Bi-Annual Seminar Series
An ACS Orlando Section Outreach Event
The ACS student chapters at the Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech) and the University of Central Florida (UCF) organize together a chemistry seminar series, officially sponsored by the ACS Orlando Section.
This event series was developed with the goal of bringing quality chemistry seminars to undergraduate students throughout Central Florida in order to increase student’s exposure to cutting-edge research in chemistry, thus increasing interest in the field. At times, department seminars are oriented toward the faculty, resulting in the content being, to some extent, unrelatable for undergraduates. Instead, seminars in this series will be geared towards undergraduate students, on topics of interest to them and given by chemistry professors they have selected. This event series will involve student chapters at Florida Tech and UCF co-hosting a chemistry seminar once a semester, alternating which university the seminar will be hosted. Unlike seminars incorporated into many chemistry programs, students will work together to select chemistry professors from around the country to give a seminar each semester, ensuring that the chemistry professor will be giving a talk on research that interests and speaks to undergraduate students. Additionally, undergraduates not only discuss the speaker’s research during the event, but also his/her graduate school. In addition to attending a quality seminar, students will get the opportunity to have an open discussion with the professor prior to, where they can pose questions on various topics from graduate school, careers in academia and any related topic. Time will be reserved following the seminar for a standard Q&A session.
Due to safety considerations, the first and possibly second events in this series will be held virtually, with a live conference-style video call serving as an open discussion room for undergraduate students to speak with the speaker. The speaker will then use the same virtual platform to give their presentation which will be streamed live to attendees. As always, we hope to promote chemistry to all students, and as such this will be an open event for any undergraduate students interested in attending. Although the event is being hosted by ACS student chapters, the speaker’s presentation will be streamed live to all Florida Tech and UCF chemistry students, as part of each university’s pre-existing department seminar series. When it is safe to do so, these events will be held as regular seminars at the host school but will still be streamed live to co-hosting universities for any students unable to attend the event in person.
We would like to thank the Orlando Section for graciously sponsoring this event and are looking forward to hosting our first seminar this upcoming fall semester. Currently Florida Tech and the University of Central Florida are co-hosting this event series, but we would love to get more schools throughout Florida involved! If your student chapter is interested in having these quality seminars streamed live to their university, co-hosting a future seminar, or inviting their favorite chemistry researcher to give a talk, please do not hesitate to contact us with the information below.
Florida Institute of Technology Chapter President - Alex Ferguson, aferguson2016@my.fit.edu
Florida Institute of Technology Chapter Vice President – Mckenna Plocica, mplocica2018@my.fit.edu
Florida Institute of Technology Faculty Advisor I – Dr. Norito Takenaka, ntakenaka@fit.edu
Florida Institute of Technology Faculty Advisor II – Dr. Roberto Peverati, rpeverati@fit.edu
University of Central Florida Chapter President – Joey DeLoretto, jadl99@knights.ucf.edu
University of Central Florida Faculty Advisor – Dr. Stephen Kuebler, Stephen.Kuebler@ucf.edu
Thank you for your interest in, and support of this event.
Sincerely,
Alex Ferguson, Florida Institute of Technology ACS Chapter President
