Hi All,
Baby, it’s cold outside! I have to stop singing that so much around the house, lest I find myself out in the cold. Annie says a woman can only take so much. It is an ear worm. Lo, Winter has gone a wandering and found his way all the way down to the subtropics. I think he’s lost. But I hope he decides to set a spell because it is my favorite kind of weather: Clear and cool and just a little bracing. How little we see of it around these parts.
Even though it’s only the first week of classes (and barely just, starting as we did mid-week), it’s still been a busy and eventful Week in UR. For my own part, I’ve been busy anxiously monitoring the abstract submissions database. Our current count of submitted abstracts stands at six (6!) which, as many will no doubt recall, is 100% more than we’ve ever had at the start of the spring semester. I thoroughly anticipate that nearly all of the abstracts that we get will come in at, or very near, the last possible moment. That’s just the nature of this work, and it is uncomfortable waiting for them to roll in. But with all the work we’ve done to create awareness this year, I’m confident that they will, ultimately. I’ll start keeping everyone posted on the count of submissions with each subsequent edition of this little newsletter.
Please also circle Tuesday on
your virtual calendars, where you’ve already got a meeting invitation for our
first UR Council meeting of the spring semester waiting to pop up. As per
usual, I’ve posted a draft agenda on Teams; feel free to add on to it. We’ve
got a few important things to discuss on Tuesday. One is a process for
reviewing the aforementioned abstracts. Again, I’ll be calling upon everyone to
review their fair share of them. In reality, that shouldn’t be too onerous of a
task, but it might require everyone to block out a few hours around the second
week in February, just after the deadline. I’ll also briefly talk about the IRB
approval process, and solicit feedback about how it might be improved. Here’s a
link to the draft agenda:
agenda ur council meeting 1-14-25.docx
Also on the agenda will be a discussion about the brand spanking new Undergraduate Research Fellowship, which has now received formal approval from the TSC Foundation! To recap, students will be able to apply for small grants to cover expenses related to their research projects. An application is being finalized now, and it’ll be ready to roll out next week. The Research Mentoring Committee, chaired by J.T., has spearheaded this entire effort, and they are most deserving of our thanks for doing so. I’m not aware of another community college that offers this kind of opportunity to students. It’s a great thing to do for students, and it reflects incredibly well on the College.
Lastly, I just want to mention that the Communications and Workshops Committee, ably led by Sam DeZerga, will be hosting another UR Symposium Information Session on Tuesday, January 21, from 2:00 to 3:00. As always, this event will be offered both in-person and online via Zoom. Also as always, complete information is available on the UR Program’s homepage, at www.tsc.fl.edu/research. Please spread the word!
And now, having pilfered yet a few more precious moments of your fleeting lives, once again, with my rambling musings on UR, I will let my keyboard rest, and leave us all to huddle pitifully before our space heaters, as all North Floridians must do when the temperature dips below 65 degrees. I wish you all a pleasant weekend, swaddled beneath blankets with nary a paper to grade, nor an abstract to review. For the moment. Let us enjoy this briefest of moments. And might there be a little snow?? One can dream, I suppose…
Dan
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