In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the development of the laser, the CAP Lecture Tour in 2010 will include a number of talks in the area of lasers and modern optics. Lectures will take place between January and April, 2010 at participating physics departments in Canada. The CAP is is encouraging joint sponsorship of the 2010 lecture tour with Canadian industrial and government partners to enable this celebration to reach as many undergraduate physics students as possible.  We specifically acknowledge and thank the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovation (CIPI), Coherent Inc., Optech Inc., TomoTherapy, the Atlantic Provinces Council on the Sciences (APICS), and the CAP's physics department members for their support of the 2010 lecture tour.

A call for speaker nominations was issued in September, 2009, with a deadline of Oct. 16 for submission to the CAP Office. 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, the Lecture Tour sponsors, and LaserFest, are provided to each speaker for presentation during the introduction to the lecture. Host universities are requested to promote the lecture as a joint CAP-university sponsored special event.

The speakers for the 2010 tour are now all confirmed, and the lecture dates are being finalized and will be updated on the attached schedule.

Organization and Deadlines

All tour plans and associated budgets will be developed and managed by the Regional Coordinators. Departments seeking to host a CAP Lecture in 2010 should contact their Regional Coordinator to make arrangements, and must be departmental members of the CAP in order to participate. Ideally, speakers will visit 2-3 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 5.

The planning milestones for the 2010 CAP Lecture Tour are as follows:

• November 6, 2009 -- Detailed planning begins for the 2010 CAP Lecture tour. Announcements are sent by the CAP office inviting CAP member departments to view the speaker choices for the 2010 Lecture tour. Regional Coordinators follow up to determine the students' preferred speaker choices (top 3) at each institution and available times for the lecture to take place. This information must be communicated to the Regional Coordinators no later than November 20; plans will be finalized no later than November 30.
   
• November 30, 2009 -- Regional Coordinators submit final tour schedules and budget plans to the National Coordinator and the CAP Office.
   
• December 15, 2009 -- The CAP Office contacts each of the lecturers, confirms their lecture schedule, and provides them with a set of powerpoint slides about the CAP to be shown at the introduction of their talk. Speakers will be invited to publish their talks as articles for a future issue of Physics in Canada, and will receive a copy of the Instructions to Authors, established by the PiC Editorial Board.
   
• January 4 - April 30, 2010 -- The CAP Lecture Tour takes place at participating departments.
   
• May 31, 2010 -- Deadline for finalizing all expense claims with the CAP office.

Finances and Expense Claims

All tour plans and expenses must be pre-approved and managed by the lecture tour Regional Coordinators. The costs to bring a speaker from his / her home institution to the location of the talk will be eligible for reimbursement by CAP, against receipts; the host department must cover all local expenses. The CAP will support one speaker at each participating institution, according to these guidelines.

The maximum travel reimbursement from CAP to any speaker will be $500 per institution visited, while the total cost within a region must be consistent with the region's assigned budget. As noted above, ideally speakers will visit 2-3 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 5.

Eligible Expenses

Expenses to be covered by CAP are for return travel from the lecturer's home to the various lecture tour locations via the most economical option, including airfare, car rental (not to include CDW unless this is not covered by the speaker's credit card), and use of personal automobile (at $0.30 per km). Meals in transit which are not provided from other sources can be claimed up to a daily maximum of $45, or for individual meals: Breakfast $10, Lunch $10, Dinner $25. Original transportation receipts must be submitted with the travel claim. As noted above, the host department must cover all local expenses. CAP travel claims must be approved by the appropriate Regional Coordinator before submission to the CAP office.

CAP Expense Claim Form