A Valuable Community of Support and Learning
For Mark Bussell, professor of chemistry at Western Washington University, being a part of the RCSA community has offered distinct benefits at different stages of his career.
When he wrote his first RCSA proposal in 1990 as a new assistant professor, it was turned down. But RCSA’s program officer at the time talked him through the proposal, helping him chart a new direction and turn a weak proposal into a strong one that was funded during the next round.
“I realized then that RCSA was a high-touch organization that values communication and advice to help faculty members,” he said. “It was a real lifeline for me as a new assistant professor who was feeling a little isolated, and it changed the trajectory of my career.”
Early on, Bussell said, being part of the RCSA community offered the benefits of guidance, funding, and connections to the broader community of science researchers at undergraduate institutions, not just those in his field.
Later on, serving on RCSA’s Science Advisory Committee from 2005 to 2011, Bussell experienced a “tremendous trajectory of learning about how the broader research community works and how grant-making decisions function in support of research.”
These days Bussell is active serving on the Cottrell Scholar Program Committee. He believes RCSA’s teacher-scholar model, “creating a focused community of really talented researchers and educators,” is tremendously valuable, especially for undergraduate institutions that are a part of it.
Receiving Cottrell College Science Awards early in his career and later being named a Cottrell Scholar “nucleated the idea of the importance of mentored undergrad research at my university,” he said. His original RCSA award enabled him to do research that got crucial results, leading to a string of National Science Foundation research grants.
“The university took note of that, and we were able to go on and hire more faculty interested in research,” he said.
A department development proposal funded in 2000 by RCSA and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust “really helped us grow the culture around undergrad research, first in chemistry and then transferring the idea to other science departments,” he said.
This has benefited the university, which has gained a recruitment tool to attract talented students, as well as undergraduates who are able to grow as scientists, going on to great research careers of their own.
Bussell also said that his connections within the CS community have helped him pivot his research in a positive way in the last five years.
For the first 25 years of his research in surface and materials chemistry, he focused on removing impurities from fossil fuels. But thanks to his connections to others in the CS community who are quite active in renewable energy and suggested promising avenues of research, he has shifted to an emphasis on the development of new heterogeneous catalysts for the production of clean and renewable fuels.
Bussell said he is looking forward to this year’s virtual CS Conference sessions on the challenges of online teaching. Having previously recorded a few lectures only for snow days, he is now teaching both lectures and labs remotely.
“We will all have new experiences to share,” he said.
