March 23, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

On behalf of the faulty, staff, and students at Missouri Western State University, welcome to the 2007 meeting of the Missouri Academy of Science. Western is privileged to host the annual meeting of the Academy here for the second time in ten years. We hope that you will find your meeting both productive and enjoyable.

Since its founding in 1934, the Missouri Academy of Science has worked with clear purpose. That purpose is to promote “the diffusion of scientific spirit” through a diversity of activities. Today, with more than eight hundred members on some forty-nine college and university campuses, the Academy continues in the tradition envisioned by its founders. Missouri is very well served by your commitment to the “scientific spirit.”

At Western, we are similarly committed to the “scientific spirit.” We are especially interested in applied learning - - the application of science to contemporary issues well beyond our campus. Our faculty, staff, and undergraduates work together in research and in the application of its outcomes to economic and other societal needs. Our work is often done in partnership with others in business, industry, government, and the schools. Our commitment is to “the diffusion of the scientific spirit” to assist both the learning process of students and the application of learning to real world needs. Practical application of the “scientific spirit” is, in fact, our overt mission

During your 2007 annual meeting, as members of the Academy, you will carry forward a tradition that is more than seventy years in the making. Western welcomes you and wishes you a meeting imbued with the “scientific spirit” that characterizes the Missouri Academy of Science.

Yours sincerely,

James J. Scanlon
President