I am writing to request your assistance in identifying doctoral students of color in your program to participate in the Southern Regional Educational Board(SREB) Doctoral Scholars Program. Oregon State University has partnered with SREB to provide mentoring and support for doctoral students of color who are interested in becoming faculty members in academia. While the program is designed primarily for students of color, anyone can apply. The SREB Doctoral Scholars Program was established more than 20 years ago to increase the number of scholars of color who earn their Ph.D., and to address the need for a more diverse college faculty. OSU participates as an individual institution, and supports four doctoral students and their advisors to participate in the SREB program at no cost to your department. OSU currently has funding for three new Doctoral Scholars Program participants, and we invite nominations from you and doctoral candidate advisors to participate starting with the 2020-21 academic year. Please share this information with doctoral program directors in your college.

Preference is given to candidates who are just beginning or within their first year of doctoral study. SREB is especially interested in candidates from STEM disciplines, however other disciplines are welcomed. Additionally, the doctoral advisor can attend the Institute on Teaching and Mentoring for one year with the doctoral student at no cost to the advisor or student based on our agreement with SREB.

SREB provides the following:

1. Coordinates the annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring for Scholars, which emphasizes gaining knowledge, developing professional skills and building a sense of commitment, teamwork and belonging.
2. Provides the following program services: orientation for scholars; consultation with the scholar’s campus liaison and advisor/mentor; monitoring scholar enrollment and progress reports; initiating periodic and frequent communications via such avenues as listservs, newsletters, emails, phone calls and personal contact; and supporting scholar professional development.

1. To nominate a student you think would benefit from this program, please share their name and email with my assistant, Pamela Johnson at pamela.johnson@oregonstate.edu.  (Prior to October 9^th.)
2. She will forward them a short application to complete. 

Deadline to submit applications to our office is Oct. 9, 2020. Please feel free to contact me with any questions at charlene.alexander@oregonstate.edu.

About SREB

The Southern Regional Education Board works with states to improve public education at every level, from early childhood through doctoral education. We help policymakers make informed decisions by providing independent, accurate data and recommendations. We help educators strengthen student learning with professional development, proven practices and curricula. And we help policymakers, institutions and educators share scarce resources to accomplish more together than they could alone.

Best regards,

Charlene

You may have seen President Alexander’s message or other messages requesting your participation in TRACE-OSU.  I would like to amplify OSU’s request for your participation. OSU will best be able to measure prevalence and help to keep our community healthy by maximizing the number of people enrolled.

Please see the President’s message below for details, and go to this link to enroll.   Furthermore, I would very much appreciate it if you encourage others to enroll.  Thank you.  

–Roy Haggerty, Dean of Science

Welcome to a new academic year – one where it is more important than ever to prioritize your health and the well-being of all community members. Please join me in contributing to a safer community – and learning more about your own wellness – by participating in TRACE OSU COVID-19 testing.

TRACE OSU prevalence testing begins Monday, Sept. 28, on our campuses in Corvallis and Bend and at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. Current faculty, staff and students are invited to participate in this testing by using this link to enroll. Enrolling only takes a few minutes.  

Each week during fall term, up to 1,000 names of faculty, staff and students, who have enrolled to participate in TRACE OSU – and who reside in the Corvallis, Bend or Newport areas – will be drawn randomly from a pool of enrollees and invited by e-mail to be tested. 

Once you have enrolled in TRACE OSU, wait until you receive an e-mail inviting you to be tested. This invitation will include a unique QR code. Please bring that code on your smartphone or on a printed copy of your e-mail invitation to whichever OSU testing site is most convenient for you. There will be two testing sites on the Corvallis campus: one at the Reser Stadium ticket booths and one in the plaza between Kelley Engineering Center and Johnson Hall. Testing will be offered in two HMSC apartments and in a testing center room in Tykeson Hall Room 204 at OSU-Cascades.

Testing will be conducted by the TRACE OSU team and is designed confidential, easy, simple and safe and takes less than five minutes. Your personal information will be kept secure at all times, and your results will be provided to you by secure e-mail, typically within 48 hours. As required, results of positive tests will be provided to the local county health authority to aid in contact tracing.

Meanwhile, OSU will do weekly analysis of wastewater on our Corvallis and OSU-Cascades’ campuses, at HMSC and in the Corvallis, Bend and Newport communities. 

TRACE OSU prevalence results through random COVID-19 testing and wastewater testing will help the university and local county health departments plan, serve those who test positive, and respond to changes in the presence of the virus that causes COVID-19.  

Join me in enrolling now and participating this fall in TRACE OSU.

While testing itself does not prevent the spread of COVID-19, nor are the results guaranteed, testing does provide a sense of your own COVID-19 personal wellness and participation in testing encourages proper personal and public health measures by each us. Because testing is but a snapshot of results at specific time, I ask you always to observe these public health measures:

• Wear a face covering.
• Observe physical and social distancing measures by staying 6 feet apart from others.
• Limit holding or attending social get-togethers of more than 10 people.
• Wash your hands regularly.
• Conduct daily personal health checks.
• Stay at home if you are not feeling well or if you test positive for COVID19.
• Get tested by TRACE OSU.

Be well and best of luck this year!

Sincerely,

F. King Alexander

President

On October 5, 2020, NSF will require biographical sketches and current and pending support forms be provided in specific formats.  One of the formats utilizes SciENcv to generate compliant PDF forms for upload.  Join College proposal support personnel for training and work sessions to assist you in transitioning to this new system.   

Sessions will be held on Zoom Tuesday, Oct 6, 2020 from 12-1pm, and Friday Oct 9, 2020 from 10-11am.  

Please register for a session at the qualtrics link below and we will send out a Zoom invitation prior to the session.  Handouts and instructions will be provided at the sessions and also made available to researchers who are unable to attend. 

Qualtrics Registration Link: https://oregonstate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LAEqMH49PzXc2h

For questions or additional details, contact:

Liz Etherington at Liz.Etherington@oregonstate.edu 
Cyndy Kelchner at  Cyndy.Kelchner@oregonstate.edu

Melora Park at  Melora.Park@oregonstate.edu

OSRAA’s internal deadline for the NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program is due 7 October 2020.

Research office guidelines: https://research.oregonstate.edu/program/major-research-instrumentation-nsf-mri

ECOS posting: https://internal.science.oregonstate.edu/funding/major-research-instrumentation-nsf-mri-0

Any MRI proposal may request support for either the acquisition or development of a research instrument.

• Track 1: Track 1 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $100,000 and less than $1,000,000. (no more than two)
• Track 2: Track 2 MRI proposals are those that request funds from NSF greater than or equal to $1,000,000 up to and including $4,000,000. (no more than one)

Note: The 30% cost-sharing requirement applies to only the portion of the total project cost budgeted to non-exempt organizations, including those participating through sub-awards. When required, cost-sharing must be precisely 30%. Cost-sharing is required for Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education and for non-degree-granting organizations. Non-Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education are exempt from cost-sharing and cannot provide it. National Science Board policy is that voluntarily committed cost sharing is prohibited. See section V.B. for specific information on cost-sharing calculations and the solicitation text for definitions of organizational types used for the MRI program.

You are invited to nominate engaged, curious, problem-solving students to join Launch Academy, a course for undergraduate and graduate students of all majors who have ideas for services, products or community change. Launch Academy students are eligible to win up to $2,500 in business development funding each term and have access to mentorship, networking, and other resources. Tuition scholarships are available. Nominate students here and contact michelle.marie@oregonstate.edu with questions. Launch Academy is a program of the InnovationX Center of Excellence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Hi – As the librarian for your department, I have a few library-related items to share with you.  I know this fall (and probably the whole year) will be quite different, but I am happy to meet via Zoom with you or your students to talk through any questions you may have (and email always works too).

Library Orientation for New Grad Students – Your fall new graduate student orientations likely look a little different from other years. I know I won’t be able to visit your orientations in person, but the library has short videos covering tips and information about essential library services that you could share with your new graduate students. The videos can be found on this New Graduate Student Virtual Orientation website. Videos cover:

• Graduate student services and spaces in the library
• How to register for and use interlibrary loan
• How to set up Google Scholar to communicate with OSU Libraries collections
• A virtual tour of the library.

Course Reserves – Please submit your course reserve requests ASAP before classes start to ensure course materials are available for your students when term begins. Please use the reserve request form (http://library.oregonstate.edu/reserves/request), and send any questions to valley.reserves@oregonstate.edu.  To help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, OSU Libraries is continuing to provide scans of course reserve materials. The COVID-19 library guide has additional information.

Ebooks – Access to ebooks is increasingly helpful during COVID-19. Our ebook license rights vary from vendor to vendor in terms of how many users can access the book and whether or not users can download the book to their own device. If you plan to use ebooks in your classes, you can explore the rights for the book you’re interested in by searching for the book in 1Search and then opening the book up to see what the download rules are (these rules are often found on the left side of the page). If you’re confused about an ebook’s access options, feel free to ask me.

Library Building Access – As you may have heard, access to the Valley Library building will be restricted primarily to the main (second) floor for most of fall term. And our hours will be shorter than usual (10 a.m. – 5 p.m.). We will continue offering electronic delivery of articles through interlibrary loan and home delivery of books. 

Library Workshops – Library workshops on topics like Git, Zotero, Researching the Literature Review, and EndNote will be held online via Zoom this Fall (schedule coming soon). Feel free to attend yourself, or suggest to your students. I’m also happy to lead workshops via Zoom specifically for your lab groups or classes. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Take care,

Diana

—

Diana Park

Science Librarian

Oregon State University Libraries & Press

Pronouns: she, her, hers

Remote availability: Mon-Fri, 9am – 5pm (PDT)

The Renewable Energy Scholarship Foundation is now soliciting applications for the scholarships to be given in 2021. (Of course, applications are always accepted, but they are actively solicited throughout the fall and winter, with a deadline of Feb 15.) We expect to be giving four scholarships this year, with the possibility of a fifth depending on fundraising.  We anticipate that one scholarship will be for an early undergraduate, with preference for a community college student; a second will be for another undergraduate, likely a junior or senior but not restricted to that; a third will be for an early grad student, first or second year; and the fourth will be unrestricted (but, if history is any guide, will likely go to a late grad student). If you know any top students studying renewable energy, in any sense, in Oregon or Washington, please encourage them to apply. All information is on our website, www.resf-pnw.org. 

OSU’s Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium (SURS) will take place on September 14^th-15^th in a virtual format. SURS is an annual showcase for OSU undergraduates to present their research and creative projects to the OSU community. Undergraduates from all academic disciplines, in all years of study, and all stages of research or creative work will be presenting.

Each presenter will post a 3-minute lightning talk about their work on a central Canvas page where the symposium will be hosted. In addition, four students will be delivering 10-minute, live plenary presentations via Zoom. To ensure that you have full access to the Canvas site, you must RSVP to attend this event. Once you RSVP, you will be able to view presenters’ recordings, ask questions, and engage in dialogue via the Canvas discussion board function.

Please RSVP here to attend SURS 2020!

Those who RSVP will be added to the Canvas course the morning of September 14^th. Please check your email or log in to Canvas to accept the invitation. Event details are available here.

Mark your calendars to join us for this exciting opportunity to celebrate undergraduate excellence at OSU!