Report on Expanding Your Horizons 2023

Every year, volunteers at Cornell University hold the Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) conference, a one day conference that encourages students in grades 7-9 from across New York state to pursue STEM education. The conference attempts to provide a variety of hands-on demonstrations, tours, and other engaging activities designed to stimulate the imagination of these young students. As is typical, the Cornell ACS local section helped to sponsor this program, which assists in paying for transportation, workshop materials, etc.

We have been informed that this conference was an incredible success this year, with ~250 participating students (~30% being students of color), 31 different workshops, 22 laboratory tours, and 13 scientific demonstrations for the participants to engage in.

The Cornell ACS is proud to have helped sponsor this event, and to continue to do so, and would encourage anyone interested to reach out to EYH for information on donating, volunteering, or otherwise becoming involved in years to come (https://www.eyh.cornell.edu/index.php).

Undergraduate Symposium in Review

The second annual Cornell X Ithaca College Chemistry Undergraduate Research Symposium has concluded. 19 students presented registered to present, and showed off some really great work. With our new location in the Baker Atrium, we had a lot more through-traffic than last year, resulting in some great scientific interactions for the students. Students had one hour to present their posters in two different blocks, after which Dr. Bruce Ganem provided the keynote lecture “Multi-Carrerism in Chemistry”. After a series of challenging discussions, poster judges chose to award prizes to Shiva Dahagam, Elena Wanvig Dot, Ryan Pinard, and Talia Morris, each of whom were presented with an award certificate and a $200 prize. We would like to congratulate all the students for their hard work, and encourage everyone to participate in this event next year.

Upcoming Annual Business Meeting

Our annual business meeting will be held on Friday, May 12, at 3:00 PM. This will be a hybrid meeting, you can attend in person in Room 214 of the Physical Sciences Building (PSB) at Cornell University, or via zoom. If you are already a member of the local section, you should have received a zoom link by email – please let us know if you need one but do not have it!

Among other agenda items, we will be voting to ratify a new set of bylaws for our local section. Our section’s bylaws were last updated in June, 1981. Clearly there have been some major changes in the world since then, not least the advent of the internet, and our proposed bylaw revisions will help to update our section to make use of modern technology via e.g. electronic balloting for elections, and otherwise streamline operations for modern times, and bring the bylaws into compliance with the modern American Chemical Society. Please be sure to attend if you are able, and make sure your voice is heard!

Upcoming events

We have a number of events coming up in the near future to report upon.

  • First, we’ll be helping to sponsor an Undergraduate Poster Session in the Cornell Atrium on April 22. We’ll get more details out as they are finalized, but poster prizes were pretty hefty last year – we highly suggest undergrads in the area consider submitting a poster!
  • Our revised bylaws should be going out in the not too distant future for consideration before a formal vote. Our bylaws were last updated in 1981, so as you might imagine, we had a lot to update to make everything compatible with modern technology.
  • On a related note, we’ll be having our next executive committee elections later this year! If you’re interested in being part of the group that decides local ACS programming, this is a great opportunity. As a note: graduate student members of the ACS count as full members, and are absolutely eligible to run for the executive committee. We’ll be particularly needful of a Chair-elect. Again – more details to come!
  • Finally, we’re seriously considering putting in a bid to host the next Northeast Regional Meeting (NERM) in the Ithaca area! The Cornell section last hosted the NERM in 2015, with generally very positive reports. If you’re interested in helping to plan/organize a large regional conference, and plan to be in the area in 2-3 years time, please reach out to us. We’d be happy to have you involved!

End of year summary

As the academic semester comes to a close, it seems a good time to reflect on the last year. And the Cornell section of the ACS has had a busy year, that’s for sure! Due in large part to the Covid pandemic, the local section lapsed in officer appointments, and became non-viable. With the help of the Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC), we were able to re-energize our membership, hold new elections, and get some activities happening again. So far, we’ve accomplished the following:

  • Election of officers. See our executive committee page for details!
  • Big summer meet and greet. We held a social event at Stewart Park for members to enjoy a day in the sun, meet other chemists in the area, and enjoy some good food. We fully intend to hold this event again in the coming year, so if you missed it last time, hopefully you can stop by this time around!
  • We were able sponsor several poster and travel awards for undergraduate and graduate students on the Cornell and Ithaca College campuses.
  • We were also able to support activities by e.g. the Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) program.
  • We have an official web presence and local section email address (cornell_acs@cornell.edu).
  • We successfully applied for and secured a METT (Member Engagement Through Technology) grant to obtain a portable projector, screen, and laptop. These can be made available for loan to members wishing to hold events in locations lacking AV equipment (e.g. Coffee Talks or the like), and we plan to utilize them in future events we are planning as well!
  • We have begun the process of revising our section’s bylaws to account for new technology and means of communicating. Thank you to those who sent in comments. We have done our best to address various concerns, and have submitted the bylaws to the ACS Committee on Constitution and Bylaws for formal approval. We anticipate receiving the ‘final’ version of the bylaws early in the new year, and holding a vote sometime in February or March to formally adopt them.

No elections were held this year, as the current officers have only served a partial term. However, once our bylaws are officially updated, approved by the ACS, and approved by the local section membership, we will turn our attention toward securing nominations for officer positions moving forward. If you’re interested in helping to lead the local section, be sure to keep an eye out for emails about the elections, or send us a letter. Volunteers are also more than welcome to start new committees, or plan events, and we’d love to help get such things off the ground. Just drop us a line.

With that, we’re happy to call this year an unqualified success for the section, and wish many of you good luck on your final exams, and all of you a happy new year!

Spooky Science at Ithaca Sciencenter

In collaboration with the Cornell chapter of the Alpha Chi Sigma professional chemistry fraternity, and the Ithaca College Chem Club, the Cornell local section of the ACS helped to facilitate the ‘Spooky Science’ event at the Ithaca Sciencenter. This yearly event was put on hold during the Covid pandemic, but came roaring back to enchant the audience with live demonstrations and hands-on experiments. Scott Ulrich from Ithaca College led a number of live demonstrations, while students in Alpha Chi Sigma led hands-on demonstrations including classics such as making oobleck or slime, and a new activity to make a chemical ‘lava lamp’. Hopefully you were able to attend, and if not the event will almost certainly happen again next year!

Students running a hands-on experiment at Spooky Science at the Ithaca Sciencenter

Cornell Section hosts summer picnic

On July 15, the Cornell local section, in collaboration with the Cornell Graduate Association of Chemistry (GAC) sponsored a picnic meet-and-greet at Stewart Park. We were blessed with excellent weather and a great turnout of ~120 people! Food was catered by Luna Street Food, a local business that provided chips, salsas, tacos, sliders, and a host of other delicious treats. For everyone who attended, we hope you had a great time, and for everyone who didn’t, we hope you’re able to join us next year! As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions for future events, or would like to know some ways to get involved with the local section, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Results of Annual Business Meeting

The annual business meeting of the Cornell local section of the ACS was held on May 11. The executive committee gave a rundown of the current status of the section, and the floor was opened for questions, comments, and ideas for future events and engagement mechanisms. Particular interest was expressed in helping to sponsor travel to ACS conferences for undergraduate and graduate students, and this will be further discussed in follow-up meetings.

The full minutes of the meeting can be viewed here.

Upcoming Annual Meeting

Our section’s annual meeting will be on May 11, starting at 4 PM. The event will be via Zoom. If you are a member of the ACS in our area, you should have received a Zoom link to attend. If you did not receive the email, please contact us, to have it sent to you.

Cornell X Ithaca College Undergraduate Symposium a Great Success!

On April 23, 2022, the Cornell section co-sponsored a symposium, led by the Cornell Chemistry Peer Advisors and the Director of Undergraduate Studies Nandini Ananth, and held at the Baker Laboratory at Cornell University. This event highlighted research being performed by undergraduate students at Cornell University and Ithaca College. We had ~20 students present the results of their work, and an excellent keynote lecture by Nobel laureate Roald Hoffman. Our congratulations go out especially to Tenjing Sherpa, Jose Mondragon, Nya Evans, Jon Meinhardt, and Alex Rono, who were recipients of awards for their posters, including a formal certificate of recognition and a $200 honorarium. We hope to see you all at the same event next year!

  • Jose Mondragon presents his work
  • Jon Meinhardt presents his work
  • Alex Rono and Tenjing Sherpa present their work
  • Nya Evans presents her work
  • A crowd gathers immediately after Dr. Hoffman's keynote lecture
  • A crowd of participants
  • Roald Hoffman describes several elegant molecules
  • Roald Hoffman begins his lecture
  • Students prepare for the keynote lecture
  • Several attendees view a poster
  • Several posters and their presenters
  • Several attendees view a poster together
  • A poster is presented
  • Attendees viewing posters
  • Posters are presented
  • Students discuss their work
  • Several posters
  • Posters are presented
  • Presentation of work by students
  • A crowd discusses a poster
  • A gathering of students early in the day
  • Several students discuss their work
  • A poster presenter discusses his work