SUSPENSION OF 2020 CAP LECTURE TOUR TALKS EFFECTIVE SATURDAY 2020 MARCH 14
**Click here for an update***
In monitoring advice from national and regional health authorities, observing precedence set by many public-facing organizations, and considering the health and safety of student, staff, faculty, and our speakers, the CAP Board has decided to formally suspend the remainder of the CAP Lecture Tour for the current academic year, effective after any lectures scheduled to Friday,
March 13.This action is taken in direct response to the current COVID-19 uncertainties and the closure, yesterday, of Laurentian University in response to a confirmed case within their community and the anticipation that this measure may ultimately be taken by other universities across Canada in the upcoming month. Once again, the health and safety of our speakers and the students and faculty who would be attending the lecture are of paramount importance to us.
Depending on how the pandemic plays out, we will consider running the cancelled lectures in the Fall 2020 period.
The 2020 CAP Lecture Tour will feature presentations that span a wide range of current topics in physics. Lectures will take place between January and April 2019 at participating physics departments in Canada.
Organization
A call for speaker nominations was issued in October for submission to the CAP Office by early mid-October. Then, a list of potential speakers is developed. Once the speakers are confirmed, the lecture dates are finalized and posted on the website. To meet the tour’s objective of enhancing the visibility of the CAP and of promoting student memberships, it is essential that all speakers be willing to act as ambassadors for the association. A brief set of slides introducing the CAP and the Lecture Tour sponsors is provided to each speaker for presentation during the introduction to the lecture. Host universities, who must be CAP departmental members to participate in the tour, are requested to promote the lecture as a joint CAP-university sponsored special event.
All tour plans and associated budgets will be developed and managed by the Regional Coordinators. CAP departmental members seeking to host a CAP lecture in 2020 should contact their Regional Coordinator to make arrangements. Ideally, speakers will visit two or three institutions in one trip to keep overall costs at a reasonable level. To ensure that a broad range of speakers can participate in the tour, the maximum number of talks that will be supported for any individual speaker is five.
The planning milestones for the 2020 CAP Lecture Tour are as follows:
2019
- October 5: Call to CAP members for speaker nominations (full name, affiliation, e-mail, short bio, presentation title and abstract required).
- October 30: Deadline for speaker nominations.
- November 26: List of speakers and abstracts available on the Web. Invitation to CAP member departments to view the speaker list and submit the students’ top 3 choices to Regional Coordinators.
- December 6: Deadline for CAP member departments to submit the students’ top 3 choices with available dates and times to Regional Coordinators.
- December 12: Regional Coordinators submit speaker choices and preliminary budget scenarios to CAP office.
- December 13: Meeting of regional coordinators, national coordinator, and CAP office to finalize speaker choices per region.
- December 17: Regional Coordinators send invitations to speakers
2020
- January 8: Deadline for speakers to confirm their participation.
- January 22: Deadline for speakers to finalize their tour schedule and submit same to Regional Coordinators and CAP office.
- February 03: Lecture dates are posted on the website when finalized.
- February 03 – May 1: The CAP Lecture Tour takes place at participating departments.
- May 31: Deadline for speakers to submit all expense claims to the CAP office.