Awards Announced

Welch Award

The Welch Foundation has announced that two chemists are being honored with the 2007 Welch Award in Chemistry for their work developing theoretical analyses that have greatly influenced scientific discovery and provided the basic tools necessary to understand approaches to chemical problems.

Noel S. Hush, an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, and William H. Miller, a professor of the University of California at Berkeley, will share the annual Welch Award, recognizing their lifetime achievements in theoretical chemistry. The $300,000 award and gold medallions will be presented to Hush and Miller at a banquet in their honor in October.

Hush’s best known research achievement is the development, starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, of a model for electron transfer in inorganic and biological compounds. The Marcus–Hush theory has provided considerable insight into the mechanisms of photosynthesis. His current research focuses on an area of nanotechnology known as molecular electronics.

Miller has done seminal work in the field of chemical dynamics, dealing with essentially all aspects of molecular collision theory and chemical reaction dynamics. Most recently his efforts have focused on developing the initial value representation of semiclassical theory into a practical way for adding quantum effects to classical molecular dynamics simulations of chemical processes in large molecular systems.

2006 Chemvention Finalists

ACS Student Affiliates chapters participated in the Chemvention competition for National Chemistry Week 2006. Each chapter was challenged to develop or improve an existing material to build a home. Competition was limited to “active” ACS Student Affiliate chapters as defined by the ACS Office of Undergraduate Programs.

Two Student Affiliates chapters were named as finalists and received $500 each for their participation and efforts to put extensive reports together.

• Northeastern University
• Tarleton State University

The chapters received their checks at the Spring ACS Meeting in Chicago.

Courses, Seminars, Meetings, Opportunities

Ocean Optics Spectroscopy Workshop

Ocean Optics will host the “Spectroscopy 101 Workshop”, a two-day seminar covering the use of spectroscopy for lab experiments in chemistry, physics, and other branches of the sciences. The workshop takes place August 15–16, 2007 at Ocean Optics headquarters in Dunedin, FL, about 25 miles west of Tampa. Registration is $99.

Educators who attend will investigate spectroscopy principles involving pH measurement, kinetics, the Beer–Lambert law, and qualitative measurement of fluorescence and reflectance. Included is instruction in the use of Ocean Optics spectrometers and Vernier’s LoggerPro 3 Software. Also, attendees can satisfy prerequisites for enrollment in Portland State University’s course on data collection and earn a free Spectroscopy 101 Manual with experiment tutorials and software tips. The first 20 registrants also receive a free SpectraSuite Spectroscopy Software site license and earn a 10% discount on any Ocean Optics spectrometer.

For registration and other information, phone 727/733-2447 or respond by email.

Open Educational Resources Launched

Teachers’ Domain (accessed Jun 2007), an online educational resource announces the launch on June 1, 2007 of its new Open Educational Resources—video segments, interactive activities, and lesson plans in earth science, engineering, life science, and physical science that are downloadable, sharable, re-mixable. Whether you’ll want to download them to your own computer, share them with your students and colleagues, or edit them to create your own educational media, Teachers’ Domain will provide you with high-quality materials to accomplish your goals.

The Teachers’ Domain Collections are free for anyone to use and comprise carefully chosen and edited online resources, multimedia learning tools, and corresponding lesson plans from NOVA and other award-winning PBS programs. Currently providing more than 1,000 resources, a third of which will now be available as Open Educational Resources, Teachers’ Domain covers all key topics in science and is now expanding into the humanities. To see Teachers’ Domain’s new Open Educational Resources in action, view an exciting sample resource, "What Is a Planet?".

Teachers’ Domain is an online educational service with two related components—Collections and Courses—that help teachers enhance their students’ learning experiences and advance their own teaching skills. It’s free and easy to register. Find fresh new ideas to get your students excited and engaged in learning!

Funding for presenting Open Educational Resources on Teachers’ Domain is provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Teachers’ Domain is a Pathways Portal to the National Science Digital Library, funded by the National Science Foundation.

The Achievement Standards Network (ASN)

Are you ready to correlate resources to state academic standards? The ASN is ready to help. The NSDL Achievement Standards Network (ASN) now contains all of the states’ standards for math, science, and English language arts. For free access to the database, go to the Web site (accessed Jun 2007). If you would like an in-house copy of the states’ standards, an RDF/XML distribution is available through an annual subscription. Once your resources have been correlated, ASN provides the networked technical infrastructure for applications to freely access the standards text for inclusion in your metadata to facilitate searching and browsing. For more information contact Diny Golder, JES & Co. or visit the documentation site (accessed Jun 2007).

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