The Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS) is now three years old. Since the early days as an idea in Marilena Longobardi’s mind, we have become quite an active unit within the American Physical Society (APS). Our recruitment activities, sessions at the annual meetings, and participation in various committees and taskforces at the APS have kept the executive busy, but we still recognize we should do more. To achieve more and to distribute the workload more within the FECS community, we propose to increase the size of the executive. You should have received an email asking all FECS members to vote on the approval of new bylaws. These not only put us in compliance with new APS best practices, but also allow us to expand the executive by ~30%. We would split the office of Secretary/Treasurer into two positions. Each position carries a significant amount of responsibility, and we believe that things will run more smoothly if the tasks were divided. We would also be creating a Communications Officer and an International Affairs Officer. The Communications Officer would be charged with improving the electronic communication between members, becoming more active on platforms like Facebook, keeping our official APS website active, and encouraging conversations on the APS messaging board Engage when it is rolled out to all APS members. The FECS has always had a strong emphasis on international activities, often collaborating with the Forum on International Physics. To promote more fellowship between physicists across boarders, we hope a new International Affairs Officer will devote some time to creating new opportunities.

If you are interested in knowing more about FECS, please reach out to any member of the Executive. We always need help with the annual meetings, divisional meetings, and simply getting the word out that we are here to help. If you want to get more involved, consider joining the FECS Executive or contributing to the newsletter or our web presence. Every summer we look for nominations to several positions, and the Past Chair of FECS is always willing to answer questions.