Submitted by Nancy Williams / Scripps College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 18:36
Forums

Hi, all  

We're foolishly thinking about resubmitting our CCLI for an NMR here at JSD, and was wondering if any of you had any knowledge or experience regarding the description of NMR useage?  Normally, at a big school, they have 24/7 use expectations, and they also have excellent computer records of who used what when.  We have.....bupkus.  People just use it as they please.  Have any of you run into this, and if so, how do you estimate useage? Do you assume 8 hour or 24 hour days (since we don't expect our students to work at night when we are here, unlike our kindly mentors in grad school)?

Also, on another note, do any of you have an instrument technician, or does this fall to the faculty?

Finally, if anyone has any experience or suggestions on CCLIs for NMRs, please don't feel that you need to leave to us the valuable learning experience of acquiring such knowledge the hard way....do tell (:

-Scott

Hilary Eppley / DePauw University
Speaking from my recent nail-biting NMR experience, we do not have a technician or a service contract (hence my extreme agitation this weekend since I am the back-up "expert" when our main tech-savvy faculty member is on sabbatical). We keep a handwritten log of usage (students in classes who use it sign up for time) so I guess we could add up usage if we wanted to, though usage during the summer is not really recorded because it is really spread out. We certainly don't have 24/7 usage. I am maybe not the best person to ask since our NMR is about 16 years old! We got our NMR through the MRI program so the requirements were obviously different. Hilary Eppley, DePauw University heppley@depauw.edu
Thu, 01/10/2008 - 18:41 Permalink
Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College

We use Yahoo calendar during the summer to reserve and log time (informally at least.)  During the academic year, we don't keep track of hours since we usually don't need.  If I know I will have a long/overnight/VT run, I inform the major users informally.

 We also have no technician, so faculty are in charge.  I am about 4th on the totem pole, so have only been involved in 2 He fills in 9 years.

 Finally, I have no advice on the CCLI grant, except I am happy (again) to be listed as a co-user like last time.

Adam

Thu, 01/10/2008 - 19:48 Permalink
Joanne Stewart / Hope College
We also got our NMR through NSF-MRI and it was also a long time ago. As I might have mentioned in Chicago, there was a whole CCLI panel devoted solely to NMR proposals. I encourage you to look carefully at what ones were funded.
 
We also keep a log book and our NMR sees heavy use during the spring and summer and lighter use during the fall. For CCLI, I think the more important consideration is how it is going to transform student learning in as many classes as you can possibly imagine! Research use, if it's pitched as "research _is_ teaching," could also be included.
 
Joanne
Tue, 01/15/2008 - 15:06 Permalink
Barbara Reisner / James Madison University

I also highly recommend the MRI program.  In the past few years, we've been successful in obtaining a confocal microscope and TGA-MS system.  It has been many years since we've written an NMR proposal.  

Don't forget that you can submit MRIs as a RUI proposals and include the RUI impact statement.  We've used this space to "educate reviewers" about the mission of PUIs.  (I don't know if this can be done for CCLI proposals).

As for logs - I have no idea what the NMR usage assumptions are because I don't use one.  When I wrote an XRD grant (IMR - probably not applicable for the NMR) - I went and discussed the usage stats during the academic year and summer months separately.  I stressed how the instrument would be incorporated into both classwork & teaching and discussed the research = teaching mentality. 

We've been using Microsoft Outlook Web Access to keep track of usage time on the NMR. It's a simple system and easy to use both on campus and remotely.  I've begun using this to keep track of XRD stats.  It's a handy tool for both usage and other instrument issues.

Sun, 01/27/2008 - 22:24 Permalink