Rafting, of course, was awesome – very glad we escaped the vicious beaver sharks.  The sessions themselves were all great. I particularly appreciated the Kenan Talks – so many new apps/technologies to try. The formal sessions were all informative and applicable – Dacia’s session (eieiOH!) really stood out because of her energy and enthusiasm.  All were well done.

There’s a lot I hope to accomplish with the Kenan and I suspect some of my thoughts will change with time too.  I hope to get recharged a bit with the opportunity to “do” some science and be around other scientifically-minded people (I am the only science teacher at my school). This has already started.

I also hope to develop some meaningful curricular items that really help my students connect to important ideas and see how science truly works…and get more of them interested in pursuing career opportunities in STEM fields.

I also want to network with like-minded people to see what they are doing, and that has already started here at NCCAT. I am looking forward to the rest of the week.

My team and mentor have been at a conference this past week, so I’ve been working on a presentation for the team and doing a bit of brainstorming on potential lesson plans linked to my project.  I’ve been fairly productive, but I am definitely ready to have some interpersonal interaction.  I am looking forward to meeting everyone at NCCAT and getting started.  The workshop sessions look like they will be really informative and I can’t wait to go white water rafting.  I start my experimental project a week from today (Sunday, June 29), so I’ve got to get geared up for that too.  See everyone tomorrow!

I’m on the left – Dr. Dave Muddiman is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Director of the W.M. Keck FT-ICR-MS Laboratory at NC State University.

I know that I always start my Chemistry classes by talking about the importance of learning the language of science and the language of chemistry.  I show my students how words like “prove” don’t mean the same thing in everyday parlance that they do in science and, of course, we get into chemical nomenclature with the IUPAC naming system.

This can be hard on students and I’m currently feeling their pain.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been in an analytical chemistry or organic chemistry course, and I’ve never taken biochemistry (it wasn’t offered when I was in school).  That’s pretty much what my project is on.  I’m enjoying learning, but thank goodness for the internet and for a team that’s willing to explain things to me (of course, many of the words they use in their explanations are specialized words too, so that doesn’t always clarify things!).

Still, I have to admit that I love the environment.  I will be starting on the actual experimentation on Sunday, June 29, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of research and a lot of brainstorming, and I’ve been a part of some really stimulating discussions.  Look forward to getting into it more!

I started working with Dave Muddiman and his team at the W.M. Keck FT-ICR Mass Spectrometry Lab at NC State on Tuesday.  It’s been an experience already!  Dr. Muddiman wanted to give me a choice of three different projects to work on.  Together we eliminated one, so then I had to do a little “light” reading to pick between the other two.  After a couple of days of reading and interpreting (thank goodness for the internet and Dr. Muddiman’s team), I have picked my project.  Once I can actually figure out how to phrase it properly, I will post it here.  We have to wait a few weeks until some materials come in before we get started on the actual experimentation, so until then it’s time to go hard into the background and see if I can understand this thoroughly.  Off to study!