American Ceramic Society Bulletin

4
news & trends
those, in eight subjects, including chemistry,
materials science, mathematics,
engineering, computer science, environment
and ecology, earth science and
physics, CAS was ranked in the top five.”
However, Qiu says CAS leaders
are raising the bar. “But the report
acknowledges that there is substantial
room for improvement. For example,
CAS researchers should aim to become
leaders of the international scientific
community, and shift their focus away
from generating as many papers as possible
and toward genuine originality
and innovation,” she reports.
CAS currently has 50,000 employees,
12 branch officers and 103 affiliated
institutes, labs and engineering research
centers.
In regard to revenues generated by
CAS-related companies, president
Yongxiang Lu reports that income was
more than 170 billion RMB (about $26
billion) in 2010. This represents approximately
a 20-fold increase since 2000.
According to the Xinhua news service,
“The CAS deputy president, Bai
Chunli, said 2011 would serve as a pilot
and start-up period for the program,
while breakthroughs in strategically
important scientific fields, such as energy,
health, environment and advanced
materials, were expected in the following
years.”
Qualitatively improving the national
research–development–demonstration–
deployment conveyor belt is a goal
shared by many countries, including
the United States. However, making
these improvements requires significant
and politically difficult strategic decisions
about shaking up the status quo in
regard to funding, infrastructure, status
and accountability. There is no guarantee
that China will succeed, for the
same reasons.
But China is riding on a lot of
momentum from the 1998–2010 period.
CAS has laid out its goals clearly, so it
will be interesting to watch.
Along these lines, it is worth noting
that China will hold its first
International Refractory Production
and Application Conference May
10–12, 2011, in Guangzhou. The conference
is being held in association
with China’s Iron & Steel Association,
Nonferrous Industry Association,
Association of Refractories Industry
and the Metallurgical Council of the
China Council for the Promotion of
International Trade. Aside from applications,
such as blast furnaces, continuous
casters and high-power electric-arc
furnaces, organizers of the conference
say they intend also to cover refractories
for nonferrous metals, cement,
glass and ceramic industries, plus green,
monolithic, low-carbon and noncarbon
refractories.
Visit: Chinese Academy of Sciences
http://english.cas.cn. n
Alfred U. to target leadership
development with new
E-LEAD scholarships for
engineering students
Using $570,000 in NSF seed money,
Alfred University’s Inamori School of
Engineering and the school’s Division
of Student Affairs are launching an
innovative leadership program for engineering
students. The program, called
Engineering Leadership Education and
Development, will begin as a five-year
program to identify and work with a
Alfred University High-Temp Lab.
group of 16 students at the university,
plus help attract high-school-aged
females to the field of engineering.
Doreen Edwards, dean of AU’s engineering
school, explains E-LEAD by
noting that leadership and teamwork
skills are needed for a successful engineering
career. She says, “We hope to
teach students that leadership occurs
at all levels within an organization and
that they can apply their leadership
skills during their very first job as new
engineers. We are particularly interested
in developing leadership around
issues related to gender in the science
and engineering fields.”
The leadership program Edwards and
others are crafting at AU will be based
on what is known as the Social Change
Model. Julia Overton-Healy, director
of the Women’s Leadership Center,
explains that SCM “assumes that there
are core values held within ethical leadership,
and taken together, create change
for the common good. Leadership, then,
is not positional: It becomes a shared
endeavor of committed persons working
toward a common goal.”
Overton-Healy says scholars selected
for E-LEAD will learn specific leadership
skills. Moreover, she notes, the
scholars will be helped in three strategic
areas: identifying their core strengths,
aptitudes and values; understanding
how their experiences, privileges and
American Ceramic Society Bulletin, Vol. 90, No. 4
(Credit: Rick McLay; Alfred Univ.)