American Chemical Society’s Class Act: Discounted Student Registration Fee

Attendees examine posters during the SciMix Interdivisional Poster Session at the ACS Fall 2020 National Meeting & Expo. (Loris Guzzetta photo)

This case study is part of Convene‘s April CMP Series story looking at innovations in scientific and medical meetings. 

Students often can barely cover the rent let alone find the thousands of dollars needed to fly to the top annual meeting in their field and pay for hotel, meals, and high registration fees. Yet, those meetings are where they must be to present their research, discover other cutting-edge findings, and make the contacts crucial to advancing their career.

One solution associations offer is discounted rates for students, an approach taken by the American Chemical Society (ACS), whose spring national meeting attendance is comprised of up to 40 percent graduate and undergraduate students, said Robin Preston, CEM, ACS’ director of meeting operations.

For that event, ACS members’ standard full-conference registration fee for 2019 was $590, for graduate students it was pay $245, and the price for undergrads was $125.   “Our meetings attract thousands of chemical students and professionals,” Preston said.

“ACS has such a strong student attendance,” she said, “we wanted to make sure the meeting was affordable enough for them to register, attend, and present their research.” The reduced student fees, she added, did not negatively affect revenues.

ACS also waives registration fees for members who may be currently unemployed “to make sure that the meeting is still accessible” for them to attend.

Cristi Kempf is executive editor of Convene.

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By reading this case study and the others found in the April Convene cover story,  you will be ready to earn one hour of CE credit toward CMP certification from the Events Industry Council. To take an online test to earn that CE credit.