This is the time of year that my institution offers teaching and learning workshops. On Thursday, I attended a workshop entitled "The Elements of Mentoring" that was led by Dr. Brad Johnson, a faculty member in our Leadership, Ethics, and Law division and someone who researches mentoring. Last August I was formally assigned to mentor a new assistant professor in my department so I was really looking forward to learning about mentoring from an academic point of view.

Hi All,

We've been thinking a lot about instrumentation (and getting more somehow) recently.  Besides the standard NMR, IR, UV-Vis, fluorescence, is there any instrumentation that you have found really useful for your department? Have you found some hot new thing that has totally changed how you teach your classes or do your research?

One thing we obtained in the last few years was a flash chromatrography system (Combiflash), which has really sped up purification of organic and inorganic compounds. 

Hi all, 

I'm new to VIPER and am overjoyed that I came across it! My question is this:

Hi All,

I was curious if anyone has found research collaborations through the VIPER website or the workshops (if it has happened, I am sure the Leadership Council would love to know about it too!)?

Is this something that this website could play a role in?

Perhaps it would be something that could be a topic in the Research forum ... "seeking collaborators" or something like that. What do you think? 

Hi all,

I recently accepted an offer to become the new Membership Chair for the ACS DIC! I'm excited by this opportunity to help the Division through recruitment and retention. When I was approached, my first thought was, "How can VIPEr play a part in this?" I'm at a PUI, so I'm always curious about how we can get undergraduates juiced about chemistry, paritcularly inorganic chemistry. What are some of your thoughts? What kinds of outreach can the DIC do to UGs?

Hi All,

I am teaching inorganic for the second time this coming spring quarter (10 week quarter, meets twice a week, with a holiday that takes away a day) and I have decided to go more non-linearly than usual through the text (MFT). I would really appreciate your thoughts on this as a group of professors with extensive experience teaching inorganic. My students are juniors and seniors, some of which have had some p-chem, some of which have not, and most of who have not had much exposure to inorganic-like content beyond a taste in gen chem and ochem.

Our campus has transitioned from ANGEL to Blackboard and a few of us have lost all of the algorithmic questions we had written in ANGEL. We've also discovered that Blackboard doesn't support the same level of algorithmic questions. So, I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts or interest in how we can recreate this random value questions in Blackboard.

I posted this first on Facebook as sort of an impulse, but the number of responses has made it obvious that a lot of us would like to talk about this topic  and would like to read the answers.

Being part of VIPEr has made me extremely grateful for the shared teaching materials available--I use them frequently in general chemistry and inorganic.  Often times, I modify them for my particular need, my students, the material, or the time available.  Regardless, that Creative Commons statement of copyright and attribution is part of the document.  

I am currently working on a paper. I am going to be comparing some catalytic activity to a literature reference that likely uses the examine same precursors. I use the term likely because...