Every 5 years the NMISC is required to contemplate revisions to the NMISTC constitution. The purpose is to “evaluate the effectiveness of this Constitution and Bylaws, to study the rules of governance required by the activities of the Committee at that time, and to consider writing a new Constitution and Bylaws appropriate to the existing and anticipated needs of the NMISC.” Last year I chaired a committee to do this, and am happy to say that the committee did not feel that major changes were necessary. There were, however, a few “housekeeping” changes that were desired in order to simplify the Constitution and to improve the operation of the NMISC. We therefore created a revised NMISTC Constitution that has been approved by the NMISC and the NPSS AdCom, and will go into effect unless 20 NPSS members send objections to the NMISC Chairperson (Ron Jaszczak, rjj@dec3.mc.duke.edu) within 90 days of the mailing date of this Newsletter. While the entire (revised) Constitution is printed below, I suspect that some of you may prefer the executive summary, so I list the more “major” changes below.

• Made the NMISC Vice-Chairperson position a two year position (it previously was a one year position). As the Vice-Chairperson is Chairperson-elect, this change lengthens the training period for the person who will become Chairperson. The succession is now two years as Vice-Chairperson, two years as Chairperson, and two years as Most Recent Chairperson.
• Added the Chairperson of the RISC to the list of ex-officio members of the NMISC. This is a reciprocal relationship - the NMISC Chair is already an ex-officio member of the RISC.
• Allowed the Vice-Chairperson or the Most Recent Past Chairman to represent the NMISC at AdCom should the Chairperson be unable to do so. This conforms to IEEE and NPSS rules.
• Changed the procedure for voting for Vice-Chairman, simplifying the nomination procedure and the method for casting ballots.
• Removed the requirement to hold an annual Open Business Meeting.
• Simplified the procedure for removing or replacing NMISC members.
• Removed a bylaw that prohibited a single institution from having more than two members on the NMISC.

Bill Moses chaired the committee that prepared these proposed changes to the NMISTC Constitution and Bylaws. He is also the NPSS Vice President and can be reached at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MS 55-121, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720; Phone +1 510 486-4432; Fax: +1 510 486-4768; E-mail: wwmoses@lbl.gov.