Dear Fellow TMS Members:

As a materials professional and long-time TMS member, I feel especially sensitive to the profound concerns that the materials community shares as we navigate personally and professionally through our current worldwide economic uncertainty. As the executive director of the society that strives to be the materials professional’s partner for career advancement, and with the encouragement of the TMS volunteer leadership, I have asked myself, “What can TMS do to help?”

Here are some things already in place or underway:

The TMS Career Center provides an excellent online resource for job seekers in the materials community—both in presenting current job openings as soon as they are announced and in connecting TMS members with potential employers via a resume bank. You can access this site at http://careercenter.tms.org.

For the TMS 2009 Annual Meeting & Exhibition, we are assembling the TMS Employer Pavilion in the exhibition hall where job seekers can talk with representatives of a variety of companies, universities and national laboratories. Also at the meeting, a job board will be featured, and information about the TMS Career Center will be on hand for professional and student attendees. The meeting will be held during February in San Francisco. You can learn more about the meeting and register at http://www.tms.org/meetings/annual-09/AM09home.aspx.

Our Members-Only web site has a robust membership directory with a variety of search tools to help you find colleagues (and their advice) worldwide by technical interest, employer, region, and more. Members can also use the Committee Home Pages to find contact details and listservs for the members of our myriad technical committees—comprising people with like interests and who are working in the same industries as you. This is an essential place to start or expand your personal network. Start your search of both at http://members.tms.org.

Taking a longer range perspective, TMS has just joined a multi-society study being conducted by the massive trade association for associations, ASAE and The Center, to research how the economy is affecting our members. (Many TMS members will be surveyed as part of the research.) With these results, we will spend early 2009 further developing targeted tactics to support you as the economic challenges unfold.

Also, I have charged our staff with compiling general resources and conceptualizing other ways in which we can address issues that are especially relevant now, such as financial planning and management as well as enhancing job skills and security. These resources and services will be made put in place in the coming weeks, and I will be sending a follow up message when they are available.

What else can we do to assist you? What other resources should we bring to bear? I am eager to hear how TMS can help. Please e-mail me at whunt@tms.org.

Can we weather this storm? Absolutely. We are scientists. We are engineers. We are materials professionals. We adapt. We find solutions to problems.

We are a community….we are TMS.

Regards,
Warren Hunt
TMS Executive Director