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Messages from Prof. Tyson

December 22nd 1:47 pm

Just a reminder that materials for the arsenic project are due by midnight on December 23rd. The materials in question are (a) a final report in the form of a journal article (just one from each group), (b) a report from each participant on the contributions of each member of your group (one or two sentences for each person is all that is needed); send this as an e-mail, and (c) also from each participant, a completed questionnaire (was circulated a few days ago and can be downloaded from the website); send this as an e-mail attachment.

If you have already submitted materials, you should have received an acknowledgment (if you submitted electronically). To my knowledge only one person has handed material in at my office and I was present when that happened.

If you have submitted something and I have not acknowledged it, please send again. For the group reports, I sent an acknowledgment to the person who submitted it.

Many thanks to all of you who have submitted material already.

Have an enjoyable break for the holiday season.

December 15th 1:15 pm

Here is the questionnaire that was mentioned in my ealier message of 12/12. It is also available at the website as a downloadable Word document. Please complete and return to me by midnight on Friday December 23rd. I would prefer to receive a Word document attached to an e-mail message, but you can print and put under my office door or in my mail box if you prefer.

Remember that submitting a "completed" (not all the questions apply to everyone involved) questionnaire is a requirement for getting a grade. If you don't submit the report on the activities and contributions of the group members or the questionniare (or the final report!), you get an INComplete.

Thanks to those of you who have already submitted a report on the group member activities.

I hope the end of the semester goes well for you, and that you have an enjoyable and productive break from academic studies over the holiday season.

December 12th 2:39 pm

Arsenic Independent Study. Reporting and Grading. Deadline Friday 12/23 (midnight)

There are 4 parts to this message. Be sure you read all of them. 1. Each group creates one report. 2. Each participant writes an evaluation of the contribution of other group members. 3. Each participant also answers some questions in an evaluation questionnaire that I will circulate separately. 4. I assign grades based on criteria described below.

Part 1. Each group should write a report of their project in the form of a short article in a chemistry journal. It should contain the following sections:

Title

Names and addresses of authors

Abstract

Introduction

Experimental

Results and Discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgments

References

The “Results and Discussion” section should include any tables and figures (including pictures) that are relevant. Each table should have a title (above it) and each figure should have a caption below it. You may want to include a figure in the experimental section if you include something that is best described by a picture.

Some further help on what each of these sections contains is available elsewhere on the website in the form of a detailed description of the various components of a manuscript that a graduate student might write for submission to a journal. There are also some examples of previous reports available at on site, though these are not offered as models.

The entire document should be submitted to me (tyson@chem.umass.edu) as a Microsoft Word document. Include your group number in the title of the document. Following minor editing if needed, I will convert this to a pdf file and post on the course website. The site will not disappear after the end of the semester.

Part 2. Each participant needs to submit (by e-mail) a confidential, signed (put your name and student ID# at the bottom) memorandum to me in which you explain (a) what your role in your group activities has been, and (b) what the contributions of the other undergraduate student members (from both Chem. 315 or Chem 288 and Chem. 111 or Chem 121) of the group have been. List each student by name and explain what he or she did (or did not) do. Include your name and group number in the title of the document.

Part 3. A questionnaire will be distributed later with some specific questions. There will also be an opportunity for you to provide unstructured feedback, if you wish, and you can indicate whether you would be interested in participating again at some future stage and what the format of any such participation might be.

Part 4. Grading. I do not plan to try to be discriminating in the grading other than as follows:

Full credit (A): a good faith effort to participate, taking a fair share of the workload, meeting with other members of the group, willing to cooperate, and submission of (a) a project report, (b) an evaluation of other members of the group and (c) a completed questionnaire.

Less than full credit (B): less than full participation, as defined by other members of the group,

Even less (C): minimal participation (as defined by other members of the group), uncooperative (as defined by other members of the group),

INC: no participation at all, or failure to submit one of the required reports. In due course, an “INComplete” will morph into an F, unless there is an intervention.

December 5th 5:32 pm

I hope you are still finding the aresenic project to be an enjoyable experience and are getting some interesting results from your investigations.

I have now fixed the diagrams in those proposals that had problems, though I am still not sure why some files have this problem and some don't (actually I am not sure how I fixed the problem as I eventually ended up inserting and them deleting another version of the picture/diagram that was in difficulty).

I have also uploaded the PowerPoint presentations from the meeting on November 21st. For some of these I made it so that the link opens a new page in the browser (of exactly the same size as the original page). Is this a useful feature? With the Netscape version I am using if the mouse is held down a menu appears from which one can select "open in new browser window". Let me know what you think about this and any other aspect of the website.

Your activities are being noticed. I received e-mail from a reseacher in Australia asking about removal of arsenic, and I was asked to attend a meeting in Bangladesh on Dec 11th. There is a long story attached to this, but the short version is "I am not going" so I will be around on December 12th.

We will meet as a group on Monday December 12th at 5:00 pm in GSMN 51 (same room as before). The agenda will be to receive progress reports on the results so far from each group, though group 8 will get a little extra time to give the overview of their activities as we didn't hear this on the 21st. We'll do a PowerPoint presentation as last time. Feel free to use the same material as before as a quick intro before moving on to the new stuff. Pictures are good. The presenter should be a group member who has not presented previously. As before, e-mail me the material in time to load on my computer and bring a version on a flash drive.

I'll send round another message soon describing the activites for the remainder of the semester.

November 15th 4:30 pm. 1. Every group has submitted a proposal and my first efforts at converting them to webpages are up on the website. As you will see, I still have problems with diagrams and pictures. I'll be fixing the problems over the next few days I hope.

2. Our next group meeting is on Monday November 21st in GSMN 51 (the room where we met before). This time the meeting will start at 5:00 pm. The agenda is to report back on research progress and so each group should select one person who will present the group's report. This should NOT be the same person who gave the report last time. This time the process will be a little "higher tech", and so each group should send me (or bring with you on a flash drive or CD) a short PowerPoint presentation and I'll bring my lap top and a projector.

The content of the report is (a) aim of the studies, (b) experiments proposed, and (c) results so far. The presentation should last about 3 or 4 minutes.

3. Thanks to those of you who expressed an interest in the presentation "On the Hill" in Washington, but there wasn't enough interest overall to make this a viable activity.

4. The next meeting after November 21st will be Monday December 12th, again at 5:00 pm in GSMN 51.

November 10th Please read the message below. If you would be prepared to go to Washington (at least partly at your own expense) to participate in this activity, then let me know immediately and I will submit material for consideration. I am a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research, so we are eligible to enter this competition. If we do enter and are selected, I will make a very serious effort to find funds to cover most of the expenses of the trip. I imagine there will be a limit to how many students can participate and so if more students are prepared to go, we'll have to get creative about a selection process.

Get back to me asap if you would be prepared to go.

Thanks,

JT
PS April 11th is a Tuesday (in 3rd week after return from spring break)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CUR Posters on the Hill
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:23:50 -0500
From: Robin Potochnik <curmember@cur.org>
To: tyson@chem.umass.edu

Dear Julian Tyson,

The Council on Undergraduate Research wishes to remind you that the 2006 Posters on the Hill will take place April 11, 2006 at the Rayburn House Office Building. Proposals must be submitted by November 15, 2005.

Posters on the Hill is a program for undergraduate researchers and their faculty advisors. Research teams from across the nation gather in Washington D.C. to share presentations with Congress. The poster session is a way to communicate our thanks for federal support for undergraduate research, and to share the knowledge that has been learned with our nations elected officials.

In addition to congressional visits, we are also planning to offer special optional tours of research facilities in the DC area.

Visit the Posters on the Hill website, http://www.cur.org/postersession.html for more information.

Best wishes,

Nancy Hensel
Executive Officer

November 8th 9:00 am According to my records, you did not yet provide a brief report on the activities of the various members of your "arsenic project" group. If you already sent me a report, please send again as I may have misfiled it. If you haven't sent it, please do so as soon as possible.

Here is the relevant e-mail in case you have deleted it (all general e-mails are on the website).

"You will recall that a short report is due from each of the Chem 111 and 315 students on how the group is functioning. At this stage all I want is one to two sentences describing the involvement of each of the other students in your group. This is a confidential report. Only I will read it. Please send me, by midnight on Sunday (11/6) an e-mail in which you list the students in your group (include everyone, Chem 388 and grad students as well) with comments next to each name.

I would also appreciate any feedback of a more general nature that you might like to provide, but this is not required. Feel free to make comments and suggestions. There will be a chance to do this at the end of the semester as well."

November 4th 9:38 am. Many thanks for your recent reports on aspects of the measurement of arsenic. My first efforts at creating web pages from them are up on the web site. As you will see, I need some help with this aspect of the project. It could be an agenda topic for Monday's meeting. In the meantime, I will do what I can to fix the problems.

You will recall that a short report is due from each of the Chem 111 and 315 students on how the group is functioning. At this stage all I want is one to two sentences describing the involvement of each of the other students in your group. This is a confidential report. Only I will read it. Please send me, by midnight on Sunday (11/6) an e-mail in which you list the students in your group (include everyone, Chem 388 and grad students as well) with comments next to each name.

Just a reminder that for as many of you as can manage it, we will meet as a group on Monday November 7th at 4:30 pm in Goessmann 51 (the room where we held the kick-off meeting). I will be asking for a brief report from each group on what they have been doing.

Your group's proposal is due as an e-mail attachment by midnight on Sunday November 13th (don't forget that the results of some preliminary measurements should be included).

Keep up the good work,

October 31st 3:28 pm. Many thanks to those groups who have sent me the report on some aspect of how to measure arsenic. I will be posting these on the website in a few days. This is to let you know that some information about the research proposal is now available on the website (a Word document is attached if that helps) and to remind you that your group should have made some preliminary measurements whose results are to be included in the proposal. The proposal is due by the usual route by midnight on Sunday, November 13th. Please make sure your group's number is part of the title of the file.

Let me also remind you that I will be asking for a brief report (confidential, for my eyes only) on your group member's participation by November 6th. I will send a separate e-mail about this.

We will meet as an entire group on Monday November 7th at 4:30 in GSMN 51 (the room in which we held the kick-off meetings). The agenda will include a brief oral report from each group on research progress, so each group should select someone who will speak for them at this meeting. The meeting will be over by 6:00 pm.

My apologies to anyone who is (a) getting two of these messages or (b) getting the message who is no longer involved in the project. In this latter case please let me know.

October 24th 1:45 pm. I have now posted all of the papers on the website. I made very few changes to the material that you submitted. My efforts to convert the Word files into html files with Dreamweaver were a bit clumsy for some of the papers. If I have really made a bad job of your paper, then let me know and I'll try again. I tried to activate all of the links, so you should be able to go directly to the site being referenced. I am not sure that I checked all of them, so if you come across one that does not work, let me have the correct url and I'll update the document.

One or two general comments that you might like to bear in mind for the next document (on how to measure arsenic).

1. When you send the document as an attachment, give it a unique filename. Otherwise, I have to deal with 11 documents all called "background paper.doc". Not a big deal for me, but it could irritate a future employer if you send an attachment called simply "resume.doc".

2. Give the piece a title that says something about the contents and provide your group number and the names of particpants prominently at the top.

3. Adopt the American Chemical Society or similar format for references (which should be collected at the end, rather than at the bottom of each page). So, put numbers in the text at the appropriate place. Refer to previous work by giving the name or names of those involved and some active verb (it makes for slightly more interesting reading) and we get to learn who is doing what. For websites, try to give some indication of whose site (home page) it is or who the author is. There should be more to the reference than just "http://www.etcetc"

4. As these pieces of writing are meant also to be webpages, don't hestitate to create hyperlinks in the text to the websites of interest. These are preserved when I convert to html format.

5. Names of chemicals don't have capittal letters unless (a) they start a sentence or (b) they are tradenames, such as, for example, Teflon. A similar comment applies to techniques: although it is now universally agreed to abbreviate atomic absorption spectrometry (just to take one example) as AAS (i.e. upper case letters with no periods), the words do not take initial capitals (unless one of them happens to begin a sentence). It used to be considerd very bad form to start a sentence with an abbreviation or acronym, but this seems to be changing. I discourage it, so avoid it if you can.

6. I think it is still bad form to have abrreviations in titles, so write out in full all the words in your title.

7. Try to make sure that everything is in the same font and fontsize (apart from headings and subheadings).

8. If you have a figure or a table you should refer to it in the text; it should not just appear at some point. So, for example, you might write, "a schematic diagram of an atomic absorption spectrometer is shown in Fig. 1."

On the whole, you did a pretty good job with these background papers. I am looking forward to the reports on the various techniques.

October 15th 5:51 PM Many thanks to those groups who have sent me their background papers. I will be posting these on the website in a few days.

I have provided some guidelines and background for the next report (on how to measure arsenic) and this material is available on the website and can be downloaded as a Word file.

I also posted a message from Dean of the undergraduate advising center about withdrawing from classes by Oct 31st (you get a W on your transcript--probably better than an F). If you have been involved in your group's activities, everything is going fine. If you have not been to any meetings or been in e-mail contact with other group members, you might like to reconsider whether you have the time to be involved with this project.

More shortly when the background papers are posted.

September 23rd 3:00 pm I have posted a listing of groups and a very brief description of the project your group will undertake. The graduate student adviser will provide more details. I am still mailing to everyone on the list I created from the e-mails expressing interest, except those who have told me they definitely are not going to join the program. However, if I have not heard from you about a late add to the course, I have not assigned you to a group. Please check the list for accuracy and let me know of any corrections. Also if I don't have an "@student" e-mail address for you, please let me have that information.

Our kick-off meeting will be on Monday September 26th at 5:30 pm in GSMN 51. All of the graduate students except Maura (group 7) will be there on Monday. For those students who cannot make it on Monday, there is a repeat meeting on Tuesday 27th at the same time and same place. All of the graduate students except Yustina (group 11, who will be in the CRC), Fumin (group 2) and Prince (group 8) will also be present on Tuesday.

Two students taking Chem 388 (Independent Research Project) will be helping two of the groups.

See you on Monday or Tuesday. Bring your note book.

September 23rd 10:00 am. I am working on assigning the groups, but in the meantime I have booked GSMN 51 for our kick-off meeting on Monday 9/26 and Tuesday 9/27 at 5:30 pm. Most of the graduate students will be there both nights, so if you can't come on Monday (the preferred night), come on Tuesday. I should be able to post the groups and projects on the website in the next couple of days. I'll e-mail you again when I have done so. One or two announcements.

Nothing fancy is needed in the way of a notebook, doesn't have to have duplicate pages or graph paper, just lined pages and approx. regular letter (8.5 in x 11 in) size.

Non-OIT e-mail addresses cause problems when mailing through the OIT system from off the campus, so if those of you with yahoo, aol etc e-mails could migrate to your OIT account and let me know what this is, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Next Thursday afternoon there is an interesting lecture:

Thursday, September 29
The Arsenic Crisis in Bangladesh
Dr. Charles Harvey, Doherty Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://cee.mit.edu/index.pl?id=2321&isa=Category&op=show

This is the first in the fall series run by The Environmental Institute (TEI) called the Fall 2005 Environmental Lecture Series focusing on the Global Environment and Health. This public lecture will be held at 3:30 pm in the Bernie Dallas Room in the Goodell Building with a reception to follow. This means that you can go for free and there will be some food afterwards.

My apologies to those of you who are still getting these messages but who are no longer interested in particiapting. I have not updated the e-mail list to account for those who did not register by the deadline.

September 20th 2005. I am assured that the SPIRE system will now allow you register for the H04 honors colloquium associated with Chem 111. So please try once more to do so. Today is the last day of the add/drop period, so it is important that you register today. Late additions require lots of faculty and dean signatures and are a real pain to handle, so I would not like to have too many of those (if any).

Chem 315 students can ignore the above. Chem 121H students: I will be writing to you separately about your situation. You should also ignore the above.

More information will be coming on the allocation of groups and topics, once I have met with my graduate students on Wednesday. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, put "arsenic" and some other key words into Google (or other search engine) and scan what you get back. Don't forget to bookmark anything that looks useful or interersting. Get yourself a hardbacked lab-type notebook and start recording everything you do and find related to this project. Date each entry.

September 19th 2005. So--I gather the info from the Comm Coll was not correct and you can't (yet) register through SPIRE. I will try to remove the restriction as soon as possible tomorrow morning. Keep trying to register. if you still can't get in, I will arange for the Dept to do this. Apologies.

September 19th 2005 . Thanks to those of you who updated the information. Apologies if I haven't removed your name from the mailing list even though you told me you were no longer interested.

I have been talking to the scheduling officer at the Commonwealth College. What is supposed to happen is that we (i.e. the Chemistry Department) will enter the 315 student names into the SPIRE registration system, but for the Chem 111 students it will be possible for individuals to register.

So, if you are a Chem 111 student and you are still interested, log on to SPIRE and add the H04 colloquium (40238). If you cannot do this for any reason (the course shows up as being full, for example), please e-mail me with the details. I have sent a message to the Dean of the Commonwealth College asking her to allow the somewhat larger numbers than I expected to register for the course and I am confident that this will be allowed.

I am posting these messages on the website as well as sending to everyone on the mailing list I have created. If you contacted me about getting involved today or very late last night, you will not have recieved the first e-mail I sent, but you can find it on the website.

The Chem 121 students should bear with me, I am working on what you will do in terms of registration.

September 18th 2005. This is to let you know what is going on. So far about 70 Chem 111 students and 8 Chem 315 students have indicated they would like to particpate. This large response is one of the reasons I have been slow to respond to some of your questions. I have created a summary sheet as of 11:00 pm on Sunday Sept 18th and posted this on the website (http://courses.umass.edu/chemh01/). It is also available as an Excel file. Please look at your entry. The designation "missing" means I don't have your student (SPIRE) id #. Check to see that I have noted the names of persons with whom you would like to work correctly, and that I have the correct information about the topics you expressed an interest.

E-mail me with any corrections or updates.

Once I have sorted out the business of getting everyone registered, I will try to assign participants to one of 10 groups. The assignment will be posted on the website. I will be calling a meeting of everyone involved sometime in the next ten days. This will most likely be in the early evening ( approx 5:30 - 6:15). I am aware that it is unlikely that everyone can attend, so I may well have two such sessions.

Thank-you for such a positive response. I am looking forward to working with you during the semester.