Short Term Consultations
The purpose of the Short Term Consultation (STC) is to encourage and support collaborations involving two or more individuals at different Consortium campuses. Projects might involve sharing information, instrumentation and facilities or expertise among the faculty members of the Consortium. The STC grants fund faculty and students in a particular area to visit a member campus for many reasons including consultation on curriculum, collaboration on research projects, participation as an outside examiner in a senior thesis exam, demonstration of a laboratory technique suitable for an undergraduate laboratory or advising faculty or departments on proposal writing or project assessment. The STC also allows faculty to visit another Consortium institution with highly sophisticated research equipment to have a sample tested, learn a new technique, or visit a field station or library.
The STC program will fund an average of three visits per year per institution, including travel, hotel and meal expenses for no more than three days. Awards for $1,500 or less will be approved by the Director and communicate the results to the applicant within one week of receiving the application. The Executive Board will review proposals for $1,500 to $7,000. These awards can be used as seed money or matching funds for other proposals. Contact the Director about writing a letter of support describing these funds that you can attach to the proposal.
Recent Short Term Consultations
On May 27, 2009 Dan Choffnes from Carthage College Biology met with Jerry Lokensgard in the Chemistry department at Lawrence University. The main purpose of the trip was to analyze three chemicals and training on the GC-MS.
May 15-16, 2009, Mary Crawford from Knox College Chemistry and Elaine Marzluff from Grinnell College Chemistry met for a second time to finish up their collaborative NSF-CCLI proposal.
On May 5-6, 2009 Steve Remillard traveled from Hope College to Washington University to do SEM anaylysis on superconducting samples. Tyrone Daulton of the Physics department was his host. The day and a half visit turned out to be valuable as three of the samples proved to be important.
Keith Kuwata from Macalester Chemistry Department met with Brent Krueger in the Hope College Chemistry department October 15-16, 2008 for the purpose of writing an NSF-MRI proposal to be submitted in January of 2009. The two created a proposal on FastLane, met with Tracey Nalley, Hope's Director of Sponsored Research, to strategize about the proposal, met with Paul Van Allsburg, assigned to each other a section of the proposal text, considered ways that the proposal could satisfy NSF's broader impacts criterion, had a conference call with another senior personnel, Dani Kohen of Carleton College, and wrote a first rough draft of 1/3 of the 15 page narrative.
Dec. 10-12, 2008 Brent went to Macalester to complete the proposal.
Dr. Tim Pennings of the Hope College Math department and his welsh corgi, Elvis, spent the week of Sept. 22-26, 2008 speaking at eight colleges/universities, of which five were Midstate Consortium institutions.
While playing with Elvis at the beach one day Tim noticed that Elvis demonstrated mathematical principles in retrieving a ball from Lake Michigan. Tim began to take measurements and wrote about his findings. He and Elvis have received many awards.
They began the tour Monday at Carthage College. Tuesday they spoke at Beloit College where a local TV station reported on the talk and interviewed Tim. CNN picked up on the story and broadcast it throughout the country. Next on the Consortium tour were Gustavus Adolphus and St. Olaf. The Consortium tour concluded on Friday at Knox College.
Elvis, and of course Tim too, received many rave reviews. Students and faculty alike always enjoy their visits.
- Dr. Jennifer Hampton of Hope College and her students traveled to Luther College from June 29-July 2, 2008 to visit Dr. Erin Flater and the Nanotribology laboratory there. During teh Short Term Consultation between Dr. Hampton and Dr. Flater, they used the atomic force microscope (AFM) in teh Luther College Nanotribology lab to explore the surface structure and frictional properties of electrodeposited metal thin films.
- May 2-3, 2008, Ian Harrington and Erin Stoffel took students Jim Clinton, Peter Bowling, and Julie Gass to the MidBrains Undergraduate Neuroscience Conference at Macalester College.
- Mary Crawford from Knox College Chemistry department met with Elaine Marzluff from the Chemistry department at Grinnell College. Mary also met with other faculty from the Chemistry department and received a tour of the department which led to a lot of discussion about pedagogy and planning. Elaine and Mary shared ideas about the physical chemistry curriculum and plan to write a CCLI grant entitled "Transforming the Physical Chemistry Curriculum". The Midstates grant afforded Elaine and Mary the opportunity to exchange ideas about the physical chemistry curriculum and plan for educational grants for their institutions. Another meeting is planned for the fall.
- Maria-Luisa Alegre from the University of Chicago visited Luther College on April 17, 2008 and gave a presentation on Transplant Immunology. Maria-Luisa also met with her host Jodi Enos-Berlage and Marian Kaehler where they discussed programs and opportunities available at both institutions. Marisa met with several Luther undergraduates to discuss research interests and opportunities as well as graduate school.
- April 2-5, 2008 Dr. Brianna Gross of Washington University gave the Biology department colloquium at Luther, speaking on the origin and evolution of homoploid hybrid sunflower species. Brianna attended a non-majors ecology trip to Seed Savers Exchange, met with her host Dr. Eric Baack to discuss recent work in the evolution of genome structure, had lunch with Caleb Mattison the sustainability intern, and met with Dr. Elizabeth Lynch to discuss the ongoing field trials of desease-resistant elms on Luther College land.
- On March 5-6, 2008 Wes Pearson of St. Olaf's Chemistry Department hosted John Frederick from the Department of Geophysical Sciences of the University of Chicago. John met with students at St. Olaf concerning the design of measurements to define the mechanisms by which the green roof will alter teh demand for energy in the interior of the new building. If a proposal made to NSF by St. olaf is approved then these measurements, when combined with some numerical models provided by John, will define the energy budget of the green roof and contrast it with that of a manmade surface. John also presented a seminar entitled "Energy Balance of the Earth's Surface: Contrasts between Natural and Urban Environments" to the Science faculty.
- Fall semester 2007, Dr. Ben Newton of Beloit College Math and Computer Science, began to organize a new seminar series for calculus students at Beloit. The purpose of the seminar series is to expose students in introductory math classes to a wider range of topics, hopefully inducing then to pursue further study in math and science. In speaking with Dr. Pedro Teixeira from Knox College Mathematics at the New Faculty workshop in July 2007, they found that both departments faced similar challenges attracting students. Ben thought that Pedro would be interested in how the program has fared thus far so a short term consultation was scheduled for Nov. 27-28, 2007. Pedro gave two talks while on Beloit's campus and much conversation ensued. Both felt that their conversations were very useful.
On August 22, 2007, David Lopatto, in Psychology at Grinnell College met with Mary Walczak and other St. Olaf Chemistry and Biology faculty to talk about strategies for assessing their new course sequence, Integrated Chemistry and Biology. This three-term (fall, interim, spring) course sequence integrates the typical first year chemistry sequence with the first semester biology sequence.
- In the fall of 2007, Andrew Knudsen of the Geology Department at Lawrence University traveled to The University of Chicago to visit Ian Steele of the Geology Department. Andrew used their Electron Microprobe (EMP) to investigate the chemical relationships of heavy metals in contaminated soils from the banks of the Milwaukee River in Riverside Park, Milwaukee, WI.
For about a week in July 2007, Ed Hansen from Hope College's Geological and Environmental Sciences Program took a group of students to The University of Chicago where they used a scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive analytical capacity to characterize samples for several student research projects. Ian Steele from The Universtiy of Chicago's Department of Geophysical Sciences, trained the students on the use of the microscope and then made himself available for consultation during the analysis.
- Lawrence geology faculty member Marcia Bjørnerud and her student, Noah Planavsky, took stromatolite samples to Washington University to conduct geochemical analyses with Dr. Zhan Peng.
- Linda Collins, Department of Statistics, University of Chicago and Shonda Kuiper, Department of Math and Computer Science, Grinnell College, have consulted twice about their NSF-funded curriculum development project.