NSF sponsored VIPEr faculty development workshop in Inorganic Chemistry. July 13-18, 2014, Northwestern University. Topic: Coordination Chemistry at the Frontiers of Bioinorganic. Information for the workshop is available here. 

Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource

A Graphical Approach to Ligand Group Orbitals

Submitted by Adam R. Johnson, Harvey Mudd College on

It would be an understatement to say that I fell in love with molecular orbital theory as an undergraduate. My inorganic professor at Oberlin College, Marty Ackermann, introduced us to SALCs and group theory. Two years later, I plowed through all the math in Cotton’s book at MIT and then I got to (yes, GOT to) TA the course two of the following three years (LC member Betsy Jamieson was one of my first students). My approach to MO theory and LGO generation is intuitive and graphical.

Organometallic reactions via student skits

Submitted by Lori Watson, Earlham College on

I’m a big fan of getting students up out of their chairs and moving around during lecture.  I’m not altogether convinced they learn concepts we act out better than ones we don’t, but they sure enjoy it more!  This week in my Inorganic course we were doing a quick overview of organometallic reaction types and catalytic cycles.  It was a particularly cold, grey, rainy day and a number of my students were all pretty tired from studying for their Senior Comprehensive exams.  They were supposed to have read all about different organometallic reactions from their text, but it was clear in about 2

DIC opportunities

Submitted by Stephen Koch, SUNY Stony Brook on

Thanks to the undergraduate inorganic community for another very successful symposium in the Inorganic division at the ACS meeting.  I have a request.  If you are going to be at a national ACS meeting and would like to chair a session, please email 

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New look, same great feature

Submitted by Flo, Slytherin' State on

Hopefully you've noticed the fancy new logo for our BITeS feature. I would like to thank my friends Hilary Eppley and Lori Watson for their efforts in the redesign. So far I have really enjoyed reading the various posts that have appeared in BITeS. I'll let you the reader in on a little bit of inside information. When the idea of BITeS was first proposed, it took a bit of convincing to get the full support of the leadership council. So our initial logo was very low tech.

IONiC does Dallas

Submitted by Sheila Smith, University of Michigan- Dearborn on

For the sixth consecutive year, IONiC sponsored a successful symposium at the Spring National ACS Meeting Focused on Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Inorganic Chemistry.  We also continued to be a significant percentage of the DIC programming at the Meeting with approximately 10% of the DIC presentations/posters falling into our symposium.  Along with our colleagues from various institutions who presented the fruits of their labors with undergraduate students in the research lab, we were able to provide an opportunity for several talented undergraduates (and one absolutely amazin