Path to Portfolio — Chemistry Ph.D.

Felix Nwogbo and Brett Hemric have successfully defended their dissertations!  Way to go, Fellows!

Congratulations to Dr. Paige Daniel on the successful defense of her dissertation! 

Wow!  This has been an incredibly busy summer for our GAANN Fellows!  Congratulations to newly minted PhD’s Junu Bae, Kacey Hall, Christopher Reyes and Christopher Eubanks!  Junu departed this summer to begin his medical career and Kacey wrapped up in September and headed to South Carolina!  We are so excited to have been a part of your graduate careers and we wish you all the best on your next endeavors!

Congratulations to Dr. Katie Bitting, one of our six inaugural GAANN Fellows, on a successful defense this week!!!!! We wish you all the best in your next adventure as a faculty member at West Virginia State University!!!!!!!

“I have been learning how to teach Biophysical Chemistry (Chem 302) for the last six years.”  Learn more about Professor Beratan’s journey to revamp Chem 302 with a little help from his GAANN Fellow, Julia Johnson, and Duke undergrads!  https://learninginnovation.duke.edu/blog/2018/06/revising-biophysical-chemistry-with-student-help/

One of the first GAANN fellows named, Rachael Al-Saadon, has successfully defended her dissertation!!!!  Congratulations, DR. Al-Saadon!!!!!!

Congratulations to Paige!  She received a travel award from the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry!  This award will help defray costs associated with her presentation at the upcoming Spring National Meeting in New Orleans!  Way to go, Paige!

The Graduate School is hosting a seminar, “Searching for Fertile Ground: The Role of Personal Values in Influencing PhD Career Interests and Diversifying the STEM Workforce” on Tuesday, November 14 at Noon in Perkins 217.  

Today’s STEM workforce offers a plethora of options for graduates to consider upon PhD completion. Interestingly, the declining availability of faculty positions combined with the expansion of job opportunities resulted in a waning interest in academic careers. However, PhD graduates from underrepresented groups are disproportionately choosing to pursue careers outside of academia, and the underlying reasons for these disparate patterns are not well understood. In this workshop, we discuss some of the literature and potential best practices that address these dynamics. Lunch will be provided but you must RSVP. Learn more about this seminar and register here.

The Graduate School is hosting a workshop session focusing on how graduate students and postdocs can prepare a compelling teaching statement for the academic job market.  More info is provided below and a link to the event is here.    If you’re interested in attending, please be sure to register!

A teaching portfolio is more than a collection of documents: it is set of claims about your teaching and evidence to support them. In this workshop, you will examine how claims and evidence can be framed in way that allows you demonstrate your skill (or potential) as a university instructor in a teaching statement supported by materials created by you (such as videos, handouts and student assignments). Our speaker is Dr. Hugh Crumley, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs.

Lunch will be provided; bring a beverage to enjoy.

This event is part of the Teaching Ideas series and is co-sponsored with the Academic Job Search Series. Please contact Dr. Francisco Ramos (francisco.ramos@duke.edu) if you have a question.

My message is a must-read article.  The must read article for all faculty, staff and students is this week’s cover article in Chemical & Engineering News on Sexual Harassment in Chemistry.  Some of you may read this and say, really? this can’t happen here. And others will read it and say, yeah, I could have told you that, or even, that happened to me. This may seem like a complex issue, but it boils down to the simple recognition that reprehensible, unprofessional or disrespectful behaviors not only harm individuals, but also diminish our collective potential to do great science.