A laboratory-safety course has been developed that is designed to introduce first-year graduate students to the array of dangers associated with research in the chemical sciences. We describe the challenges of creating an impactful course that seeks to convey practical laboratory-safety information in a classroom setting for students with a diverse array of interests. In particular, we have found that a flipped-classroom model highlighting case studies creates a concrete experience that actively engages course participants. In addition, the introduction of various pedagogical tools, including active-learning techniques (field trips, role-playing games, and group projects), were triggered in large part by recommendations from the students themselves.
I f you love working with technology and people, then serving as the Web site and virtual library coordinator at Western Ken tucky University (WKU) Libraries might be your job of a lifetime. Haiwang Yuan has held that position since 1998.
If steering the course for the world's largest museum library from an office on the National Mall sounds like something you aspire to, then being the director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) might be your job of a lifetime. After a distinguished career including positions at the Library of Congress, the Council on Library Resources, and the Research Libraries Group, Nancy E. Gwinn joined the Smithsonian in 1984 as assistant director for Collections Management, and has served as director since 1997. I asked Gwinn what originally attracted her to SIL and she re sponded, "I had been working at the Research Libraries Group (RLG) in California and I decided that if I was going to come back to Washington, I wanted to come back to the kind of job that you could only have in Washington. The Smithsonian itself, and the fact that it was a unique organization, fit my criteria of a job you could only have here. Once, during the interview process, I walked across the Mall and looked up at the U.S. Capitol and down at the Washington Monument. I said to myself, 'You couldn't be more Washington than this.' It was really only after I took the job that I began to understand this institution in its political, bureaucratic, and fi nancial complexity. Let us say it was a slow courtship initially, but eventually, along the line somewhere, it turned into a marriage." Beyond the castle walls When I asked Gwinn what people might be most surprised to learn about her position, she Nancy E. Gwinn, director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.