Ohio State University (OSU) has over 30 years of experience recruiting and retaining minority students within various academic departments on campus. During the fall quarter, the annual Graduate and Professional Schools Visitation Days (GPSVD) is held each first Sunday through Tuesday in November. The program takes place on the main campus in Columbus, Ohio. We invite about 40 Historically Black ...
It was a regular school day in the fall. I attended classes as normal, adhering to the stringent high school schedule. I was generally happy, but what usually made my day was second period--math class. I had always liked mathematics, but in my senior year of high school, I realized that above all other subjects, mathematics was the one in which I was most interested. I had developed a desire to l...
OTHER ARTICLES When a department recruits an academic couple, one of the partners is usually the standout. The other is the standby. The standout scholar is the drawing card, the reason the offer is made in the first place. The partner who tags along is known as the "trailing spouse," the "satellite," the "second income" -- or as some of these professors call themselves, the "albatross." Few issu...
OTHER ARTICLES The short list of colleges that do not grant tenure just got a little longer. Westark College signed on last month. It won't fire its tenured professors, but it won't hire any new ones, either. In 30 years or so, when all of Westark's tenured faculty members are gone and the professors who remain are on annual contracts, tenure there will be dead. The demise was big news at Westark...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX I am a physical chemist working in the research areas of clathrate hydrates, inclusion chemistry, and materials science. Since 1999, I have been working as a Visiting Fellow at the National Research Council of Canada in the Functional Materials Program. The writing of this article is an opportunity for me to talk about the path I've taken through science and to encourage...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX I entered the field of molecular genetics in spring 1991 as the Forensic Technician in the Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, under the supervision of Bradley White. Since then, I have completed my master's and Ph.D. part-time while operating the day-to-day logistics of the forensic testing. Through my experience, first as the t...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX "Before I began my GCSE, physics was my least favourite science. I didn't have a clue why anyone would study it. However, [after] the first lesson I had with her [a named teacher], it seemed like a whole new subject." This quote, from a recent nomination for one of the Institute of Physics Teachers' Awards, reminds us of the crucial importance of good schoolteachers in e...
