William Armstrong
notwwa@lsu.edu

Following last year's Annual, the Professional Development Committee put together another CE course proposal for this year that was accepted by the SLA Board. The course, entitled, Mathematics, Computer Science, and General Science Reference Fundamentals for Non-Scientists,was held at the Annual meeting in Nashville in June, 2004.

This course was a revised version of one that was offered for the first time in Los Angeles, 2002, but which included Physics and Astronomy along with Mathematics and Computer Science. This proved to be too much information to try and compress into a half-day course however, so we revised the course the following year for 2003 Annual in New York, and omitted Mathematics and Computer Science to focus on Physics and Astronomy. This year, Mathematics and Computer Science were the main focus, providing a review of important print and electronic resources in these fields, as well as tactics on how to answer information requests using such resources.

Instructors for the session were Carol Hutchins, Mathematics; John Dupuis, Computer Science; and Travis Warwick, General Science. In addition, Emily Poworoznek provided our participants with information on PAM's Mentoring Program. Moderator was Bill Armstrong.

Unfortunately, we have seen decreasing numbers of participants over the past few years, likely due to several factors, among them the cost of travel, the cost of the course, and a lack of employer support in attending these sessions. Due to these decreasing numbers coupled with the increasing cost of putting these programs on, the Professional Development Committee will not be creating another CE course for the coming year, but rather will concentrate its efforts on finding new ways to reach our membership with professional development opportunities. This will include finding ways to bring the type of information imparted in our CE courses to our constituency. In this endeavor, we welcome any and all input.