It’s 65 degrees and raining here in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It doesn’t feel much like summer…yet. But my research students get here next week, and then it won’t matter what the weather is like. It will be SUMMERTIME in the lab.
Why is summer so awesome?
No grading.
No faculty meetings.
No 8am organic chemistry labs.
Just plenty of time to think about our research and actually DO the experiments we want to do. My NSF-RUI proposal was just (finally) funded. I’m ecstatic. I’m thrilled that we will finally have the instrumentation we need to move our work forward, and that someone thought it was worthwhile to fund us. Nailing the undergraduate research niche is hard…harder than I thought. Doing high impact work that is accessible to undergrads and that you can publish at a rate that won’t get you scooped…well, I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Part of the NSF funding allows me to refresh my teaching lab, BCM 341 to bring in new original projects – so, this summer I’ll be working on rebooting that course.
TTFN
