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!

The OSU Advantage Accelerator is currently seeking proposals that describe technology-based projects in any discipline that will move OSU-owned technologies closer to commercialization. Proposals should describe a project that requires $15,000 or less of funding to achieve an important milestone(s) connected to commercialization. Proposals can include expenses for activities related to customer discovery, prototyping, student time, research, commercialization plan development and more. Each project may be awarded up to $15,000 and should span 9 months or less, beginning in October 2020. Proposals are due no later than 5 p.m. on Sept. 23. Read the full RFP here:https://advantage.oregonstate.edu/advantage-accelerator/funding-opportunities/aid-fund

Funding provided for teaching faculty to participate in The Fall 2020 Blended Faculty Learning Community. The group will use Canvas and meet via Zoom, and will focus on effective practices for blended learning and the use of educational technology. Sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning and Academic Technology. Join us: See the Call for Proposals.

NEW Fast track funding for developing COVID-19 biosensors for skin or oral cavities

Preapplications DUE Wednesday September 9, 2020, 5:00 pm

Full RFA attached

The Washington Entrepreneurial Research Evaluation & Commercialization Hub (WE-REACH) is announcing fast track funding for early-stage projects aimed at developing biosensors for COVID-19 open to researchers in the Pacific Northwest. This one-time opportunity through the NIH is part of the Emergency RADx-Rad initiative to detect the virus or other biomarkers in nasal and oral cavities or skin.

This funding is intended to support innovators with promising technologies and identified biomarkers for early-stage product concept development (R&D) by providing support and project tracking. Each applicant may request up to $434K for 2 years.

This funding is not for discovery research or for identification of new biomarkers. Biosensing devices are expected to target skin or the oral cavity as sampling sites. Skin biosensing designs must target detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs, i.e. scents or odors) emanating from skin in passive and noninvasive manner for use at point of care. In addition to VOCs, oral biosensing technologies may target a wealth of biological, chemical and physical biosignatures representative of SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or COVID-19 disease sampled from exhaled breath/droplets, saliva, and tissues in the oral cavity using a variety of detection schemes.

Projects must have the infrastructure to rapidly report study findings to the RADx-Rad Data Coordinating Center. Researchers applying to this funding opportunity are strongly encouraged to also review the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) funding opportunity (RFA-OD-20-019), 

Researchers apply through WE-REACH. Other RADx-Rad opportunities for small companies and institutional initiatives are below. Applicants in those categories apply directly to NIH.

https://www.washington.edu/we-reach/ (Pre-SBIR institutional researchers)

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-20-017.html (U18 for cooperative submissions)

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-20-020.html (R44 SBIR Phase II)

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-20-021.html (R42 STTR Phase II)

For more information and submission information see https://www.washington.edu/we-reach/

Student Technical Assistant

OSU Human Resources job posting #P06709SE. Recruitment closes Friday, September 11, 2020.

We are seeking to hire one student worker whose chief responsibility will be machine shop operations, maintenance and general facility support. This position requires a goal-driven self-starter capable of working independently while consistently meeting goals on schedule.

Student Operations Assistant

OSU Human Resources job posting #P06711SE. Recruitment closes Monday, September 14, 2020.

This recruitment will be used to fill up to three part-time (minimum 12 and maximum of 20 hours per week) Student Operations Assistant positions. Student workers will be members of the ATAMI Operations Team performing routine to complex tasks in support of ATAMI’s operational mission to administer a safe and secure facility.

I am a third-year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh contacting you on behalf of the Pitt-CMU ACS Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee. We are a group of chemistry and chemical engineering graduate students from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University who have been selected to organize a symposium at the Spring 2021 ACS National Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We invite you to our website for more information about our symposium and speakers, who are experts in the field of materials science (https://pitt-cmu-gsspc.github.io/).

We are contacting you in the hopes that you will share two excellent opportunities for your graduate students. We ask that you share the following information and attachments with the graduate students in your department. We are currently accepting applications for:

• The Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee for the Spring 2022 ACS National Meeting to be held in San Diego, California
• Graduate student travel grants to attend the Spring 2021 ACS National Meeting being held in San Antonio, Texas

The Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee is a unique opportunity for graduate students to learn how to organize and execute a symposium and make invaluable connections within and outside of academia. Communicating your research to the scientific community is important in not only moving science forward, but also in making connections and networking, yet funding to attend conferences can be difficult to come by, especially in these trying times.

Information on how to apply to either opportunity is attached. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions (pitt-cmugsspc@pitt.edu).

Thank you for your time!

Zoe Simon

Pitt-CMU GSSPC Finance Chair

We have (5) $1,500 awards available this year for students focused in chemistry and materials science.

Visit ereztech.com/award for full scholarship details.

The Office of Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, & the Arts  (Office of URSA) is excited to announce this year’s call for faculty submissions for the 2020-2021 URSA Engage Program, a program designed to provide first and second year students, and transfer students in their first year at OSU, opportunities to pursue research or a creative activity under the guidance of an OSU faculty mentor. 

The mentor summary submission form can be accessed at this link (see “Step 1”).

While we hope that undergraduates and mentors will be able to work together in-person during the 2020-2021 school year, we are planning for the possibility that students in the URSA Engage Program will be required to engage in research remotely. Click here for a collection of strategies that OSU mentors are currently using to keep their undergraduates engaged in research while working remotely (this is a live document – feel free to contribute if you have other ideas).

Below are the four major steps involved in selection for the URSA Engage Program. More detailed information about eligibility and deadlines can be found on our website.

1. Faculty submit the mentor summary form by October 19, 2020.
2. The opportunities submitted by faculty will be posted on our website for students to view on October 23^rd.
3. Students will read through mentor summaries and reach out to faculty mentors they are interested in working with. Students and faculty will then discuss shared interests and whether they want to work together on a project.
4. Faculty will ultimately decide which student(s) they will allow to move forward with an application to the URSA Engage Program (i.e. students cannot apply until they have a mentor secured).
5. Students who have secured a mentor will then apply to the URSA Engage Program. Student applications will be evaluated by the Office of URSA.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. We appreciate your partnership and willingness to mentor students early in their careers at OSU!