It's been a crazy week for a lot of the leadership council. We have assembled here in beautiful Evanston to host the second NSF-TUES funded faculty development workshop. This week's theme is bioinorganic chemistry, especially how to incorporate it into the undergraduate curriculum. There are 24 participants at our workshop from all over the US, including several grad students and post-docs from Northwestern U., some familiar VIPEr names from the website and at least one former student of an LC member!

The first two days were a whirlwind tour/introduction of the VIPEr website, designing learning objects, and the entirety of the field of bioinorganic chemistry. Sheila and Betsy did an excellent job presenting their 5-slides about bioinorganic learning objects and demonstrated how to use a literature discussion to teach. More than half the participants have uploaded their initial LOs to the site and the leadership council (some on-site, and some off-site) is frantically reviewing, editing, and approving them--you should see an influx of new LOs on the site soon!

We have a phenomenal slate of speakers: Tom Meade, Northwestern, Janet Morrow, SUNY Buffalo, Anne Jones, ASU, and Tom O'Halloran, Northwestern.  Sessions so far have been lively, with lots of great questions. we hope our participants incorporate the lessons from earlier in the week into their own LO development on the research talks starting today.

We certainly miss the half of the LC that is not here this week, but Chip and Joanne have continued our summer 2014 invasion of Canada at the International Conference on Chemical Education.

(pictures of Betsy and Sheila giving their presentations)