The Erlenmeyer Flask « Where diverse minds inspire endless innovation.

Students take OSU Chemistry online for a variety of reasons. This month, we focus on Angela Courchesne, an experienced high school teacher who needed additional credits in Chemistry to advance her career. Here is Angela’s story:

I have been a teacher in the state of Connecticut for 20 years and I am seeking an additional cross-endorsement in Chemistry. I am presently certified in grades 7-12 biology and 7-12 general science. I took the Praxis certification exam (which is used by a majority of states in the US) and passed it, then sent my credentials to the state education department to see what I would need to obtain my certification. They told me I needed 7 additional chemistry credits to satisfy the requirements necessary for certification, so I am taking them through OSU Ecampus.

These online courses are perfect for those working full time. I received my Master’s degree in Education online through another university. It was perfect: no running trying to get to class on time, and you can schedule your studies around your work schedule. During my work for my Master’s degree, I was married with no kids, but now with 2 children we are a busy family, and OSU’s online courses have worked out well. They are best for someone who can have the discipline to sit down and get their work done bit by bit; if you are a procrastinator, you can get overwhelmed quickly because there is a lot to cover. If I am in need of other classes, I will certainly look towards Oregon State University Ecampus Chemistry again. Also, I would highly recommend these classes for others in a similar situation as mine.

The Teva Pharmaceuticals Scholars grants program will begin accepting proposals on March 16th. Proposals are due by May 1st.

The Teva Pharmaceuticals Scholars grants program is administered by the ACS Office of Research Grants with funding provided by Teva Pharmaceuticals. The program is a philanthropic grant program that supports academic researchers in the fields of organic and medicinal chemistry.

Award Information
Amount: $100,000 per year for 3 years
Number of awards: 3
Award period: September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2018

Eligibility
An applicant must be a recently-tenured faculty member of a PhD-granting department in the United States.

Research Area and Evaluation Criteria
Applications for the Teva Pharmaceuticals Scholars grants must propose research in the area of organic chemistry, with potential or direct connections with medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry, such that the successful results would be of potential practical benefit to the discovery of organic compounds useful as human medicines. Proposals are evaluated on: a) scientific merit, creativity and novelty; and b) addressing unexplored fields in organic and/or medicinal chemistry. General aspects of research proposals will also be considered, such as: Is the project achievable within the time frame? Are the personnel and facilities adequate? Does the applicant consider and address potential problems?

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/funding-and-awards/grants/teva-pharmaceuticals-scholars-grants.html

Multiple submissions are allowed assuming separate PIs. The Foundation Services office can assist in the proposal writing process http://osufoundation.org/foundation_services/.

teva_appl_2015b

Request for Proposals in Support of Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.* Open textbooks and course materials are digital in format and made freely available online. Free and open textbooks and course materials are being developed in many disciplines at a fast and growing rate and are funded by organizations such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Oregon State University is committed to supporting this endeavor. To that end, Open Oregon State is a unit that has been created within Extended Campus to assist faculty in the research, use and creation of open educational resources.

Open Oregon State and the office of Summer Session are partnering to pilot a program to encourage the use of open textbooks and other course materials in order to address textbook/course material affordability for our students.

Proposals for the use of open educational textbooks and course materials for use in a face-to-face Corvallis or Hatfield Summer Session course are now being accepted.

Funding for accepted proposals is up to $1,000 per course.

Open Oregon State will assist faculty in finding and evaluating suitable open textbooks and course materials for their Summer Session course. Summer Session agrees to highlight courses that have adopted OERs at no cost to students. The faculty member agrees to use the open textbook and/or course materials in their Summer Session course.
In addition, the faculty member agrees to submit a 1-2 page review of the textbook/course materials that were used in the course, addressing the suitability of the materials for use in future courses using these review criteria. This RFP and the Review Criteria are also attached.

For more information, contact:

Dianna Fisher                                    Claire Cross
Open Oregon State                            OSU Summer Session
dianna.fisher@oregonstate.edu      claire.cross@oregonstate.edu
541-737-8658                                   541-737-3107

*Defined by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
OOS_Summer RFP 2-19-15

Open Materials Review Criteria 2_13_15

Name: Sean M. Burrows, PHD

Area of Study / Position Title: Assistant Professor: bioanalytical chemistry, laser spectroscopy, innovations in biosensor and instrumentation technologies, and cellular analysis.

Why chemistry? (What about it initially interested you?): Curiosity, forensic science, and DNA sequencing at Tufts University as a freshman in high school. In addition, chemistry was the only subject I was any good at in high school and college.

Research focus (in non-science terms) or basic job duties? Our laboratory focuses on the innovation of biosensors and laser-based technologies for qualitative and quantitative analysis of biomarkers in biological systems. More specifically, we aim to image cellular regulatory biomarkers indicative of disease (cancer) development and progression. Providing diagnostic tools and discovering answers to fundamental questions about molecular regulation of diseases and cancers through sensing and imaging is a major interest to our group. Ultimately, our group aims to bridge bioanalytical chemistry, laser spectroscopy, and molecular biology to solve complex biological problems.

One thing you truly love about your job? Working with and training students in chemistry, watching students learn and make discoveries on their own, contributing to the community through innovation and discovery, and playing with lasers.

One interesting/strange factoid about yourself. I used to restore antique stoves from the late 1880’s to early 1940’s.

Name: Chong Fang

Area of Study / Position Title: Physical Chemistry, Assistant Professor

Why chemistry? (What about it initially interested you?): Understanding how everything works always fascinates me. Physical chemistry and chemical physics provide myriad powerful tools to reveal the mechanism during the transformation between molecular species.

Research focus (in non-science terms) or basic job duties? The main theme of my research group is to investigate the structural dynamics basis of functions performed by all kinds of molecules in biological systems and novel materials. Ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy enables us to capture vivid molecular “movies” of chemistry in action with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions.

One thing you truly love about your job? Our research is at the forefront of the field and the experimental protocol is still being developed. That gives us a sense of urgency and pride in bringing new ideas into our experiments, grasping unexpected discoveries and making sense of them. It is truly exciting to have the freedom to design, explore, execute, disseminate, revise, improve, and make an impact on the world surrounding us.

One interesting/strange factoid about yourself. I like seafood. I want to cook more and try different flavors in the future.

Fang & Hochstrasser 2012 — This precious picture was taken in my lab during Prof. Robin Hochstrasser’s Linus Pauling Lecture Series in OSU Chemistry (October 2012). He was my Ph.D. advisor in Univ. of Pennsylvania, and I treasure everything that he taught me in graduate school. Though he passed away in February 2013 at the age of 82, his legacy continues in numerous research labs around the world.

Online student Justin Reed shares his story about how OSU Ecampus made a difference in his life:

At some point towards the end of my pursuit of my bachelor’s in electrical engineering I realized that I was not in love with what I was doing. I really liked the science and the problem solving side of it, however I just could not find the passion that I was hoping to find in a life long career. At the time, my wife and I had just decided to start a family in the near future so I did what any responsible husband/father would do and I finished my degree and I went to work as an Electrical Engineer at the Idaho National Lab.

After a couple years of working in the industry, I again was feeling unfulfilled with my work. I quickly realized that what I was missing was human interaction. From past experiences I knew that I loved working with people in all aspects of the human experience. I knew that I would never be happy working with inanimate objects. So, I started to think about which careers could allow me to use science, problem solve, AND work with people on a daily basis. What had never been obvious to me before, quickly became so, as I realized that a career in medicine would fulfill all these objectives.

By this time in my life I was 28 years old, had a third child on the way, and there was not a college or university in my town. I was painfully aware that as an older student from non-traditional background trying to get accepted to medical school I would face some obstacles; time being one of the biggest ones. I had a couple of pre-requisites that had to be completed in order to apply. At the time, in addition to my growing family, I was working 50-60 hours a week. I realized this would not be easy and the timeline would have to work out just right for me to have a chance. I laid out a plan that had me starting medical school exactly two years later. Everything would have to fall into place exactly right in order to accomplish this goal.

My work schedule forced me to take most of my classes online or at night. This was a problem for me because I was living in rural Idaho and there are not of options in that area. In fact the only university in the area was 45 minutes away and did not offer Organic Chemistry either online or at night. I started to panic! I absolutely needed to take Organic Chemistry that first semester for my plan to work. I jumped online and quickly found out that Oregon State University offered the class through their Ecampus! I applied and registered for the class. I knew my plan was going to work.

About three weeks before the start of my class I received a call from the Ecampus Coordinator, Kim Thackray. She explained to me that while I had taken one year of Chemistry (a pre-requisite for O-Chem), one of the semesters I had taken would not fulfill the requirement and I would not be allowed to start O-Chem that semester. I would have to take an additional semester of general chemistry and then I could take O-Chem. Due to the course schedules, this would set my plan back an entire year. I was devastated!

The very next day, Kim called me back. She said that she understood how important taking O-Chem that fall was and had taken it into her own hands to do some research for me. Kim found a 3-week long condensed Chemistry class that started in two days and would meet my pre-requisite requirement. She had already talked to the professor, showed them my undergrad transcript, explained my situation to them, and arranged for me to have a seat in the class if I wanted it! Amazing! My plan was back on track.

Today I have four children (yes, you read that right) and I am a first year medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine. I absolutely love what I am doing. I feel like becoming a physician is my calling in life. It is all I dreamed it would be. As I think back through all the classes I had to take, studying for and taking the MCAT twice, all the applications and interviews and finally getting accepted to UWSOM, I realize that without the extra effort put forth by the Ecampus folks, specifically Kim, there is a very good chance that I would not be where I am today. From my experience, it is not very often that someone will go out of their way for someone that they don’t know, much less for someone that they have never met. Especially when it comes to helping an out of state student find unique ways to fulfill their dreams. OSU’s Ecampus made a difference for me.

A Tribute to Melissa M. Schultz

(April 26, 1977-February 7, 2015)

I met Melissa Schultz in the Fall of 1999 when she entered OSU’s PhD program in Analytical Chemistry. In the Spring of 2000, Melissa became a member of Professor Jennifer Field’s and my research groups. At the much too early age of 37, Melissa was killed Saturday evening, 7 February 2015, in a two-vehicle accident a little north of The College of Wooster in Ohio where she had reached the rank of Associate Professor of Chemistry. Behind this stark fact lies the story of a wonderful person who became an excellent scientist, an outstanding college teacher, and an ardent champion of science among elementary and middle school students, particularly young women.

At Oregon State, Melissa was an exemplary graduate student. She was solid academically and a dynamo in her research. During her time as a graduate student she received the American Chemical Society Environmental Chemistry Graduate Student Award, the David Shoemaker Award for Excellence in Graduate Research, and the Shirley R. Kuse Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Engineering. It was her personality and energy, however, that for me set her apart as a special student. Melissa energized everyone in the laboratory. She cultivated an esprit de corps, catalyzed a special chemistry if you will, between the students, post docs, and technical staff that were part of the mass spectrometry laboratory between 2000 and 2004. She organized social and athletic events. She was a leader and an inspiration to her fellow students. Melissa carried her passion for science and teaching with her after she graduated from OSU. Her post-doctoral work on antidepressants in environmental and biological matrices at the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Laboratory in Denver (2004-2006), where she was a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow, was highlighted in Nature News and Science News. By all accounts, she was an outstanding, motivating teacher as well as an innovative researcher at the College of Wooster, and her leadership carried over into the city of Wooster’s community where she worked to inspire young people, especially girls, to study science.

Melissa’s death is a profound loss to all at OSU who knew her. It is my hope that her story will inspire all students of science, present and future, as did the example she set while she lived.

Those wishing to learn more of Melissa’s life and family can do so by reading obituaries at http://www.mcintirebradhamsleek.com/obituaries/dr-melissa-m-schultz and http://www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2015/february/obituary-melissaschultz/. A memorial Mass was held for Melissa on Saturday, February 14, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Mary Catholic Church, 527 Beall Ave., Wooster, Ohio.

Doug Barofsky, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry

Name: Marita Barth

Area of Study / Position Title: Instructor

Why chemistry? (What about it initially interested you?): I love science and figuring out how things work. Chemistry is fun because you can apply it to so many different aspects of life to understand things better.

Research focus (in non-science terms) or basic job duties? I primarily teach Ecampus courses. Mostly I teach in the general chemistry for non-majors sequence, but I also teach environmental chemistry.

One thing you truly love about your job? I love the opportunity to help students – many of whom are terrified of chemistry – face their fears and work their way to success in the material. I *especially* love it when they come to appreciate or even enjoy the subject matter along the way.

One interesting/strange factoid about yourself. I did my BS at OSU, but did a year’s study abroad in New Zealand. It was amazing.

Originally published in Terra Magazine – January 30, 2015 – by Doug Keszler

I AM OFTEN ASKED ABOUT THE STEPS leading to establishment of the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry headquartered at Oregon State University.

The story starts with the glimmer of an idea that emerged in the mid-1980s. The idea took hold in the 1990s, and culminated in 2011 with the establishment of a multi-institutional research center dedicated to developing the next generation of electronic circuits — circuits that are cleaner, cheaper and faster to make for the ever-changing demands of industry and consumers. Driving the center’s formation was a critical mass of relationships, philanthropy, distinctive science, strategic planning, numerous institutional partnerships and opportunities for leveraging.

A PARTNERSHIP BLOSSOMS

In the beginning, there was the OSU Foresight! Campaign, a modest fundraising effort that provided startup packages for three faculty hires in the mid-1980s — a “cluster hire” focused on building the area of materials science. At the time, materials science was a barely emerging field, making OSU an early player. John Wager in electrical engineering and I were two of the hires. We rarely interacted, however, until the mid-1990s. Our collaboration, combining fundamental chemistry and electrical engineering, eventually blossomed and formed the basis for the unique research now done in the Center. Read more…

Name: Doug Keszler

Area of Study / Position Title: Distinguished Professor of Chemistry; Director, Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry (CSMC); Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, College of Science.

Why chemistry? (What about it initially interested you?): My father worked as an engineer for IBM, so I was exposed to high-tech from a very early age. That exposure led to an intense interest in the chemistry of materials.

Research focus (in non-science terms) or basic job duties? I am responsible for the research, education, outreach, and diversity activities of the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry, a Phase-II Center for Chemical Innovation; we annually support approximately 100 researchers. For the College of Science, I am helping to grow the research enterprise and enhance graduate education.

One thing you truly love about your job? Working with a broad network of colleagues and students in academics and industry.

One interesting/strange factoid about yourself. I am a retired shepherd. In past times, I herded sheep with my border collie – Kate. (We also won national titles in Dog Agility)

The Erlenmeyer Flask

Where diverse minds inspire endless innovation.

Focus on ECampus

Funding Opportunity: Teva Pharmaceuticals Scholars Grants

Grant Opportunity for Summer Session Faculty

Who Am I? Wednesday – Sean Burrows

Who Am I? Wednesday – Chong Fang

Focus on Ecampus – Justin Reed

Melissa M Schultz – In Memorium

Who Am I? Wednesday – Marita Barth

How OSU became the headquarters for re-imagining the computer chip

Who Am I? Wednesday – Doug Keszler

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