Hosted by East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN.
Conference Location: The Millennium Centre, Johnson City, TN.
Conference Hotel: The Carnegie Hotel, Johnson City, TN.

Conference Topics:
Star formation triggering mechanisms; star formation thresholds; age-dating of stellar populations; star cluster formation and destruction processes; ring galaxies; tidal dwarf galaxies; including both numerical modeling and multi-wavelength observations.

Pre-Registration:
The meeting is still a year away, however, we are already starting to collect the names of people tentatively interested in attending. If you are considering attending this meeting and would like to be included in future mailing lists, please send your name to Bev Smith at smithbj@etsu.edu. If you have a tentative talk/poster title, please also include that in your email, along with a note stating whether you would prefer to give a talk or a poster, if you have a preference.

Meeting Organization:
There will be three types of presentations at this meeting: Keynote Speakers, Oral Presentations, and Poster Presentations. The Keynote Speakers will have 30 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions. Oral Presentation Speakers will be allotted 15 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions. Posters will be available to the meeting attendees throughout the entire meeting. The Proceedings will be published (likely with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series publishers).

Other Information:
Johnson City is in the extreme northeast region of Tennessee, nestled in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Two other cities neighbor Johnson City, Bristol and Kingsport, which gives this area the name of "The TriCities". These cities are serviced by the TriCity, Tennessee (TRI) regional airport. Weather in July is typically sunny with highs in the low- to mid-80s and lows in the mid-60s. ETSU is primarily an undergraduate institution with an adjacent medical school. The total student population is approximately 13,000 students.

There will be an optional excursion to the Gray Fossil Site and Museum on Wednesday July 22, from 3-6 PM. This very rich fossil site, which covers 4-5 acres in nearby Gray, Tennessee, was discovered in May 2000 during road construction. It has been dated to between 4.5 and 7 million years old (late Miocene - early Pliocene). Species found so far at this site include a new species of red panda, a new species of weasel, the rhino Teleoceras, the short-faced bear Plionarctos, ground sloths, and many others.

This will be the fourth in a series of astronomical conferences hosted by ETSU, following "The Nature and Evolution of Disks Around Hot Stars" (Summer 2004), "Probing the Distant Universe with Gravitational Waves" (Fall 2005), and "The Biggest, Baddest, Coolest Stars Conference" (Summer 2007).

Scientific Organizing Committee:
Committee Chair: Bev Smith (ETSU) [smithbj@etsu.edu]
Nate Bastian (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University) [bastian@ast.cam.ac.uk]
Debra Elmegreen (Vassar College) [elmegreen@vassar.edu]
Sarah & Jim Higdon (Georgia Southern) [shigdon/jhigdon@georgiasouthern.edu]
Curt Struck (Iowa State University) [curt@iastate.edu]

Local Organizing Committee:
Committee Chair: Bev Smith [smithbj@etsu.edu]
Mark Giroux [girouxm@etsu.edu]
Gary Henson [hensong@etsu.edu]
Rico Ignace [ignace@etsu.edu]
Don Luttermoser [lutter@etsu.edu]

For more information about this meeting, contact Bev Smith at smithbj@etsu.edu.

Last updated 21 May 2008 by B. J. Smith