposia session support. If you're willing to contribute a couple of hours of your time, please contact Bruce Barrett ( BarrettB@missouri.edu ) our Local Arrangements Chairman.

Important Meeting Contacts
Program Co-Chairs: Tom Coudron ( Tom.Coudron@ars.usda.gov ) and
Holly Popham ( Holly.Popham@ars.usda.gov )
Local Arrangements: Bruce Barrett ( BarrettB@missouri.edu )
Linnaean Games: Wyatt Hoback, Linnaean Game Master ( hobackww@unk.edu ),
Susan Weller, Linnaean Game committee, chair ( welle008@umn.edu ).
See you St Louey,
Steve Yaninek
2008-09 ESA NCB President

Member Survey

Following the recent branch meeting in Columbus, the NCB Executive Committee conducted a survey of members to learn what might be done to improve the meeting in the future. The survey was designed to provide useful information about the demographics of our membership (years in ESA, years in NCB, category, home state), meeting attendance, appropriateness of meeting topics including structured and unstructured social time, reasons for attending or not attending, costs, and suggestions for future meetings including the role of the meeting as a venue for recruiting future students. The results of the survey are now in (see link below). This information will be used to plan the meeting next year, and should help with future planning. We are indebt to member Jim Jasinski for developing the SurveyMonkey tool used for this survey.

Survey Results