My first paper as a faculty member! Was a lot of fun working w/Tom Kuntzleman, Dean Campbell, & James Hurst on a new oscillating rxn for students to use in lab. You can see, hear, & measure the oscillations, which my students loved! Let me know if you need a PDF copy! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thrilled to have receive this fellowship to help add new skills to the chemistry curriculum that will help my students become better scientists! And thanks to the college for highlighting it! www.kzoo.edu/news/faculty...

I gotta say I find a lot of AI discourse around higher ed very confusing. "if ChatGPT can write your essays is college even worth it?" did people think math teachers were assigning problem sets because *they* couldn't figure out the answers?

I am happy and tired after an awesome week of learning with the MolSSI Act-CMS group. And I regret nothing 🤣

Lesson learned from the MolSSI ACT-CMS workshop: If @cvollbrecht.bsky.social invites you to the hotel lobby for an evening 'work' session after dinner, don't bother bringing your laptop and be ready to be up past your bedtime

Two possible reasons for this are: 1.) Women, POC and/or disabled people are more likely to do equity oriented work 2.) Women, POC and/or disabled people have been marked as DEI regardless of what they do The government will try to point to the former reason when it is in reality the latter

📣🧪 $25k grants for those who: 1. are working on research on STEM and education (including AI and CS, graduate education and MSIs, and scholarship that aims to reduce inequality), and 2. have had a recently terminated or cancelled grant from NSF. Early-career scholars prioritized

A lot is wrong in the world, but a student told me they look forward to office hours every week and I'm holding that close for the day.

This is a new image from #JWST. The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way. Everything else is a galaxy. Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.

It's really ok to say "I am not well-informed enough about this news item that people are discussing to feel like my opinion will contribute meaningfully to the discussion, and therefore I will choose to say nothing."

Students often talk with friends & fam about climate, @lizbarnes.bsky.social + colleagues find. But they tend to go heavy on the stats & facts, and don't know how to bring up solutions. They rarely learn how to have effective conversations, and would love training & practice. Well, guess what! 🧵

If you visit the Upper Peninsula of Michigan & go to the shores of Lake Superior at night, be sure to bring a long-wave UV light source so you can hunt for fluorescent Yooper Stones. "Yooper" here is a play on 'U.P.' (Upper Peninsula), but they're rocks that contain a fluorescent mineral, sodalite.

Hi all, I'm hiring a junior specialist/research technician for my lab at UCSC. An ideal applicant would be an undergraduate who would like more research experience before applying for grad school but all are welcome to apply 🧪 recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF01882

For any REI members who may not realize there is a Board election, or that it is contentious, see this. I ended up supporting one and not supporting the other two. do your research, make your call and VOTE.

Does anyone have a running list of universities that have paused or slashed graduate admissions? We’ll add it to ours if it doesn’t exist

Hey folks-- If you're a recent (or soon-to-be) analytical chem PhD, or if you know of one... We're hiring a 1-year VAP as sabbatical replacement. We don't do a national search for 1-year positions; it's completely word of mouth. DM me if you want details. #ChemSky

Extremely disappointed to see HHMI decide to kill their Inclusive Excellence program, including terminating the current IE3 awards to over a hundred institutions effective this year in the middle of a 6-year grant. I was hoping HHMI (and other private funders) would continue to lead the way.

Way too much going on in the world. So here’s a #funnyfriday from our dept hallway where we put up a new chemistry joke each week. And yes there is a backstory to the crepe paper horse

Another day of checking the news post-coffee and wanting to scream.

I used to work for an elected official as the person who answered their emails. I can tell you from personal experience, if even twenty or thirty people all call an official in a day, they start panicking. This stuff does help.

What can you do? Talk loudly about what government actually does for you. Call your reps and tell them to protect federal research and to make government work for all Americans. Write op-eds. Talk about the medical research that saved your life. Share your stories. Help people make the connections.

Fellow scientists, please consider speaking w/ media about what this means for "regular Americans." The link below is to contact a reporter who's collecting stories about the unfolding NIH situation - pls share anonymously or on record. @anniewaldman.bsky.social www.propublica.org/people/annie...

Saw people posting on this and was hoping they were isolated incidents… but nope, it’s real and it’s bad www.science.org/content/arti...

Day 5 of a 3 day weekend. And I don't teach on Thursdays...

Local government and elections have a lot of power on communities….just another reminder

Haven’t had a coffee shop workday in a while and it’s bringing me a lot of joy and productivity this morning. Most impressive is maybe the fact that I even had a morning without meetings.

I am extremely excited to announce that for the first time ever, Skype a Scientist is offering mini-grants to support IRL science communication!! Communicating science out in our communities is critical. We want to enable others to get their projects off the ground! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Happy to announce I will be guest editing a special issue highlight PUI research! Please share axial.acs.org/cross-discip...

My partner (a biologist) just asked me (the chemist) if it was cooler to root for a "really smart bird or an alloy" and we are now rooting for different teams in this football game (which neither of us had strong opinions on until 5 minutes ago).

I have my first students graduating (all undergrads) from my lab this year. I'm trying to think of some fun graduation traditions for the lab! What are everyone's favorite traditions they have/have seen?

It's not to early to start thinking about how you will contribute to #BCCE2026! We have six #forward looking Conference Contexts around which programming will focus. What symposia would you like to see associated with these Contexts? #chemistry #chemsky #ChemEd #ChemEdResearch

The meeting you didn't realize you were stressed about til it was over is either the best or worse kind of stress. Like no wonder I couldn't focus all morning even though I told myself I wasn't worried. Verdict is still out. But I am glad it is over

We have winners! Well done everyone & thank you for sharing your festival creations! There were many great ideas this year for the theme of "Complex Molecules" Check them out in the link here, and follow the hashtag #Chemistree and #OChemistree ochemistree.wordpress.com/2024/12/18/o...

"Stop asking why schools don't have bulletproof glass and metal detectors at all the doors. Ask why schools have to. That's the question that needs to be asked,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes

Posting this cartoon every once in a while for anyone struggling with imposter syndrome. I think it's a really helpful perspective. I don't know who originally made this, please add a link if you do. 🧪

Note of appreciation for the people that don't wait until the first week of the term to schedule our weekly meetings with >5 people. Hard enough to find a time even before everyone has office hours and other meetings scheduled in.

I will never pass up posts about lab safety gone wrong, in part bc there are always more stories in the replies. 🧪

New paper out! We show that heart cockles use bundled fiber optic cables to transmit light through "skylights" in their shell for their photosynthetic algae. The skylights filter out harmful UV radiation. These coral analogues are cool critters!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Science friends 🧪🌎🦑, @altmetric.com tracks Bluesky posts now! Quote or reply to this post with a link to the paper you’re best known for or most proud of, and a brief plain-language summary of what you found and why it matters! Let’s fill Bluesky with SCIENCE!

Discussion point that came up with a group of pchem instructors today but applies to a lot of educators. What exactly are we trying to teach when we say we are teaching problem solving? Thoughts?

This is one of those weeks where I love the trimester system. (Our classes & finals wrapped up before Thanksgiving). Making note of this now to remember when we are still having classes in June. For now though, writing, emails, & deep thinking time on the couch at home with snow outside is so nice.

I was deeply disappointed by the lack of nature/science/climate/enviro on many major end-of-year book lists—so I decided to make my own! Introducing: ✨🎁📚 The 2024 Holiday Gift Guide to Nature & Science Books ✨🎁📚 Please share: Let's make this go viral in time for Black Friday / holiday shopping!

Speaking of clicking links to articles I’ve written about books, NPR’s Books We Love 2024 is live! I have a ton of recs in here. 🧵 apps.npr.org/best-books/#...

“May you all be rated above the mean”

For even more, @elliscrawford.bsky.social has done an amazing job collecting up the different chemistry starter packs 👏