Scott Chapman and Jim Coykendall are organizing a Special Session on Commutative Rings and Monoids at the AMS Regional meeting in Raleigh, April 4-5, 2009. The session is dedicated to Professor William W. Smith on the occasion of his retirement from the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more information see the official AMS website for the session or email Scott Chapman at scott.chapman@shsu.edu .