March Meeting Tutorials Policies & Guidelines

Tutorials fall under the category of “pre-meeting programs” at the March Meeting. Tutorials are ½ day workshops held on the Sunday before the opening of the March Meeting organized by March Meeting Program Chairs. Traditionally, there have been four morning and four afternoon tutorials. They are advertised on the March Meeting website under “Pre-Meeting Programs”.  Each tutorial on the website contains complete information about it, including the day and time, content description and speakers. Tutorial fees are in addition to the March Meeting registration fee, although the same form is used to register for both. Tutorials must be registered for prior to the March Meeting registration deadline. There is no on-site registration for tutorials. This fact is clearly stated both on the March Meeting website, on the registration form, and in several e-mails we send to prospective meeting attendees reminding them of upcoming deadlines.

The Tutorial Program is funded through the March Meeting budget. It is budgeted to breakeven.  The budget includes charges for a-v, refreshments, costs incurred by speakers for handout production, and speaker honoraria.  There is no liability on the part of a tutorial organizer or unit relative to registration revenue or expenses for the tutorial.

Tutorial Chair Responsibilities

It is the responsibility of the Tutorial Chair to receive and evaluate proposals for tutorials, making sure that there is little or no overlap and that the proposal for the tutorial has been well thought out.  Once the tutorial program has been made final, the Tutorial Chair should communicate this to the APS Director of Meetings (baudrau@aps.org) , and designate which tutorials will be held in the morning and which in the afternoon.  This information should be communicated to the tutorial organizers and the APS Meetings Department by September 8, 2008.  For the extensive effort required to organize the tutorial program, the Tutorial Chair will receive complimentary registration and a complimentary hotel room.

Tutorial Organizer Responsibilities

A tutorial organizer (March Meeting unit program chair) should send a proposal for a tutorial to the Tutorial Chair, currently Mark Johnson (mjbooj@anvil.nrl.navy.mil)  by July 25.  The proposal should include the following information (see attached sample):

• title of tutorial
• paragraph describing content and who should attend
• speaker names and full addresses including e-mails, and titles of their talks

You should contact and confirm your tutorial speakers’ participation.  Each tutorial speaker gets a $400 honorarium. This fact should be communicated on initial contact with the speaker. In February prior to the meeting, we send each speaker a W9 form (or W8) that they must complete in order to get a check at the meeting for the $400.  These checks will be held at the APS registration desk for pick-up by the speakers.  When the Tutorial Chair has notified the tutorial organizers of the time of their tutorial, the organizers should notify their tutorial speakers of this.

Handouts for tutorials are the responsibility of each speaker and/or the tutorial organizer.  Enough copies of handouts should be made according to the number of registrants for the tutorial.  The APS Meetings Department can tell you the number of people signed up for your tutorial after the pre-meeting registration deadline in February. If speakers incur costs to produce handouts, APS will reimburse them up to $250 based on receipts submitted to the Meetings Department.

Each tutorial room is provided with an LCD projector, overhead projector, microphone and pointer.

Any special requests for a-v, room set, etc should be communicated to the APS Meetings Department (gaier@aps.org) by January 5.

About two weeks prior to the meeting the APS Meetings Department will send an e-mail to all tutorial registrants informing them of the room assignment for each tutorial, and instructing them to go directly to their assigned room.