First Cottrell Scholar Regional Meeting Reinforces Community, Connectedness
The first Cottrell Scholar Regional Meeting, held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign April 17th, drew more than 15 Scholars along with members of their research groups for the intimate, one-day session. The meeting featured brief presentations dealing with the integration of research and educational activities and two round-table discussions, one on career issues and the other on education and teaching.
The meeting was organized by Cottrell Scholars Cathy Murphy (CS 1996) and Martin Gruebele (CS 1995) and supported with funds from RCSA and the University of Illinois.
The purpose of these meetings is to reinforce a sense of community and connectedness, according to RCSA President Dan Linzer. “Cottrell Scholars frequently remark that their community is so important because of the shared values of combining innovative teaching and research, and the opportunity to discuss scientific questions from multiple disciplinary perspectives,” Linzer said. “The regional meeting was an idea to help Cottrell Scholars maintain and build on that community beyond the annual meeting in Tucson and the one-on-one, typically electronic communications that occur throughout the year.”
The event began with a pre-survey by I-STEM to record a baseline of expectations, and then welcoming remarks by RCSA representative, Silvia Ronco, and host Scholars Gruebele and Murphy, both of the University of Illinois. Gruebele is Illinois’ James R. Eiszner Professor of Chemistry and Head of the Chemistry Department, as well as Professor of Physics and Professor of Biophysics and Computational Biology; Murphy is the Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry the Deputy Director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and a member of the RCSA Board of Directors.
Presenters included Mats Selen (CS 1996), University of Illinois; Jill Millstone (CS 2015), University of Pittsburgh; Bradley Smith (CS 1994), University of Notre Dame; and Jason Gillmore (CS 2006), Hope College. They each spoke for about 15 minutes on their research/teaching efforts and then took questions.
The presentations were followed by a buffet lunch and informal networking. Participants also were able to view posters and discuss science with a number of students observing the meeting.
During the afternoon discussion on career issues, faculty inflection points came under scrutiny, specifically when might it be a good time to start high-risk/high-reward projects. The overall sense seemed to be that when it comes to tenure and promotion, departments are demonstrating more appreciation for collaborations, as opposed to focusing only on individual contributions, and that, as long as young faculty don’t put all their eggs in the same basket, it’s increasingly acceptable to work on risky projects, even during the pre-tenure stage.
Also, some participants mentioned that providing research opportunities to undergraduates is a great way to build up preliminary data for innovative projects, since these students are primarily focused on learning how to conduct research and much less concerned about obtaining publishable results quickly.
Later in the afternoon, the educational panel featured some “down-to-earth” discussions. Gruebele and Murphy said they have started to think about a potential chemistry curriculum reform at Illinois with fewer traditional courses while adding “cafeteria-style” courses to give students options to combine areas of study not traditionally covered in the undergraduate curriculum. One example would be materials chemistry, which currently is dominant in research but neglected in coursework.
Gruebele also said that often current textbooks seem disjointed and lack a logical flow to build knowledge, unlike the gradual and elegant approach taken by Linus Pauling in his classic, The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry.
“Of course, this type of curriculum reform is not an easy task in a large department!” Gruebele noted.
There were also conversations about modern educational approaches, especially from Primarily Undergraduate Institution faculty. Along those lines:
-- New Cottrell Scholar Brett VanVeller (CS 2018), chemistry, Iowa State, talked about his CS educational plan on comparative learning. He has begun a collaboration with an Iowa State psychologist.
-- Gillmore, a chemist, showed extensive data on the benefits of using Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) methods and pointed out that Hope College was one of the first institutions to pioneer these methods, back in the 1970s.
-- Kathryn Haas (CS 2016), chemistry, Saint Mary’s College, said she uses 3D printing (as part of a CS Collaborative project) in her classroom. It enables bioinorganic chemistry students to build their own models of fairly complicated structures to look at molecular interactions.
-- Smith, Notre Dame’s Emil T. Hofman Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who brought two young colleagues along to the meeting, talked about the use of Lightboard,a technology that helps create visually stimulating videos, both for online courses and flipped classes. Lightboard was developed at Northwestern University, and is currently being used in several courses at Notre Dame to good effect, Smith said.
Ronco noted that a new Cottrell Scholar Collaborative publication on CURE is coming soon and will be distributed freely to the Cottrell Scholar community and beyond.
She summarized the first CS Regional Meeting by saying: “The experience was very collegial and felt like getting together with old friends while meeting a couple of newbies. It really felt like a family gathering.”
Other Cottrell Scholars not previously mentioned who were in attendance included Boyd Goodson (CS 2005), chemistry and biochemistry, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; Nancy Makri (CS 1994), chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Chad Rienstra (CS 2005), chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Levi Stanley (CS 2016), chemistry, Iowa State University; and Wilfred van der Donk (CS 2000), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Moving forward, the expectation is to have two regional meetings a year at rotating locations, to enhance Cottrell Scholar connectivity and potential collaborations. Stay tuned for the next location and date!
