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President's Newsletter
Volume 14 - Number 1 - April 2001

Society Information

2001 Officers of the System Dynamics Society:

President:	Ali Mashayekhi Sharif University of Technology	System Dynamics Review Executive Editor:	Graham W. Winch
President Elect:	James H. Hines, Jr., Massachusetts Institute of Technology and LeapTec	Policy Council: 1999-2001	Jack B. Homer Paul A. Langley Rogelio Oliva Ginny Wiley
Past President:	Jac A. M. Vennix University of Nijmegen	2000-2002	Celine Bak John Barton Jonathan Coyle John Heinboke
Founding President:	Jay W. ForresterMassachusetts Institute of Technology	2001-2003	Carol Frances M. Mojtahedzadeh David Peterson Habib Sedehi
Secretary:	David W. Packer, 2001-2002Systems Thinking Collaborative
Vice Presidents:
Finance: Publications: Chapters: At Large: Meetings:	David F. Andersen, 1999-2001 Eric Wolstenholme, 2000-2002 Nan S. Lux, 1999-2001 Michiya Morita, 2001-2003 Robert L. Eberlein, 2001-2003
Chapter Representatives:	*Australasia, Robert Y. Cavana; China, Qifan Wang; Italy, Carmine Bianchi; Japan, Hironori Kurono; Korea, Myoung Ho Lee; United Kingdom*, Jonathan Coyle

Changes to the Bylaws In September 2000, ballots were sent out to our membership regarding an update to the Society bylaws. We received the required two-thirds of the membership vote to approve the changes. The vote was initiated because over time, some of the statements and practices specified in our bylaws have either changed, or have never been used. The update makes our bylaws current. In summary the bylaws changes include:

Placing the Executive Editor of the System Dynamics Review and Jay Forrester on the Policy Council
Throughout the bylaws, changing the word "subdivision(s)" to "chapter(s)"
"An officer shall serve until the end of the Society's fiscal year coinciding with his/her last year in office . . ." replaces "Officers shall serve until notified . . ."
There shall be an annual election, but not only by mail ballot as it was not current practice
The Policy Council shall meet as a separate body at least twice a year, rather than once each year
Amendments or annulments to bylaws can be voted on at a general business meeting of the Society, by a mail or electronic mail ballot.

" The System Dynamics Society has a domain name and new web address: http://www.systemdynamics.org/ Many thanks to Daniel Aronson for securing the name and to Jack Pugh, Webmaster for getting it up and running. (The old web address http://www.albany.edu/cpr/sds/ still works.) Jack is still hoping for some help with a short annotated bibliography of system dynamics books and publicly available articles introducing system dynamics; brief descriptions of successful system dynamics projects to encourage the novice to try system dynamics; more materials for distance learning; and models/games that can run over the web. Powersim may be contributing a website for managing such models.

The campaign to update the Society web page "Where Can I Study System Dynamics?" has resulted in a great deal of new information on that site. It can be reached at: http://www.systemdynamics.org/courses_in_sd.htm. If you are teaching using system dynamics, and your course description is not here or has not yet been updated, please send in your information as requested on the site. We hope this page will give interested students some idea of where the field of system dynamics can be studied around the world at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

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Roberta L. Spencer, Executive Director
System Dynamics Society
Milne 300 - Rockefeller College
University at Albany – SUNY
Albany, New York 12222 USA
Phone: (518) 442-3865 Fax: (518) 442-3398
e-mail: system.dynamics@albany.edu
http://www.albany.edu/cpr/sds/

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