Chemistry Community Committee
Chemistry Community Committee
by Michelle Farkas
This year has been an exciting one for the Chemistry Department’s Chemistry Community Committee. Our members include undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. One of our major goals for the year was to improve departmental cohesion through the hosting of events – we hosted an end-of-semester dessert/study break for undergraduate students, a departmental international potluck event in January (co-hosted with the Graduate Chemists Association), and co-hosted a departmental BBQ event at the end of the Spring semester. Another area of focus has been working with the graduate recruiting committee to improve the diversity of our graduate students and various applicant pools. This past Fall, we facilitated and co-sponsored a table for student, postdoc, and faculty recruitment at the NOBCChE (National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers) National Meeting in Orlando, FL. We also held a “Coffee Break with the Chemistry Community Committee” during the graduate recruiting weekend to share information on resources and affinity groups at UMass Amherst. Finally, we hosted the second “Diversity in STEM” lecture in Chemistry, sponsored by PPG. Professor Robert Gilliard (MIT) presented a seminar entitled “A Coordination Chemistry Approach to the Design of Boron-Doped Conjugated π-Electron Materials.” As part of his visit, he met with faculty, students, and members of the UMass chapter of NOBCChE.