Good morning,

This message is for graduate students. If you are a faculty advisor, please forward this onto your students as not all of them may be subscribed to the CER listserv (although now would be a good time to urge them to subscribe to the listserv as well). Thank you.

I am writing to announce the 2013 CER Graduate Student Conference to be held here at Miami University in Oxford, OH from July 26-28, 2013. Approximately 40 CER graduate students  from across the U.S. will gather at Miami University for a weekend conference to share their research projects and developing emerging networks with peers. The conference will begin on Friday July 26th at 5pm and end Sunday afternoon, July 28th by 1pm.

This conference is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a cohort of CER scholars who will seek positions in chemistry departments conducting research about the teaching and learning of chemistry. This workshop is one outreach/dissemination vehicle of the larger grant. The grant will cover travel, lodging, and meals for graduate students during this workshop.

The conference has been held twice before in 2009 and 2011. Briefly put, the focus of the first (2009) CER Graduate Student Conference was an introduction to the primary professional organizations influencing funding and publication in CER. There were workshops about assessment and peer-review of both grants and journal publications. The focus of the second (2011) CER grad student conference was to highlight the spectrum of career choices that students with degrees in CER have to choose from. The conference included a panel of colleagues in CER at a variety of institutions and offered workshops on job search strategies and preparation (such as CV, research plans, interviews, etc.) At both conferences, all graduate students in attendance presented their own research in poster sessions. You can learn more about the previous meetings at

http://chemistry.miamioh.edu/bretzsl/cergsc/

This summer we will "repeat" the 2009 workshop focusing on peer review with interactive workshops on assessment, grants, and journal publications (by interactive, I mean graduate students will have the opportunity to review proposals and journal articles, participate in mock peer reviews, etc. - not just sit and listen passively to someone tell you what you ought to do someday once you get to be a professor). Each workshop is 75 minutes and offered three times over the weekend so that each student can participate in all three. All graduate students will be asked to bring a poster describing their research, no matter how preliminary their project or findings. There will be plenary presentations on CER & curriculum development, CER & project evaluation, and CER collaborations with other disciplines (physics, math, etc.), and also a Q&A panel discussion involving all the CER faculty who will be in attendance.

We hope to offer the workshop on careers for a second time in the summer of 2014 as the NSF grant comes to a close. It is my hope that these activities will afford numerous opportunities for graduate students to develop a significant professional presence in the CER community well before graduation, and hopefully thereby contribute to a significant reduction in the "incubation" period that many new assistant professors experience.

To apply to the conference, please go to http://chemistry.miamioh.edu/bretzsl/cergsc/2013/ and click on "Application Process"

Applications completed by April 5, 2013 will receive priority consideration. Both the 2009 and the 2011 conferences were filled to capacity. A wait list will be generated in the event that someone who was accepted must cancel. Not all students on the 2009 and 2011 wait lists were able to be accommodated, so you are urged to apply by the priority deadline.

Sincerely,

Stacey

• • • • • •
Stacey Lowery Bretz • Volwiler Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry
Miami University • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry • Oxford, OH 45056
513-529-3731 • [log in to unmask] • http://chemistry.miamioh.edu/bretzsl