I will continue the trend of introductions.

I grew up in upstate New York with an interest in pursuing a scientific career in some form. I entered the University of Richmond (VA) with the intention of pursuing medical school upon graduation, but after taking organic chemistry (and loving it), I quickly discovered where my real talents were. I conducted research in organic chemistry with Drs. Stuart Clough and John Gupton, who were so influential in my development that I became more interested in an academic career. I had always been interested in education and teaching (it’s in my genes, too, I think), so upon graduation in 2004, I continued my study of chemistry with the idea that I would one day teach and do research at a small PUI.

I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2009. I worked with Professor Eric Meggers on the synthesis and biological evaluation of ruthenium(II)-based drugs. During my tenure at UPenn (with a two-year detour to Marburg, Germany to continue research), I was exposed to a lot of interdisciplinary work in organic, inorganic, and biological chemistry and was awarded an NIH Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant Fellowship to support my studies.

After graduation, I returned to the U.S. for postdoctoral research with Professor Seth Herzon at Yale University where I studied the synthesis and mechanism of action of the potent anticancer agents known as the diazofluorenes. With a continuing interest in an academic career that balanced both teaching and research, I decided to leave Yale in 2010 to gain some additional classroom experience. For the past two years, I have been a Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow here at Boston University (BU), where I have conducted research with Professor John Snyder on new intramolecular [2+2+2] cyclization methodology for the synthesis of hinge-binding 2-aminopyridines. My teaching obligations have been primarily in Intensive Organic Chemistry I/II. In addition to teaching the discussions, labs, and pre-lab lecture and designing the laboratory curriculum, I had a chance to make a significant contribution to course advancement by implementing an electronic laboratory notebook, designing new experiments, and creating an online repository of experiments for the exchange of ideas among faculty worldwide.

While at BU, I had a chance to become a part of the Chemical Writing Program, where I developed course materials and served as a writing assisant. I also co-directed the Chemistry Department’s Outreach Program, along with fellow PFF Dr. Katie Frato and Boston University Women in Chemistry (BUWIC).

I have found the PFF experience to have been incredibly valuable in both the classroom and research laboratory, not to mention being blessed with the best of students! In the fall 2012, I will begin a tenure-track position at Providence College (RI), where I will be performing research in organic chemistry and teaching undergraduates at all levels. While it will be sad to leave BU, I am eager to begin my new journey.

Hi all–thought I would follow Adam’s lead and introduce myself.

Here at BU I’m a chemist, but my path toward chemistry has taken many twists and turns. I did my undergraduate work at The College of Wooster in Ohio, where I was a double major in both biology and physics. Wooster gave me lots of great opportunities for research, especially through the senior Independent Study (“IS”). I also had some awesome summer research experiences: organic farming research at the OARDC, a physics REU at Bucknell University, and a biomedical research REU at the University of Rochester.

My physics/biology background lead me to graduate work at Johns Hopkins, in the Program in Molecular and Computational Biophysics. I worked with Bob Schleif on the most interesting protein in the world, AraC. I developed a method to quantify ultra-weak interactions between the two domains of AraC, and learned to view biology within a quantitative framework.

After mentoring lots of undergraduates in our lab at JHU, I was thinking that teaching at a small PUI (like Wooster) would be a great career. That lead me here, to the BU PFF program, where I’ve worked in General Chemistry CH109/110 for the past two years.

Next year I’ll be here at BU, spending an intensive year doing research in Sean Elliott’s group and getting ready to apply for “real” PUI jobs.

The Younger Chemists’ Committee hosted a wonderful session in March on securing external funding at primarily undergraduate institutions and I thought it would be good to share with this audience. This post is very long, but I found this information very useful.

The first part of the session focused on how to set yourself up to do research at a PUI (and do it well). Anyone reading this probably already knows this information, so I will highlight only the most important observations I made:

1. Project development is crucial – choose something that has scientific merit, has continuity, and can be done with undergrads at many levels; make your expectations known in terms of working hours, notebook, safety, instrumentation use, etc.

2. Recruit deliberately, but choose your undergraduates wisely – the best in the lecture might not be the best in the lab; sometimes it is better to choose the more curious and dedicated students; don’t let weak or unproductive students consume your time and money (a grad school prof of mine once told me that “free agency” applies to chemistry, too!)

3. OTHERS: always write something (proposal, paper, etc.), stay up on the literature, become a reviewer, present at meetings, be able to “start” or “close” a project, cooperate with colleagues to purchase instrumentation

The rest of the session was devoted to presentations from program directors at various funding agencies that have an interest in PUIs. Representatives from Research Corporation (RC), Americal Chemical Society – Petroleum Research Fund (ACS-PRF), and National Science Foundation (NSF) were present. Here are summaries of their talks on how to secure grants in your first few years:

1. RC – This foundation really focuses on the integration of teaching and research in the physical sciences. The Single Investigator grants are for $35,000 ($25,000 + $10,000 matching funds) over two years. A pre-proposal is due 9/15, with the full proposal due 11/15. The pre-proposal is basically a screening process to make sure you have some overlap with the mission of RC, and that you followed all of the rules. Once you submit the full proposal, it goes through a dual review process (external review, followed by advisory committee meeting). RC will be looking for ideas that show you’ve thought outside the box. They encourage you to be creative and pursue research that is not incremental. The biggest problems reviewers find in proposals are: a) the work is a derivative of the Ph.D. or post-doc; b) feasibility and significance were not addressed; c) the proposal was not hypothesis-driven or too vague; and d) expectations were unrealistic. They encourage you to suggest the best possible reviewers to read your proposal, who will be more generous to young faculty at PUIs, and strongly discouraged suggesting reviewers at PUIs. The funding rate is 25-30% each year. This is only open to faculty in their first three years of a tenure-track position.

2. ACS-PRF – As the name implies, this organization awards funding to basic research in chemistry that is related to the petroleum field (and they mean it!). The New Investigator Awards are for $50,000 over two years. Submissions are accepted for one month or so beginning 10/1 (submit early – proposal processed sooner and you have the greatest chance for the best reviewers). They are looking for a single project with a limited scope that is hypothesis-driven and can serve as the foundation for future award money from other organizations. They ideally want about 60-65% of the requested funds to support students. Reviewers will be looking for all of the same things: can the research be accomplished at your institution, describe how undergrads will be involved, does the institution have a history of support, is the research of high enough quality, is the level of difficulty appropriate for undergraduates? Roughly half of the proposal text should be background and half should be the project plan. The funding rate is roughly 20% each year. This is only open to faculty in their first three years of a tenure-track position.

3. NSF – There are many “programs” at NSF. The four I will focus on are the Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI), CAREER award, the Research Opportunity Award (ROA), and the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award. It should be noted that since these awards come from government funds, they are public knowledge, so grant seekers are encouraged to look up those professors whose proposals were recently funded, and ask them directly for a copy of their proposal. (NOTE: I did, and now have 3-4 proposals in my hands).

a) RUI – Awards are roughly $250,000 – 300,000 over several years, with a roughly $30,000 instrumentation request. In 2010, there were 41 total awards (new PIs were roughly 50% of these awards), with 1.25 PIs per award (meaning, there were sometimes joint proposals). Depending on your division, there are deadlines in either September or October. A five-page(!) broader impact statement indicates their focus on the integration of research and teaching, as well at outreach.

b) CAREER – Only assistant professors are eligible. You are in competition with the best researchers from major Ph.D. institutions but, again, the integration of teaching, research, and outreach carries more weight. From 2007-2009, roughly 60-90 proposals were funded per year. I know that my own undergraduate institution (University of Richmond) has had two of these awards in the past 10 years.

c) ROA – This is a supplement to an existing NSF award, meaning a professor at a PUI can propose doing work in a lab at a major research university of another professor who already has an NSF grant. They are typically summer experiences, but can also be used for sabbaticals. Funding rates are “fairly high.”

d) MRI – These awards are meant for dual-use instrumentation. Again, a combination of teaching and research. In 2009, there were 142 proposals, of which 31 were funded (22%). The average amount was $267,447. About half of the awards were to faculty at PUIs.

That’s all I have for now!

Seann Mulcahy

PFF 2010-2012

This purpose of this blog is to allow current and former PFFs to be able to discuss topics and ask  questions more easily.  It was also discussed that PFFs that use the blog should introduce themselves so help get an idea of where we all are, so this is my introduction.

I did my undergraduate at Wabash College (small, liberal arts, undergrad only) in chemistry.  I was involved in a lot of undergraduate research, which sparked my interest and got me to go to grad school.  My graduate work was in computational chemistry at the University of Minnesota for Dr. Darrin York (who is now at Rutgers).  My graduate work was fairly broad (e.g. implicit solvation, DFT, force field parameterization) because I was trying to get a grasp of as much of the field as I could because I knew I wanted to teach at a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI).

After I received my Ph.D. I came to Boston University as a PFF.  I worked with John Straub on simulations of reverse micelles and taught general chemistry.  I got to be involved in the redesign of the general chemistry course (CH101/102) and helped start the Learning Assistant program.  As a PFF I got to be involved in a lot of course development and really evolved my teaching philosophy.  I started my own teaching blog just to help organize all the good information I was gathering as a PFF.

I recently accepted a position at Loras College and I start there in fall 2012.  I’m very excited, but also nervous because of all the demands on my time (i.e. teaching, advising, new course generation, new program development, research lab start up, external funding, having a life outside of my job, etc).