BITeS

Get 'em while they're young!

Submitted by Sheila Smith / University of Michigan- Dearborn on Mon, 11/28/2016 - 15:13

There's an effort underway to make the Gordon Research Confernces more inclusive by supporting researchers with small children and family responsibilities.  Many of us have enjoyed the Gordon Research Conferences, but the immersion type events can be difficult on families. 

Specifically, the letter asks the leadership of the GRCs to consider three changes:

The parental unit of all community challenges part deux

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Mon, 11/21/2016 - 14:21

You might recall a BITeS from earlier this semester about a community challenge. If not, you can read about it here. A brief summary would be that I challenged the community to develop some literature discussion LO's on organometallic chemistry. The idea was to model the workshop experience without having a workshop. I got a greater response than I was expecting and we formed two groups.

DIC elections

Submitted by Flo / Slytherin' State on Thu, 11/17/2016 - 14:01

Members of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry (DIC) should have just received an invitation to vote in this year’s Council election. If you’re not already a member of the Division, please consider  joining. This $12 annual membership fee ($14 for non-ACS members) goes to support the excellent Inorganic programming at both National and regional meetings, including the Annual Spring “Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Chemistry” symposium. DIC has become a divisional leader in supporting Undergraduate efforts in both teaching and research.

Tech Tools for Teaching 1: EdPuzzle

Submitted by Sheila Smith / University of Michigan- Dearborn on Mon, 11/14/2016 - 22:15

If you’ve attended one of our summer workshops in the last five years, you know that we always have a session highlighting Technology

A blast from the past

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 10:07

I recently attended my ##th (not a typo, I just don't want to think about the number) college reunion. As one tends to do at these things, I walked through my old stomping grounds. A lot has changed over the years. One thing I noticed was the interesting teaching aid for learning how to write ionic formula shown below. I don't remember seeing those when I was a student, so I imagine they were tucked away in some back corner collecting dust, which is a real shame.

San Francisco reminder

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Fri, 10/14/2016 - 10:19

I know it isn't exactly the due date yet, but I wanted to remind you that October 31st is the deadline for submitting an abstract for the DIC. I have a feeling that overall submissions are a bit lower than expected at this point seeing how I recently got a reminder from Steve Koch about getting people to submit abstracts. If you want to submit to our Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Inorganic Chemistry poster or oral sessions, click here.

Lab Report Grading

Submitted by Anne Bentley / Lewis & Clark College on Mon, 10/03/2016 - 00:16

After completing nearly every household task known to humanity, I finally sat down to grade the semester's first batch of inorganic lab reports. One hour later, I had scores assigned to 12 abstracts. And now I find myself procrastinating even further by writing this blog post.

The parental unit of all community challenges

Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Mon, 09/26/2016 - 09:14

Greetings IONiC community. It is time again for a community challenge, and let me tell you, this is going to be a challenge. The topic: fundamental aspects of organometallic chemistry. The challenge: making Literature Discussion LO's using papers from ACS journals. Is that enough of a teaser to get you interested? I sure hope so.

Philadelphia Reflections

Submitted by John Miecznikowski / Fairfield University on Wed, 09/14/2016 - 09:20

A recent Inorganic Chemistry viewpoint article, "Great Expectations: Using an Analysis of Current Practices To Propose a Framework for the Undergraduate Inorganic Curriculum” (Inorg. Chem., 2015, 54, 8859-8868) summarized that the undergraduate inorganic chemistry curriculum in the United States is broad and that there is tremendous variation in content coverage.  There is no single inorganic chemistry course.