•The last Board meeting of the year will take place in Washington, DC, on December 4-7.

•SWRM 2014 will be held in Fort Worth, TX on November 19-22. Looking forward to seeing ACS members there!

•CERM 2014 was held in Pittsburgh on Octover 29-November 1. I enjoyed presenting Amanda C Bryant-Friedrich with the Stanley C. Israel Regional Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences, introducing Plenary Speaker Sara Skrabalak, and meeting ACS members! I also had the opportunity to discuss our OXIDE work during the Diversity Symposium organized by Kay Brummond, R. Robinson and Michelle Ward.

•SERMACS 2014 was held in Nashville on October 16-19. I enjoyed introducing the band at the Thursday night banquet, hosting the Ice Cream Social, and meeting ACS members!

•District IV Caucus slides available here: 14_08-DivisionalCaucus.pdf

•Find me at the following events in the ACS Fall 2014 National Meting in San Francisco, CA:

★Open Board Meeting at the Gateway Ballroom in the South Building of the Moscone Center from noon to 1:00PM on Sunday, August 10th.

★District IV Caucus on Sunday, August 10th, at 6:00PM in Union Square 5 & 6 of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel

★CMA Symposium on “Advancing the Chemical Sciences Through Diversity in Participation” all-day symposium from 8:30AM to 5:00PM on Tuesday, August 12, with a break for lunch. Union Square 15/16 in the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel

★My lecture on “OXIDE: Changing academic chemistry culture from within” at 2:00PM within the CMA symposium.

•Check out my July 14th Comment in C&EN on “Advancing The Chemical Sciences Through Diversity” on page 45.

•The next Board meeting will take place on August 8-10, just before the Spring ACS Meeting in San Francisco, CA. (For more information on the National Meeting to take place from August 10 to 14, 2014, go to the ACS meeting website.)

•ACS Board Meeting held June 5-7 in Baltimore, MD.

•Check out my March 24th Comment in C&EN on “Mentoring New Faculty—It Really Works!” and John Schwab’s letter to the editor on May 19th reiterating the “Importance of Mentoring.”

•District IV Caucus slides available here: 14_03-DivisionalCaucus.pdf

•At the Dallas Meeting, I was honored to receive the 2014 ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences “for encouraging and mentoring hundreds of undergraduate Latinos, leadership in creating policy and programs promoting diversity, and being a role model through his scientific achievements.” I am thankful to all the mentors that have helped me be in a position to give back.

•Find me at the following events in the ACS Spring 2014 National Meeting in Dallas, Texas:

★District IV Caucus will be held on Sunday, March 16th, at 6:00PM in Houston Ballroom B of the Sheraton Dallas Hotel.

★Keynote lecture on “Lost in Projection” at the CMA Luncheon on Monday, March 17th, 11:30AM to 1:30PM in the Dallas Ballroom A1 of the Sheraton Dallas Hotel

★My lecture on “Optimizing the Sampling of Nonequilibrium Trajectories and Careers” at the PHYS Awards Symposium on Tuesday, March 18th, 2:15PM-2:55PM, in Room C155 of the Dallas Convention Center.

•The next Board meeting will take place just before the Spring ACS Meeting in Dallas, TX. (For more information on the March 16-20, go to the ACS meeting website.)

•The ACS Press Release announcing my appointment as District IV Director is available here.

•2013 Campaign Announcements.

•I was quoted in the December 1, 2014 issue, volume 92, pp. 32-33 of C&EN in an article on “Cultivating A Diverse Leadership At A Member Organization.”:

Hernandez, who serves as District IV director and is the second Hispanic to serve on the ACS Board of Directors, recalls that shortly after he started as an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Tom Netzel of the ACS Georgia Section asked him to run for chair of the section. Until then, he had little knowledge about what the local section did. “Why did I agree when I was asked to do something that seemed so daunting? The answer was that I felt that it was important to contribute back to the society,” he says. “Through being a local section leader, I started to learn about what one could do in the section, and a few years later, I was asked to run for councilor. I ended up being a councilor for 10 years.

“Being on council puts you in a position to start seeing national governance and to serve on committees, and through serving on committees, you start to have a sense of what ACS does more broadly,” Hernandez says. “It’s a time commitment, but I feel that I have a voice that can help the society, and it’s exciting to be part of that change.”