{"id":1752,"date":"2009-08-10T14:16:46","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T21:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/alan\/2009\/08\/summer-ends-a-new-school-year-begins.html"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:14:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:14:40","slug":"summer-ends-a-new-school-year-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/2009\/08\/summer-ends-a-new-school-year-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer ends, new school year begins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summer still has several weeks to go unless you&#8217;re a Reed prof whose job it is<br \/>\nto teach a large course like o-chem on Aug 31 and you&#8217;ve got to get<br \/>\nREADY. Here are some items to help returning students (if you want to know what I did for MY summer vacation, skip to the next page):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>O-chem (201) students<\/strong>: go to the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/\">Chem 201-202 home page<\/a> for news and instructions (there&#8217;s also a link on <em>this page<\/em> under <strong>Courses<\/strong>). The 201-202 site will be updated <em>many<\/em> times in August so keep checking back.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Transfer courses<\/strong>:<br \/>\nI am no longer the Chem dept chair so I will not be signing credit<br \/>\ntransfer requests <em>(see below for one important exception)<\/em>. If you want to transfer<br \/>\na &#8220;foreign&#8221; chemistry course, see our new dept chair, Ron McClard, but<br \/>\nfirst read the <a href=\"http:\/\/academic.reed.edu\/chemistry\/Info.html#transfer\">Transfer Credit<\/a> instructions (there&#8217;s also a link on this page under <strong>Visitors<\/strong>). <strong>The exception:<\/strong> if you want to transfer <strong>geology course credit<\/strong>, come see me (and please read the Transfer Credit instructions).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chem seniors looking for thesis projects<\/strong>:come<br \/>\nsee me. I have two types of projects to offer you this year: lab experiments directed at the<br \/>\nsynthesis and study of new Fe-TAML oxidation catalysts, and<br \/>\nsmall-molecule computational experiments that can be directed at any<br \/>\ntopic of mutual interest. Project descriptions will eventually be posted in the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/shusterman_research\/\">Research<\/a> zone (there&#8217;s also a link on this page under <strong>Visitors<\/strong>).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Green science project<\/strong>: the Project entered a dormant phase last spring, but its ready to be rebooted this fall with a new band of student volunteers. Want to get<br \/>\ninvolved? Read the latest post [<a href=\"http:\/\/reedgreen.wordpress.com\/2009\/08\/31\/rebooting-the-gsp-for-2009\/\">posted 8\/30\/09<\/a>] on the <a href=\"http:\/\/reedgreen.wordpress.com\/\">Green Science<\/a> blog to see what I have in mind (and send me your comments, supportive or otherwise)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, and here&#8217;s what I did for my summer vacation:<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>home maintenance<\/em> &#8211; new water heater installed; cleaned garage (basement &amp; attic &#8211; you&#8217;d better watch out because you could be next); pulled weeds and cut back berries for a solid week in Manzanita<\/li>\n<li><em>car maintenance<\/em> &#8211; after neighbors crashed into my big white van in two separate accidents, I bought a spanking new 2010 Prius (sadly, I couldn&#8217;t take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program)<\/li>\n<li><em>lab maintenance<\/em> &#8211; my three research assistants spent over a week getting everything sorted out (and then re-sorted after water started dripping through the ceiling and we had to move lots of equipment)<\/li>\n<li><em>research<\/em> &#8211; worked with three paid assistants (Elizabeth Ogden, Matt Milton, Ian MacDonald) on synthesis of Fe-TAML oxidation catalysts, and with one volunteer (Ian McCullogh) on density functional investigation of competing sigmatropic rearrangement\/electrocyclic ring closure reactions<\/li>\n<li><em>culture<\/em> &#8211; read some good books; watched several good movies; saw four terrific plays at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.osfashland.org\/\">Oregon Shakespeare Festival<\/a> in Ashland (The Servant of Two Masters, The Music Man, All&#8217;s Well That Ends Well, Don Quixote); saw an amazing performance of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mikedaisey.com\/\">Mike Daisey<\/a>&#8216;s latest creation (The Last Cargo Cult); along with my daughter, I attended the July and August First Thursday gallery openings; along with my wife, I attended the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattleartmuseum.org\/exhibit\/exhibitDetail.asp?eventID=16528\">Andrew Wyeth: Remembrance exhibit <\/a>at the Seattle Art museum<\/li>\n<li><em>sports<\/em> &#8211; did as much tai chi and biking as my crummy ankle would allow, then gave up and resumed swimming for exercise (up to 20 lengths and counting); along with my daughter, I watched Lionel Messi and FC Barcelona smack around the Seattle Sounders from the south end zone of Qwest Field (Barca 4 &#8211; Sounders 0)<\/li>\n<li><em>meditation<\/em> &#8211; attended several sessions of <a href=\"http:\/\/zencenterofportland.org\/\">Zen Center of Portland<\/a>&#8216;s month-long intensive; attended <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zendust.org\/\">Zen Community of Oregon<\/a>&#8216;s regular Tuesday nite sessions<\/li>\n<li><em>technology<\/em> &#8211; replaced my home page (work in progress); replaced my laptop and desktop computers (oy, I hate new computers, but I can&#8217;t live without them)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer still has several weeks to go unless you&apos;re a Reed prof whose job it is to teach a large course like o-chem on Aug 31 and you&apos;ve got to get READY. Here are some items to help returning students&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/2009\/08\/summer-ends-a-new-school-year-begins\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/2298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/alan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}