Wandering through campus (as a @PhiBetaKappa Visiting Scholar)

I recently finished the last of my 9 campus visits courtesy of the Phi Beta Kappa Society during the 59th year of the Visiting Scholars Program. Wow! These visits included 6 primarily undergraduate colleges, in order: the College of Wooster, University of the South (Sewanee), College of St. Benedict & St. John's University, Willamette University, Bucknell University, and Hamilton College. The last three were research intensive institutions, in order: Johns Hopkins University, Kansas State University, and the University of Oklahoma. From the Society's marketing materials, the Visiting Scholars Program "sends distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines to participate for two days in the life of colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. During each two-day visit, a scholar takes part in class discussions, meets informally with students and faculty, and gives a free lecture open to the public." The chapters were sent information about me, my available dates, and possible lectures on topics accessible to undergraduates or the public. After a matching process, I filled my schedule with the nine sites listed above. The only way to make seven two-day visits possible in the Spring was to obtain release from teaching. However the number of contact hours (with over 20 hours per visit) was much greater than the sixty-ish hours I would normally have spent on a single course. Though these numbers didn't make sense form a work load perspective, the experience was transformative and in a word, priceless!

I was routinely asked by the chapters if theirs was the best visit and/or what the other schools did to make the visit special. My answer to them and to you is that all of them were equally outstanding. No jokes about Lake Wobegone, please. Each of my visits included unique and different elements that were special about the individual institutions. My visits to primarily undergraduate institutions allowed me to walk in the shoes of their faculty. The level of interaction and attention to their undergraduate students is amazing and enriching for students and professors alike. My visits to the research intensive institutions differed remarkably from my usual visits. In those, I typically meet almost exclusively with faculty and a few graduate students. As a consequence of the PBK lens, my hosts made sure that I interacted almost exclusively with undergraduate students in classrooms, in small-group discussions, and in one-on-one mentoring events. It was remarkable to see the depth and breadth of the students and the potential we have as educators to reach them if only we stop to say hello.

All of that would be enough to have made it worthwhile. But just as in those cheesy late-night commercials we sometimes stay up too late not to miss, there is more… I had an opportunity to extend my network of friends and colleagues with remarkable faculty across the country. I knew some of my chemistry hosts and their colleagues from previous activities, but most I did not. My bonds with new and old colleagues were much more strongly cemented through the intensity of the programs that they prepared for me. Meanwhile, many members of the PBK chapter hosting teams were from departments outside of chemistry, giving me the opportunity to learn and discuss a broader set of ideas with experts who I would not have seen otherwise. With them and the broad set of students, staff and faculty that attended my talks and sessions, I was able to share my work in theoretical and computational chemistry, and my work to advance diversity in academia. The latter also appear to have sparked many conversations that I believe will have an impact in their efforts to improve campus climate and diversity equity.

All to say that my term as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar was as enriching, if not more so, then a sabbatical concentrated at a single site. If ever you have a chance to do the same, I hope that you will not hesitate in saying yes!

"Have fun, fail often, don't die." — Mentoring Researchers in the Lab

The title paraphrases the bits of advice that Andrew Ellington gives to his undergraduates upon entering his research laboratory. I altered them slightly in my recent words of advice to a cohort of freshmen at the start of their college careers. The punch line (that is the one that gets the laugh) is "don't die" and that one I definitely kept. It's funny because it echoes the fear many of us have in entering a laboratory. There's real danger there because solutions can spill, equipment can break and chemical reactions can go awry in all sorts of ways. There's also psychic danger because there's the possibility that old dogmas will be shattered by your findings. Both of these require a bit of safety training and a prepared mind.

Students can't allow themselves to be paralyzed by the fear of making some mistake, small or large in a laboratory. In order to motivate my students to move forward, I encourage them to summarize ALL their findings during our meetings, not just the ones that "worked." After all, the ones that didn't work may be just as instructive. If nothing else, a listing of all the failed (numerical) experiments shows me that they were busy doing something useful. The important thing is to understand a given experiment didn't work, at least in hindsight. If you can't explain it based on known theory, then there's the possibility that something new has come about. Doing this level of analysis, not included in the title's advice, is what makes the exploration done in the lab a science.

Mentoring freshmen and incoming transfer students at #GeorgiaTech #FASET

The Fall semester is starting this Monday at Georgia Tech. That means a whole new batch of undergraduate students is streaming in. To smoothen their transition to our university and increase the chance of their success and retention, Georgia Tech has created FASET. This funnily named acronym (Familiarization and Adaptation to the Surroundings and Environs of Tech) stands for a program that (in tandem with a few other support programs during the year) has increased first-year retention rate above 95%. It was a real privilege to be invited to serve on a faculty panel at FASET this year. Given the large size of our student body and the self-imposed space limitations of our auditoriums, Georgia Tech stages five such programs, each serving approximately 500 students and their parents. Typically, a faculty member participates in only one. Not knowing when to stop, I managed to serve in three of them. Sadly, the forum didn't give me a chance to hear their voices directly, but I did have a chance to see the excitement, enthusiasm and apprehension in their faces as I looked around the auditorium.

What was my advice?

1. First and foremost, students should recognize the power of the network of their peers. Both as students and alumni, they will have a common bond through their time at Tech. While in college, they can certainly help each other learn faster and more efficiently through study groups. After graduation, they can help each other accelerate their careers through continued collaboration. 
2. The single most important thing they can do to succeed is to GO TO CLASS. Most college lectures do not include an attendance component. However, student performance tends to correlate well with attendance. 
3. Students should interact with faculty, tutors, teaching assistants and other instructors as much as they can. We all post office hours, so go to them, don't be shy and ask for help on whatever you don't understand. If you wish to meet your instructor beyond posted office hours, then pay attention to whichever mode she or he suggests you use. Some instructors will be happy to receive texts on the classroom bulletin board system, others will prefer drop-in visits at their office and others will prefer e-mail, but few will prefer all of these. 
4. As you ponder the choice of your major, remember that this decision is primarily going to affect your time in college and your first job or post-graduate program. After that, through the typical 3-4 career changes that most people undergo, you will likely be working in jobs very different from your major. So DON'T PANIC. You need only figure out what you will enjoy doing for the next 4-5 years. You might as well choose something that you like doing, and that you can do well.
5. Finally, my parting bits of advice were: "Be prepared, be engaged, stay the course, challenge your intellect, try new things, have fun, ... don't die."

Of course, these are simply a summary of the main points that I made. My actual presentation involved the type of discourse (with an audience in the several hundreds) that I learned from my use of active learning modalities. I had them raise their hands, talk to each other, repeat after me, and even laugh (sometimes). If nothing else, they might remember that they can listen to a group of professors for nearly an hour without falling asleep.