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.

Be sure to sign up for the IONiC VIPEr sessions...

With apologies to Scott McKenzie.

It is hard to believe that August is already here and that in less than two weeks chemists will gather in Philadelphia for the Fall ACS meeting.  For those of you attending the meeting, we wanted to draw your attention to a symposium organized by John Miecznikowski from Fairfield University on "Advances in Teaching Inorganic Chemistry Lecture and Laboratory" that will take place on Wednesday, August 24.  Building upon the Inorganic Chemistry viewpoint article "

Are you heading to Greeley, CO for the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE)? If so, keep in mind the following opportunities to learn more about VIPEr and swap inorganic stories with other members of the IONiC community.

There are times during the semester that I really have to work hard to get my fellow LC members to get their BITeS posts written. I understand, there is always so much to do. Not that the summer is really any better, but it is often a time to step back from classes for a bit and re-energize. Sure there are research students and workshops and conferences and placement exams and scheduling and advising and, wow, there just really isn't any down time is there? But we do frequently find time to sneak in some vacation.

This is a workshop with IONiC VIPEr. 

-Adam Johnson

You have to imagine this being sssung...loudly (and poorly) to the tune of Captain Jack Sssparrow. Yes, the LC is having some fun at the workshop. But there is also some really incredible work being done. You can check the ssschedule here for the details, but I wanted to give you a little update.

I hoped to have a catchy title for this CoLuMn - one that I could spell with elements - but as Anne pointed out, the new elements don't provide much help for spelling!

Last week, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced provisional names for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118, formerly known as Uut, Uup, Uus, and Uuo, respectively. With the additions of nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), the seventh row of the periodic table is now complete. The names will become permanent after a five-month review period ends in November.

Adam may have just written about his experience using Lit Discussions. I want to follow up with my experience moving almost exclusively to Lit Discussions.

Way back in January of 2014 at a snowy project meeting of the leadership council held in Easton, PA, I had an idea. That's actually not quite true, my brother-in-law, Ian O'Bryne, had an idea. He thought we had developed a great website full of tremendous content, but we needed to find ways to bring people back to the site on a regular basis. I liked the idea, but I wouldn't say that it was met with widespread enthusiasm.