URM is seeking ideas and suggestions on a couple of initiatives:
First, we’re producing video feature content for the Pac-12 network with cooperation from Athletics. We need story ideas that connect OSU student athletes, research, programs or faculty directly to specific Pac-12 sports. For example, it could be a student on the Volleyball team doing interesting research, or a faculty member who mentors athletes or does research that directly affects a sport. Share any suggestions you have with larry.pribyl@oregonstate.edu in News and Research Communications and he’ll add ideas to our pitch list for the Pac-12 Network folks.
Next, we’re building a website dedicated to faculty and staff recruiting, and we’d love your thoughts on new or established faculty and staff who can talk with enthusiasm on camera about why they love living and working at OSU and in Corvallis. Send these suggestions to david.baker@oregonstate.edu in the Web Communications office.
Ever wondered how the funds flow at OSU? Wonder about how base budgets are determined and how other sources – such as INTO, Ecampus, and summer session – supplement this base budget? Wanted for years to know where those top secret stashes are kept? Curious about how the various funding sources differ from one another? Here’s your opportunity to get some clarity on these matters.
Recently our colleague Sherm Bloomer, Director of Budget and Fiscal Planning, has given talks on the budget at an administrative meeting and a university-wide leadership seminar that proved to be both popular and highly informative. More recently he’s agreed to give talks of this sort for CLA and for Science faculty and staff.
All College of Science Faculty and Staff are welcome to join us for “University Budgeting 101” on Thursday Nov. 8, NOON to 1pm, 1109 Cordley Hall. Please feel free to bring your brown-bag lunch with you, along with your questions – we’ll save 10-15 minutes at the end of the talk for these.
We are pleased to announce the fourth year of the summer internship program,SCIScholars, for chemistry and chemical engineering undergraduates.
The program is a joint effort of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) America International Group, the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and was developed to introduce chemistry and chemical engineering students to careers in the chemical industry.
Exceptional sophomores and juniors with a GPA of at least 3.5 and who are majoring in chemistry or chemical engineering are encouraged to apply.
Program details:
Thirty-five scholars will be chosen for internship positions in the summer of 2013.
SCI Scholars receive $6,000-$10,000+ for a ten-week internship.
Students will be awarded a certificate and an additional $1,000, which can be used for any purpose, such as participation at an ACS or AIChE meeting.
Scholars nominate a high school chemistry teacher for recognition. Teachers will be awarded a certificate fromSCIand $1,000, which can be used for professional development or classroom materials.
Applications are due December 14, 2012 (December 15, 3 a.m EST).
Interested students should visit www.acs.org/sci to fill out an application and get more information
I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward the SCI Program Flyer (PDF at www.acs.org/sci) to any students you think might be interested in the program, as well as to any faculty members who could help promote this program to their students. Thank you for your assistance in bringing this exceptional opportunity to the attention of your undergraduates.
Cayuse 424 and Cayuse SP Training: The Office of Sponsored Programs will offer training on the Cayuse 424 and Cayuse SP proposal system on Oct. 30, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in MU 211. Any interested faculty and/or staff are welcome, but attendance is limited to 35. Send an e-mail to sponsored.programs@oregonstate.edu in order to reserve a space. This session will be offered at least monthly throughout 2012.
The Oregon Legislature’s Committee Services Office seeks 2 qualified graduate students to serve as committee interns during the 2011 legislative session. The intern positions are part of the non-partisan, professional staff of the Legislature, serving both chambers and both political parties. The internships offer a unique opportunity for students to learn about state government, current state policy issues and the legislative process.
Committee interns conduct research; analyze and write summaries of legislative measures; attend committee meetings; and communicate with legislators, state agency legislative liaisons, lobbyists, and members of the general public. Interns are supervised by a Committee Administrator.
One intern will work with committees addressing natural resource issues, including agriculture, forestry, energy, environment, sustainability, and water policy. A background in natural resource policy is preferred for this position.
The other intern will work with committees addressing various state policy topics, including transportation, business, labor, health care, and education.
The Graduate School will pre-screen OSU Legislative Graduate Intern applicants and will advance to the Legislative Committee Administrator up to 3 applicants for each of the two internship positions. The Legislative Committee Administrators will make final selections.
The Graduate School will provide those selected to serve as OSU Legislative Graduate interns a $2,500 stipend plus full tuition remission for each quarter of internship service fulfilled during winter and spring 2013. Programs may supplement this stipend if they so choose. Recipients must remain enrolled for a minimum of 12 credits each quarter (e.g., internship or thesis credits preferred).
A two-week training session will begin January 18, 2010. The internships will require students to work at least 36 hours per week at the State Capitol in Salem. The internships will take place for 22 weeks concurrent with the legislative session. The attached position description provides complete details.
Nomination Procedures
OSU graduate programs may nominate in rank order up to 3 students for consideration by the Graduate School. Each nomination is to be formatted as one PDF file and must include the following materials:
The student’s cover letter outlining his/her interest in the internship opportunity, including a brief description of the education and experience that has prepared him/her for this work;
The student’s resume or c.v.; and
A letter of recommendation from the student’s major professor or other faculty member who is familiar with the student’s potential for success in the internship position.
Nominations are to be sent electronically to Brenda.mccomb@oregonstate.edu and must be received in the Graduate School by close of business on Monday,November 19, 2010.
The Graduate School will review the nominations and will forward up to three of the nominations to the Committee Services Office for consideration. To facilitate final selection, nominees advanced to the Legislative Committee Administrator for consideration will be required to participate in an in-person interview the week of December 3rd, 2012.
Please share this opportunity with interested graduate students in your programs. If you have questions regarding the process or the positions, please contact Brenda McComb in the Graduate School.
I am writing to request your assistance in identifying outstanding undergraduates who might be interested in, and qualified for, the ACS sponsored Nuclear and Radiochemistry Summer School Program. We are seeking curious and highly motivated students with strong science backgrounds. If selected, these students receive an all-expense paid opportunity to complete a 6 week summer course in Nuclear and Radiochemistry in either California or New York. They also earn hours (tuition paid) of undergraduate chemistry credit through either San Jose State University or SUNY-Stony Brook. Selected students also receive a stipend of $4,000.
An announcement for the Nuclear and Radiochemistry Summer Schools that can be posted is attached to this request. It describes the application procedure and the background we hope applicants will have when applying. This information and an on-line application form can also be found on the web at:
The deadline for applications is February 1, 2013. Please distribute this announcement to your undergraduate students and encourage them to consider this unique opportunity! If you or your students have any questions about the ACS sponsored program, please do not hesitate to contact me using the information below.
If you ask Richard Nafshun, he’ll say that one of the quickest ways to get teenagers interested in chemistry is to put on a good show. The idea was foremost on his mind when he collaborated with local middle school teachers and Oregon State graduate students to put on the “Chemistry Show,” at the LaSells Stewart Center this spring.
And when upwards of 1200 middle-schoolers and their families showed up, he was glad he had made things interesting. The senior instructor of chemistry at Oregon State is passionate about teaching and outreach.
“We had lots of fun with exploding balloons,” he says. “So you take an uninflated balloon, hook it up to the hydrogen tank, and tie it off. You have it on a string, tape a candle to a meter stick, put the candle underneath the balloon… and BOOM!”
It wasn’t the only time sparks flew during the show’s 20 demonstrations, but for Nafshun, who holds both a master’s degree in science education and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Oregon State, the spectacle is only part of the process—learning is the other.
For the past 15 years, Nafshun has dedicated himself to creating better chemistry classes for students, especially in the lecture setting. He’s pioneered online chemistry education at Oregon State, created outreach programs for K-12 students and mentored the next generation of chemistry teachers and professors.
And he has been successful, too. Not only has Nafshun won numerous teaching awards, Oregon State students regularly approach Nafshun and tell him they remember his outreach events from their grade school or middle school years. Some even come back to volunteer with programs they experienced as grade schoolers.
“That’s a real cyclic thing,” he says. “To say, ‘Wow. You were in this program, and now you’re teaching where you’ve been taught. And you’re going to be a teacher in the future.’ It makes me feel wonderful.”
A Collaborative Experience
Nafshun discovered his passion for teaching when he was a chemistry undergraduate at California State University, Stanislaus. He was one of the few students there asked to serve as a teaching assistant—a rare thing at a university with no graduate program.
“I absolutely fell in love with being a teacher,” he says.
That love was further cemented when, that summer, Nafshun took a job working for a group that did cholesterol testing in eggs and dairy products. Although he saw value in the work, he wanted to be a part of something more collaborative.
“While the chance for development and research was there, it seemed very independent and isolated,” Nafshun says. “It didn’t seem as though I was going to be part of an institutional process to make something happen.”
Bringing passion to a profession
Now, Nafshun focuses his research on instructional methods for the large classroom, and teaches general chemistry. Many of the lessons he creates for the lecture hall reflect what he loved about chemistry as a high school student—group projects that rely on teamwork and exploration rather than rote memorization.
“It was all that time after school meeting with fellow students, and accomplishing a project and doing scholarship that I found fabulous,” he says.
Nafshun also mentors students in CH 607, his college chemistry-teaching seminar. He wants them to have the experience of engaging students in the lecture setting as well.
“We develop curriculum and labs. And then the beautiful part about it is these graduate students take over the class from one week,” Nafshun says. “So they work on a unit. They prepare. We talk about what demonstrations to do, teaching methods, everything.”
Since 1997 Nafshun has mentored nearly 20 students in the seminar setting—some of whom have gone on to use some of the methods Nafshun taught them at institutions like Evergreen, The Ohio State University, the University of Portland and Seattle Pacific, to name a few.
“I hope they’re bringing engaging instructional techniques, doing good student questioning and application-based instruction,” he says. “I hope that they’re focusing on students working in small groups. I honestly think there’s a balance in the lecture hall.”
A Home for Science
Nafshun’s input into the classroom experience isn’t the only thing that works for his students—the new Linus Pauling Science Center, which was completed in 2011, does as well. There are only seats for 178 students in the building’s lecture hall, which helps facilitate the application of some of Nafshun’s lecture content in introductory chemistry classes.
And because some of the Center’s cutting-edge research facilities like the electron microscopy lab and the nuclear magnetic resonance facility are on the main floor and encased in glass, students get a more immediate and exciting view of research in the moment.
“This year they’re coming out of the woodwork and asking about undergraduate research opportunities,” Nafshun says. “You walk down the hall and see fundamental research, stuff that matters today. Students see it, too.”
Access for Everyone
One of Nafshun’s more recent projects has been collaborating with colleagues in chemistry and computer science to develop a curriculum of general chemistry labs that are delivered online. They are currently being used in Oregon State’s Ecampus chemistry program, and Nafshun hopes that other universities might use the curriculum, too.
For Nafshun, online labs are the way of the future, and online education is a way for people to have access to education who wouldn’t otherwise, like deployed military personnel and people living in rural areas.
“I started the Ecampus chemistry program nine years ago, and saw the enrollment in the online program go from two students to 600 a term,” he says.
As for the next Chemistry Show, Nafshun is trying to figure out if there’s a venue in Corvallis that will hold an even bigger crowd.
As faculty who have agreed to have the libraries deposit articles to the ScholarsArchive@OSU institutional repository on their behalf, we thought you might be interested in attending a lecture sponsored by the OSU Libraries & Press, Teaching Across the Curriculum, Information Sciences and ECampus.
OSU Libraries & Press celebrates International Open Access week and invites you to participate in an exciting lecture by Dr. Cable Green on the topic of “Expanding the open agenda: From open access to an open education” on Friday, October 26th, from 1:30pm-3pm in the library Main Rotunda.
Dr. Cable Green is the Director of Global Learning for Creative Commons and an expert in Open Educational Resources and Open Policy. He holds a BS in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College, MPC from Westminster College, and an MA in communication and PhD in educational psychology from Ohio State University. As the Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, Cable is responsible for setting strategic direction and priorities to build a global movement that will enable robust and vibrant practices and policies for free sharing of education and learning assets. He is a strong advocate for open policies that ensure publicly funded education materials are freely and openly available to the public that paid for them.
As part of this program OSU Libraries & Press will also announce our 2012 Open Access Hall of Fame inductees.
This message was imbedded in the communication from the faculty senate but I want be sure you see thisopportunity to provide comment on current Travel Agencies and Policy. You can provide comments on-line; I encourage you to provide your experiences and suggestions in either the open forum or via the survey.
Stella
Travel Agencies and Policy Forum and Survey
All OSU faculty and staff are invited to participate in an open forum discussing performance of the contracted travel agencies (Teel’s and Azumano) and of OSU travel policy. The forum will be on October 29 from 9:00-10:00 AM in the MU Journey Room. Feedback may also be submitted through October 31via a brief on-line survey athttps://surveys.bus.oregonstate.edu/main.aspx?SurveyID=5202.
From The newsletter of APLU (American Public Land-Grant Universities) is a succinct note on upcoming changes for proposal submissions to NSF. I want to be sure our faculty are aware of these upcoming changes, especially given the pre-proposal requirement within some programs.Please share this information with them. Thank you.
Stella
NSF Issues New Proposal and Award Policies
October 8, 2012—The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released new guidelines changing the way proposals are submitted and the administration of grants and cooperative agreements made by the foundation. The new Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) goes into effect forproposals due on or after January 14, 2013. The current PAPPG will remain in effect until then.
Revisions to the merit review criteria are expected to have broad repercussions for proposers, reviewers and NSF staff. Some of the significant changes include:
Project summary and project description sections of proposals. Annual and final reports also will be affected.
Instructions for preparation of the Biographical Sketch have been revised to rename the “Publications” section to “Products” and amend terminology and instructions accordingly. This change makes clear that products may include, but are not limited to, publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights.
Coverage on compensation of Indirect Costs (also known as Facilities and Administrative Costs (F&A) for Colleges and Universities) has been clarified to specify that, except as noted in the GPG sections on participant support and international travel grants, or as specified in an NSF program solicitation, the applicable indirect cost rate(s) negotiated by the organization with the cognizant negotiating agency must be used in computing indirect costs for a proposal.
Modification of the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section of proposals to assist proposers in complying with the NSF cost sharing policy.
Additional proposal certifications must be submitted by the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) covering organizational support of the proposed research, tax obligations/liability and felony convictions.
Numerous clarifications also have been made throughout the document.
A by-chapter summary of the changes is provided at the beginning of both the Grant Proposal Guide and the Award & Administration Guide to assist with identifying the changes. Proposers can also access the revised NSF Merit Review website or visit the resource website for the proposer communitycontaining presentations, fact sheets and other important links. A webcast will be available in early Nov. 2012.
Direct link to the NSF website (in case link does not work)
