Hi All,

How many of you (at PUIs) have "group meetings" with your students? How do you model it? What time do you usually have it? Do you bring snacks?

I didn't have them my first year, but things are such that I feel like it would help my students to get together each week and talk about what they did last week and their plans for the coming week. I am going to try it this summer and see how things go. I hope it will give them good practice talking to their peers about research.

Kyle 

Hello, VIPEr community!

The US Naval Academy is among a very small fraction of schools who still use only whole letter grades (A, B, C, D, F). Our faculty senate is currently discussing recommending to change our system to include + and - grades. Given the current faculty polls, this change is almost certain to pass within the Senate. However, there is a debate going on between using a "finer" or "finest" scale.

Finer: A, B+, B, B-, C+, C, D, F

Finest: A, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-. D+, D, F

Dear IONiC,

I wanted to pass along this invitation to participate in aligning the content from inorganic chemistry to the Anchoring Concept Content Map that Kristen Murphy from the ACS Exams Institute is working on. There will be two meetings at the upcoming Denver ACS Meeting. Please take a look at her invitation, and if your schedule permits and you’re able to participate, I encourage you to attend. 

Barb

___________

It looks like I will have a local high school student spending some time in my lab this summer. This appears to be the catalyst to an avalanche because to do this I am going to have to have a thorough background check run (I am confident I will pass). Apparently, we are going to have to do this for anyone that will be interacting with high school students or minors. So essentially, it will be the whole college. I am just learning about this as I type. It looks like we have Penn State to thank for this.

Does anyone do an alumni survey in their department? Do you get helpful information from it? We are thinking about trying to do one for students who are maybe 5 years and 10 years out. We want to know what kinds of gaps they feel we have in our program.

I would appreciate any examples you have. You can send them to me at stewart@hope.edu. Thanks!

so I'm hoping to take my first sabbatical next year, and I'd like to spend it somewhere getting my hands dirty with some research.  I have the option of a semester (at full pay) or a year (at half pay), but either way I probably need to apply for some supplemental funds for travel and living expenses.  Just wondering if anybody has any tips or advice on whether I should take a semester or a whole year, where I might find funding, and how to best find a lab to work in? */ /*-->*/

Hello,

This is really useful for getting up to speed quickly.  

I would like to creste a collection into which any inorganic faculty could deposit his/her multiple choice questions appropriate for quizzes in inorganic chemistry course. In my sophomore level IC course I give 5 quizzes, a test, 5 quizzes, a test, and the final. I am slowly running out of ideas for new types of multiple choice questions for my quizzes. Each of my quizzes has 5 MC questions, and the students get 10-15 minutes, so around 3 minutes per question.

I want to start accumulating information about student experiences for outcomes assessment. Please suggest good questions to ask, besides the obvious. In the future, I plan to send surveys to alumni as well. Thanks! -Sabrina