Guidelines for IUVSTA Schools

Last updated 3 March 2002

Purpose/Formal

 The IUVSTA Schools program was established to provide education in a scientific topic within the fields covered by IUVSTA. The school is intended to provide an opportunity for students, particularly those who would not normally have such an opportunity without some support, to attend lectures and discussions with experts in the field. In order to guarantee the financial stability of such a meeting these meetings are supported by a contribution from the IUVSTA STD Discretionary Fund, currently to a maximum of 10,000 Swiss Francs. They are organized by one or more of the Scientific Divisions.


Size, Duration

Schools will typically comprise 40-80 delegates.  They will normally last 4-6 days.


Participation

It is essential that opportunity is also offered for participation from all the member countries of IUVSTA, including those in which science is less well developed than in the scientifically most active countries.  For this reason, it is envisaged that the school will be advertised through the member societies (possibly via the Electoral College members of the organizing Division(s).


Venue/Programme

It is implicit in the school format that all delegates should be together throughout the meeting and should have limited external distractions. Typically this is likely to mean that the venue will be an hotel, hostel, or possibly a University campus with suitable accommodation for students. Access (transport) for international visitors must, of course, also be considered. The dominant part of the program will be single session oral presentations with sufficient time for discussion.


Publication policy

In view of the educational nature of the event, course notes or copies of presentations should be available to the students.


Financial arrangements

Clearly in running a 5-day school, the potentially substantial fixed costs, shared between the small number of participants, can make the delegate cost high, or the financial arrangements potentially unstable, or both. For this reason the IUVSTA funding is intended to cover most of the fixed costs so that delegates will pay little more than marginal costs. In this way the price for students is low, and there are unlikely to be serious financial consequences if the total attendance is slightly lower than anticipated. This is the basic philosophy of the IUVSTA financial sponsorship.

Organizers should also recognize that the IUVSTA financial commitment is limited to the pre-agreed sponsorship level (normally 10,000 Swiss Francs). If there is a financial loss, this is the responsibility of the organizers, and for this reason it may well be appropriate to run the meeting with the support of the local Vacuum Society. Prudent budgeting should ensure that there is normally a surplus, however, and it is expected that this would be returned to the STD Discretionary Fund of IUVSTA to support further events.

Approval/Organisation

The normal procedure for organizing one of the IUVSTA Schools will be:

1. The basic topic, venue and draft program for a school is first developed by one of the Scientific Divisional Committees of IUVSTA (or a collaboration of two or more of them) and presented to the STD for approval at one of the Executive Council Meetings.

2. If approved by the STD and ECM, a fixed level of sponsorship funding will be agreed. This money will be available to the organizers when needed, although some period of notice (e.g. 4-8 weeks) may be needed by the Treasurer due to the fact that only limited funds are held in current accounts.

3. The Division responsible for the organization will ensure that the meeting is publicized within the Union via their complete Electoral College. The Division will establish a web site for the Workshop and inform the Web page editor of the site so that it can be linked to the IUVSTA web page. The organizers will also bring regular progress reports to the STD and their Divisional Committee.

4. The event should be referred to in all publicity as an IUVSTA SCHOOL, the specific topic title following as appropriate. This requirement for IUVSTA to be seen as the primary sponsor should be recognized in any possible attempts to obtain small amounts of additional funding. Major co-sponsorship is not seen as appropriate.

5. After the event, a brief scientific report and a financial statement will be given to the STD, and appropriate balances will be returned to IUVSTA. The event report will be sent in electronic form to the IUVSTA Web page editor for inclusion in the web page. The School web page will be terminated. 
Divisional Committees should note that the statutes under which IUVSTA operates precludes formal financial commitments to be made in one triennium for expenditure in the next.  This means that all of that organization process covering the period from approval of the plan to actually extracting the IUVSTA funds for a school must occur within a single IUVSTA triennium.

Application Form for School:  rtf format  or  pdf format