Tennessee Valley Chapter

The Tennessee Valley Chapter was formed in 1979, covering members in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. When the new AVS organizational structure was established in 1971, these areas fell within the South Central RAG along with Arkansas and Florida, However, during 1971, the South East RAG was formed to cover Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Chapter Chairs were:

A Brief History of the Tennessee Valley Chapter of the AVS

John Wendelken

The Tennessee Valley Chapter of the American Vacuum Society (TV-AVS) was launched in 1979 following a petition by twelve AVS members located in the Oak Ridge, Tennessee area to the national Board of Directors.  The petition requested that the chapter cover the geographic area of Tennessee, Kentucky, northern Georgia (including Atlanta) and northern Alabama.  The national BOD not only accepted this petition, they expanded the boundaries to include all of Georgia and Alabama with South Carolina thrown in as a bonus. The first organizational meeting was then held on May 9 of that year with Edward Stickle serving as the first chairman. Then the fledgling chapter’s first dinner meeting was held on June 14 with guest speaker Dr. C. B. Duke, the national AVS President.

In the first year and a half, a great deal was accomplished. The first open election occurred in November of 1979 with Ed Stickle returning as president and John Noonan becoming vice president. The Education Committee headed by Jim Johnson conducted the first in an annual series of short course offerings that put the chapter in a financially sound position that exists to this day.  The symposium committee headed by Bob Clausing and Harold Davis then organized the first annual symposium and equipment exhibit, October 28-30, 1980, at the Sheraton West in west Knoxville.  A total of 130 registrants from all five states in the chapter were recorded at the symposium with additional walk in traffic at the equipment exhibit.  Two short courses in vacuum technology conducted during the symposium were very successful and a follow-up short course in vacuum technology presented in November was also at capacity.  The chapter could now boast of 78 members compared to 34 members at the beginning.  Since all this was happening at a time before email, the chapter BOD included a newsletter committee and a telephone committee.

            The 2^nd annual symposium, organized by Doc Emerson and Steve Overbury, occurred October 20-21, 1981, again at the Sheraton West hotel. In 1982, the chapter began the annual awarding of student scholarships to graduate students pursuing research in fields of interest to the AVS.  That first year, $1500 scholarships were awarded to three students from Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, and the U. of Tennessee.  Dinner meetings continued this year with the participant costs pegged at $6 for members, $7 for non-members, and $5 for students.

            The 3^rd annual symposium and equipment exhibit was not held until May 9-11, 1983 in order to separate it further from the national symposium.  It was moved this year to a new venue, the Hilton Hotel in downtown Knoxville and was organized by Jess Simpkins and Bob Langley.  Special sessions on uranium enrichment and fusion technology reflected the local interest in addition to sessions on surface science and vacuum technology, which had become standard by this time.  The student scholarships were reduced to $1000 this year and three awards were made to students at the University of SC, Auburn, and Vanderbilt.  Short courses on vacuum technology were again offered and highly successful with a second short course offering made that year in November.  Also this year, the chapter began annual support for the Southern Appalachian Science and Engineering Fair and amended the chapter bylaws to move the start date for new officers from January 1 to June 30.

The 4^th annual symposium was again held at the Hilton Hotel in Knoxville, May 1-3, 1984 with a repeat performance by the Simpkins-Langley organizing team. By this time, the equipment show was attracting nearly 50 vendors. Free bus service from Oak Ridge and free parking downtown were offered to attract local participants, most of whom were employed in Oak Ridge.  However, there were some complaints that Knoxville was too far from Oak Ridge (25 miles) to encourage walk-in traffic at the show.  As a result, the 5^th annual symposium and equipment show, April 30-May2, 1985, chaired by John Noonan, was moved back to the Sheraton West, a site about 10 miles closer to Oak Ridge.  Also during 1985, the chapter contributed $5,000 to the Peter Mark Memorial Fund to increase the endowment for annual award made by the AVS at the national level.  Dinner meetings during the ‘84-’85 time period reflected a trend to schedule at least one dinner meeting per year on a topic outside the normal AVS agenda, but relevant to the Tennessee Valley, with a talk on aquatic biology as one example.

            In 1986, construction of a new hotel in Oak Ridge, the Garden Plaza, made it possible to move the next symposium to a much more convenient site.  This 6th annual symposium was co organized with a national topical conference on “The Calibration and Application of Mass Spectrometers and Calibrated Leaks” and held April 29-May 1 at the Garden Plaza Hotel and the adjacent Oak Ridge Associated Universities Pollard Auditorium with parallel session. A record attendance of 250 was recorded due to the topical conference and the convenience of the Oak Ridge site.  John Wendelken, George Solomon and Ken Thompson chaired this joint meeting.  Good news came to the chapter this year at the national AVS symposium in Baltimore with the receipt of the Albert Nerken Award by Don Santeler, a well know vacuum expert and former chair of the Tennessee Valley chapter.  A non-technical dinner meeting was held this year with perhaps the most visually stunning presentation on "Caving: An Underground Experience."  The 7th annual symposium on May 12-14, 1987 followed the same pattern as the preceding symposium with topical conferences on “Calibration and Application of Residual Gas Analyzers” and “Surface Modification by Ion Beams,” which were organized by George Solomon and Carl McHargue, respectively.  With the award of student scholarships this year, the roster of scholarship winners for all years now reached the total of 23 with students from a wide selection of schools and disciplines.

            1988 was perhaps the most active year for the TVC-AVS. The 8^th annual AVS symposium and Equipment Exhibit in Oak Ridge on May 3-5, chaired by Ken Thompson, was a return to traditional topics of surface science and vacuum with introduction of plasma technology sessions. Three short courses were offered with the symposium and the usual complement of dinner meetings was held. The big event of the year was the 35^th National AVS Symposium in Atlanta at the Hilton Hotel.  This was the first national symposium in the Southeast and was advertised with a peach symbol.  The Local Arrangements Committee was a joint effort of the Tennessee and Florida chapters headed by John Wendelken with 8 additional members from Oak Ridge, 3 from Atlanta, and 3 from Florida.  John Noonan and Steve Overbury of the Tennessee chapter headed the program committee that year. Working closely with Marion Churchill, a new format for the awards assembly coupled to an evening reception was developed this year.  Despite lack of a local technical base, attendance was up from the previous year and many participants claimed to enjoy the southern hospitality.  Dinner meetings this year included “Scanning tunneling Microscopy: a new view on the atomic world.”

            The following year was a bit slower paced with only dinner meetings and the 9^th annual AVS symposium chaired by Greg Gruzalski. An interesting goal of this year’s symposium was not to make too much money, perhaps even to lose a little.  Vendors were turned away due to insufficient space and three short courses in vacuum technology were offered and well attended.   An extra short course was offered in November to accommodate those who could not attend during the symposium.  Dinner meetings this year included two presentations relating directly to the space program: “Space Vacuum Epitaxy” by Alex Ignatiev of the University of Houston and “Processing of Extraterrestrial Materials", by Tom Meek of the University of Tennessee.  The financial situation of the chapter at the end of its first decade was very strong with a substantial reserve despite the relatively small size of the chapter.  The primary reason for this was the continuing success of short courses, primarily in vacuum technology, with most students coming from the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant and a few others coming from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a few smaller local industries.  Less significant revenue came from vendor advertising in the chapter newsletter and from the symposia.

            On June 3 of 1990, a meeting of the national AVS Board of Directors was held in Oak Ridge prior to the 10^th annual TVC-AVS symposium.  Pre-meeting extracurricular activities have not been forgotten by the participants. To give the board members a flavor of the local area, they were invited to stay the preceding night at the historic Fryemont Inn in Bryson City, NC with a subsequent rafting trip down the Nantahala River.  The fog and rain only added to the local ambience.  The local symposium was a new experiment this year with a joint meeting between the TVC-AVS and the local chapter of ASM International. The symposium titled “Modern Analysis Techniques in Materials Science” was structured as a two-day event with an additional two days for short courses with AVS chairs, Deborah Huntley, John Noonan, and Jim Williams.  Three student awards were granted.  Perhaps the most unusually titled dinner talk was presented this year by Sam Venable, a local columnist, on “Tales your mother Told You But Threatened to Wash Your Mouth Out If you Repeated Them”.

Over the next two years, the annual symposium and equipment exhibit was scaled back. The 11^th annual symposium, May 15-16, 1991, utilized only two days for talks with two short courses conducted over a period of 3 days.  By this year, the symposium banquet ceased being a sit down dinner and instead became a vendor sponsored buffet event adjacent to the exhibit hall.  Lee Berry and Tony Haynes were the co-organizers for this symposium and equipment exhibit titled  “Innovative Technologies for Processing and Characterization”.   In 1992, the annual symposium on June 8-10 consisted of an equipment show and short course only with no technical sessions.  Other highlights these two years included dinner talks on “The Human Genome Project” and “Winemaking in the Tennessee Valley,” as well as a complement of more traditional AVS topics such as “ The Superconducting Super Collider: the accelerator and its detectors”.   In 1991, the chapter began the annual sponsorship of a high school science teacher to attend the AVS National Symposium.  The first teacher chosen to attend the meeting that year in Seattle was Jane Nall from Atmore, Alabama, and the second teacher in 1992 was Charles Lee from Dover, TN.  Four student awards of $1000 were made in 1991, while in 1992, the award level was raised to $1500 again with three awards made.  By 1992, the chapter dinner prices were adjusted down to $5 for AVS members as well as students and $15 for non-members.

            In the following two years, Harry Meyer, a new arrival to the Tennessee Valley, chaired two consecutive annual symposia.   The 13^th annual symposium, June 9-10, 1993 was titled “Advanced Materials:  Processing and Characterization”, and included a 1- day exhibit, two days of technical sessions, and short courses on vacuum technology and scanning probe microscopy. The 14^th Annual Symposium and Equipment Exhibit, May 9-12, 1994, was titled “Innovative Technologies for Materials Processing and Analysis”. Attendance of these symposia was down from previous years, a consequence of the closing of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the beginning of a period of downsizing of the Y-12 plant and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Other highlights during the 1993-1994 period included a dinner talk by Fred Dylla, AVS president, on the historical roots of plasma physics and the beginning of a series of joint dinner meetings with the East Tennessee section of the MRS (ET-MRS).  A dinner talk on the Advanced Neutron Source in 1994 preceded the cancellation of that project that was later replace by the more successful Spallation Neutron Source.   Four student scholarships were awarded in 1993 and four more in 1994, the last year of the student scholarship program.  Also, in 1993, the 40^th National AVS Symposium was held in Orlando.  The Florida chapter was in charge of local arrangements, but in return for the great support from the Florida chapter during the 35^th symposium, John Wendelken joined the Florida crew as food chairman.

            A period of joint meetings with other organizations occurred in 1995 and 1996.  The 15^th annual TVC-AVS symposium was held in conjunction with the 18th DOE Surface Science Conference in Oak Ridge on May 10-11 of 1995.  In that same year, a joint dinner meeting was held with the ET-MRS with a talk on Project Sapphire, a previously secret project to remove weapons grade uranium from a part of the former Soviet Union and to deliver it to Oak Ridge.  In 1996, the 16^th Annual symposium and Equipment Exhibit,  “Engineering of new Materials and Interfaces” was held as a one day meeting on May 21.  This was a joint meeting of the TVC-AVS and the ET-MRS and was moved out of Oak Ridge back to the Holiday Inn (formerly Sheraton West) in west Knoxville.  Another joint dinner meeting with MRS occurred with a talk on the geology of the Appalachian Mountains.  In 1995, the chapter’s educational outreach program put its focus on secondary education.  In addition the selection of a high school science teacher to attend the national symposium, five schools spread over Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina were selected to receive $1000 equipment grants.  In 1996, four additional schools in Tennessee were selected for this program. The first chapter web site was also developed in 1996 and the dinner prices, after a period of fluctuation, settled at $10 for members and non-members, and $5 for students.

            The 17^th and 18^th annual symposia on May 22, 1997 and May 21, 1998, respectively, were the last two symposia organized by the chapter.  Their respective themes were “Optoelectronic Materials” and  “Applications of Neutron Science:  A Tutorial for the Non Specialist.” Both were held at the Holiday Inn in West Knoxville and were organized by David Beach.  Short courses were not held these years, a recognition of the marked decline in the base of prospective students in the region.  A highlight of the dinner meetings in these years was a talk by Len Feldman on “The Silicon Age” in 1997.

            In the years since 1998, no symposia or short courses have been held and the primary chapter activity has been dinner meetings.  In the 2000-2002 time period, talks have been presented on medical imaging using positron emission tomography, the free electron laser at Vanderbilt, the effect of human exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, the compact stellarator fusion reactor in Oak Ridge, the Spallation Neutron Source vacuum system, cleanup activities at the former K-25 gaseous diffusion plant, and atmospheric physics and chemistry.  Through this time, the chapter has continued to sponsor travel for a high school science teacher to attend the national symposium and other special events.  In 2000, the chapter sponsored a special seminar at the University of Tennessee by Charlie Duke on the science of xerography and in 2002, support was provided to the Surface Analysis ‘02 Conference held at Vanderbilt and organized by TVC board member Bridget Rodgers.  In 2001, a local AVS member again received a major AVS award when Ward Plummer was selected as the 2001 Welch Award winner.   

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