In two weeks I'll be flying to Dallas to take my daughter back to college. I'll be there for 6 days mostly to help her buy things for her new apartment and help move in. From there I go to San Diego for a whirlwind ACS meeting. Why is this BITeS news? Well, I'll have lots of times on planes which means I need something to read, and I think I just figured out what that will be.
For as long as we've been in our "new" (now 14 year old) building, I've curated a bulletin board across from some of the faculty offices. I often see students reading whatever is up there as they pass the time while waiting for office hours... or to speak to a professor... or just because. As you can see from the picture below, the bulletin board has a mixture of papers, things from C&EN Magazine, and comics.
I know it’s July and the upcoming academic term is the last thing you are thinking about. Nevertheless, in eight weeks, many of us will begin to see traffic build outside our offices as students descend upon campus. It sounds daunting, parking is going to get worse, ungraded exams will pile up, and the line at the coffee shop is going to be never ending. I get it… but there’s an opportunity to make a change coming, to do something different in our classes that only comes at the beginning of each term, a chance to experiment!
With great sadness, I share the news of the passing of one of the most creative, inspiring, and vibrant inorganic chemists I ever knew: Richard A. Andersen. Dick was my graduate advisor at Berkeley in the 1980’s. He died on Sunday, June 16, 2019. I miss him already.
Betsy and I are feeling chills (they’re multiplying and we’re losing control) that come along with the close of our summer 2019 content-building workshop at Smith College. We are amazed at how quickly the last few days passed. (It was like greased lightnin'!)
Tell me more, tell me more… (Channel Olivia Newton-John as you say this.)
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
If you were wishing and hoping to get to the VIPEr workshop at the GLRM earlier this month but just couldn't swing the travel, you have another opportunity coming up this Friday at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting in beautiful Baltimore!
The workshop will be run by Kate Plass and myself on Friday, May 31st, from 9-noon. Although registration for MARM has closed, if you are planning to attend the meeting, there is still room in the workshop, and we would love to have you!
Many years ago, I was an energetic first year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry at The Ohio State University. I was truly excited about graduate school and achieving my new career goal of becoming an inorganic chemist. One particular summer day in my first year, I attended a luncheon with several other graduate students and the Department Chair, Dr. Matthew Platz, at the Faculty Club on campus. We had a very candid conversation about diversity and inclusion in the chemical sciences.
On Tuesday, March 28th, the president of Wheeling Jesuit University (WJU) announced that, due to a recent declaration of financial exigency, nearly half of all academic departments (including chemistry) would be cut as of the academic year’s end.* Two days later I was in Orlando for the Spring ACS meeting with one of my fellow soon-to-be-unemployed colleagues and four graduating-in-the-nick-of-time seniors.
