On September 28, 2005, the following email was sent to seven inorganic chemists at seven schools that were part of an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Career Enhancement Initiative. The original group, the Inorganic Chemistry Curricular Initiative, consisted of five inorganic chemists (including three current members of the Leadership Council) from the cluster, and one “external” member who brought much-needed expertise in the realm of solid state chemistry. The group met three times during 2006-2007, and brainstormed about the present and future of teaching inorganic chemistry at a liberal arts college. Our last action was to secure funding in a second round proposal to found a collaborative network named IONiC, the Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists. The first stated goal of IONiC, and the purpose of the proposal, was to establish VIPEr, the Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource.

Since then we have had almost continuous NSF funding and we have used that to:

• build and grow the inorganic community on VIPEr to more than 725 registered faculty users
• host the annual “Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Inorganic Chemistry” symposia at the Spring ACS meeting
• host faculty development workshops that develop teaching materials that bring cutting edge inorganic chemistry into the undergraduate curriculum.
• publish over 800 learning objects on the VIPEr website

Sometimes big things start small.


Dear inorganic colleagues:

As you may be aware, your institution has received funds from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation for Faculty Career Enhancement Initiatives. One of the programs is called the Inter-Institutional Initiative, which is described below.

I am interested in putting together a proposal with as many of the sister institutions as possible entitled:  “The Modern Inorganic Chemistry curriculum."  I am soliciting you because according to my
search of the web, you are the inorganic chemist (or one of them) at your institution.  I may have missed or miss-assigned some of you, in which case I apologize, and ask that this message be forwarded to the appropriate person.

What I am looking to do is to bring as many of us as possible together over the course of an academic year to meet, discuss curricular issues (such as teaching 1/3 of a textbook in a semester, what to pick, what labs to run, how to modernize labs, etc).  Funds would be requested for travel (site visits to some of the institutions) and subsidizing meals, etc as we meet up several times during the year.  One potential outcome of this proposal would be a joint proposal to the NSF under the CCLI
program.  I have some ideas about this that can wait for later.

If you are interested in participating, at ANY level, please let me know ASAP.  The 5-page proposal is due on 11/2.  I am happy to take the lead on this and do most of the writing and organizing (as luck would have it, I am on sabbatical this year), but would appreciate feedback and help from those more experienced than I.  I spoke with our local contact for this program a while ago and she was very excited about it.

I am trying to schedule another meeting with her to discuss budget, and feasibility.

More info about the program is below.
Thanks,
Adam


Here is a rough abstract of the proposal:
How is inorganic chemistry taught.  How should it be taught?  What are the impacts of the inorganic course on the rest of the curriculum, and vice versa.  This proposal seeks to bring together inorganic chemists from all stages of their careers across the member institutions to have a series of discussions, brainstorming sessions, and site visits, to develop a plan for modernizing the inorganic laboratory and course curriculum at each person’s home institution.


Here is some info on the Inter-Institutional Initiative
Support will be provided for projects involving faculty members from at least three different schools in the cluster. The amount will depend on the nature and scope of the proposed project. Proposals should document how the project will be of career enhancement benefit for each
participating faculty member. Possibilities for funding include, but
are not limited to:

-       Collaborative international travel

-       Scholarly or creative collaborations

-       Curriculum or program development projects

-       Workshops on new developments in one or more fields or
disciplines
 

†Appropriately, 10 years is the traditional Sn/Al anniversary, but even the modern gift, diamond, is inorganic.