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 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.