I am writing to announce a symposium at BCCE that may be of interest to VIPERs or other department members.  The Biennial Conference on Chemical Education will be held at Penn State from July 29-August 2, 2012.  I am organizing a symposium entitled, “Innovative Foundation Courses to Meet the New CPT Guidelines.”  If you are doing something novel or different at the foundation level  I’d encourage you to submit an abstract.   (The foundation level is not general chemistry nor at the advanced level; for the VIPER audience think “sophomore inorganic” although the symposium is not limited to inorganic chemistry.)  As an example, (assuming I accept my own abstract!) I’ll be discussing our department’s approach of eliminating disciplinary-focused courses such as sophomore-level organic chemistry, and creating three foundation courses, each of which  integrates related topics from  organic, inorganic and biochemistry.

Again, please consider submitting an abstract yourself, or passing this information on to a department member who may be interested in presenting.  The abstract deadline is February 28.  Here is a link to the BCCE conference and abstract submission system http://www.2012bcce.com/abstractsubmission.html.   There are many symposia, so look for the one with the title listed above.  If you have questions about the symposium (or our curriculum, for that matter) please feel free to contact me at bjohnson@csbsju.edu.

Thanks, Brian