Greetings from Ithaca, NY, site of the ACS Northeast Regional Meeting (motto: The Finger Lakes Region Goes Green!). The hosts at Ithaca College did a fantastic job of organizing 2 days of outstanding presentations on inorganic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, green polymers and more.
Watching (and snickering at) Bill Tolman's parody video for Lab safety inspired me to think more about how I present safety to my students (in both teaching labs and research labs). I'm going to retread a few ideas that Anne Bentley wrote about in this blog, but we could probably all use to think about safety more).
Two weeks from the time I am writing this, I will be somewhere between Philadelphia and Seattle. I will be attending my first week-long workshop, and I am excited and nervous. When I joined the Leadership Council in 2011, I had no idea of where it would take me. Toronto, Quebec City, Portland (Oregon) and now Seattle... Not exactly the most exotic locations, but then again, I am not really a fan of travel. But I have never been been to Washington before, so I am excited.
This is the second year that I’ve taught JMU’s foundation level course in inorganic chemistry since VIPEr has been around. VIPEr has allowed me to adapt and adopt ideas from the community, and I think my course is much the better for it. This year, both the existing LOs and new ones generated from our community challenges have positively impacted my class.
The semester may be over for many of us, but it's never too late to recognize our outstanding undergraduates who make research possible or excel in the classroom and lab. The Division of Inorganic Chemistry has two ways to recognize outstanding undergraduates in inorganic chemistry.
It's a little over a week since the site was updated and the LC is still hard at work on getting things in order. In particular, we are moving around some of the teaching resources. The Fundamentals of Inorganic Chemistry and General Teaching Resources will soon be disappearing. Fear not, the LOs from those sessions will still be on the site, we are just reclassifying the subdiscipline they are classified with. If one of your LOs is still classified with Fundamentals of Inorganic Chemistry and General Teaching Resources it will soon be reclassified.
With apologies to Bob Dylan...
Come gather 'round snaklings
My name is Jorge Torres and I am a graduate student at Miami University working with Dr. Ellen Yezierski in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. I am pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry focusing on chemistry education research (CER) in Inorganic Chemistry. As part of my dissertation research, I am conducting a study on the inorganic chemistry curriculum to identify both the stated and the enacted teaching and learning goals.
I can’t believe that the only thing left in my foundation inorganic course is the final final exam. (No the second final isn’t a typo. I give an assessment of key concepts exam and an ACS Exam.) I’m sure that I’m more excited about these exams than my students. A few of them are eager to prove what they know. I’m excited to see what they’ve learned (and I’m even more excited to see how the Foundations of Inorganic Chemistry exam from the ACS Exams Institute is functioning)!
The VIPEr site now has a large number of literature discussion assignments – learning objects in which students read a research article and answer questions before coming to a class discussion.