LSU
Integrative Graduate Education
Research Training
Teaching Craft for
Macromolecular
Creativity
IGERT is…
Integrative
Graduate
Education
Research
Training
Why not TIGER instead???
19 IGERT Awards for 2000
Selected from 270 Proposals
Pennsylvania State
Northwestern
Arizona State (#1)
UCLA
Wayne State University
Arizona State (#2)
Tennessee--Knoxville
Virginia Tech
University of California Santa Barbara
University of Utah
University of California Berkeley
LSU
University of California San Diego
North Carolina State
Purdue
Carnegie-Mellon
University of Washington University of Colorado Boulder
George Washington
University
>100 Sites total: see http://www.igert.org
Other IGERT’s Span NSF’s Incredibly
Wide Range of Science Interests
• University of Wisconsin – Madison
Human Dimensions of Social and Aquatic
System Interactions
• University of Washington
Astrobiology: Life in and beyond Earth's Solar
System
• University of California—Santa Barbara
Advanced Optical Materials
Characteristics of all IGERT’s
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$3 Million/5 years
All $$$ to students
No $$$ for faculty
No $$$ for postdocs
Only 8% indirect
Requires that much & more in matching
Requires “creativity” to use funds efficiently
Requires very creative educational approach
LSU’s IGERT
Teaching Craft for Macromolecular Creativity
• The first IGERT in Macromolecules
• An experiment in graduate education.
• Departments: Biology, Chemistry, Chemical
Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics,
Textiles, Veterinary Medicine, Education
CMC - IGERT
• Of course there is great research--but everyone has this!
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Teaching Innovations
Apprentice/Artisan/Craftsperson Ladder
Hands First: integrate lecture, lab, demo, seminar, co-op experience
Ethics training plus community service
Faculty as researchers, not financiers of research
Faculty teams fund high-risk projects neither could do alone
Faculty work with students side-by-side
Integrated, multi-department, lab/lecture 4-course curriculum
Minigrants / Finishing School / Off-campus Advisors
Off-campus: MPI-Mainz, Turkey, Brazil, Japan
Selected Macromolecular Capabilities
SLS/DLS(2)
GPC/LS/Vis(3)
DOSY(2)
Kawabata
Rheometer
DSC (3)
TGA/DTA
DMTA
TGA/SS
Epifluorescence
Polarizing
Confocal(2)
Analytical
Ultracentrifuge
MALDI-TOF
Supercritical
Extraction
Mixing
Surface
Pressure
Extrusion
Densitometer
Porosimeter
SAXS
More: http://msg.lsu.edu/equip.html
And that’s just at LSU. We now have
APTEC
•Grambling: positron annihilation/free volume
•LaTech: organized multilayers
•McNeese: gas diffusion, anionic polymerization
•Southeastern: GPC/LS/Vis
•UL--Lafayette: rapid prototype & physical properties
•UNO: fluorescence
•Southern: composites testing
•Tulane: rheology, thermal, scattering
If it needs doing, and involves polymers,
it can almost surely be done in Louisiana.
IGERT Students Do More
• Work in a team
• Off-campus participant
• Four core technical
courses
• Ethics/Community
Service
• Yes you WILL attend
seminar
• Reports to our
statistician
• Lab books done right
• Take a bigger role in
defining your project
IGERT Students Get More!
$27,500 $30,000
• $15,000
Stipend
--------NSF-------• Plus Tuition
• Teach on top of that if
you want
• Industrial co-ops
• Actual time working
side-by-side with
faculty
• Minithesis in 2 months
• Minigrants
• Pre-doc
CMC-IGERT Faculty & Projects
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14 participants, all externally funded.
Others welcome! (Several added already)
$5 Million Annual Research.
NSF, NIH, DOD, etc.
Basic & applied research.
Good industrial & other off-campus contacts.
Biomedical to genomics to polyolefins, but all require
common knowledge of large molecules.
• Shared equipment.
• Willing to work in teams.
Projects such as...
Rods in supercrit fluids
Composites
Chem/ChE/Physics
Chem/ME
MPI Germany & Wyo.
Southern U.
Alzheimer’s
Chem/Bio
MIT, Wisconsin, NIH,
NHFML
OR INVENT YOUR OWN!
Protein
Structure/Function
Complex Fluids
Chem/Bio/Phys
Chem/Chem/Physics
Physical & Polymer
CAMD, Stanford,
Brookhaven
Molecular Recognition
Chem/Chem Synth &
Analytical
Dupont
HISTORY & ENGLISH MAJORS DO.
Drilling muds/
Chem/ChE
Environment/Composites
Schlumberger
Many more projects at:
http://macro.lsu.edu/igert
Impressions from this educational
experiment, some good and some
troublesome
How it sometimes
seems students
want us to teach
them.
Leuven, Belgium
What we give them instead.
cavorite-lis
n
-fGET
tg/stores/d
communit
rate-item
cust-rec
just-say-no
true
m/justsay
Class has doubled!
This year’s tour was 24 students.
Polymer processing tour at
ExxonMobil
Chem 4010 = MS-I
STSC class.
Teamwork meets its limits.
Science & Technology in Service to the
Community
http://macro.lsu.edu/stsc
Ethics Training Backlash
STSC
William Daly, polymer scientist
and occasional professional
consultant, lectures on:
•property infringement
•tax liability
•when to tell a lawyer “no”
•when a student sues us
Students are a little blurry on
why they have to hear lectures
on legal aspects of sci-tech,
but they enjoy this subject.
Sample Minigrants
Subject
Outcome
Grant-writing workshop
“PolyCommunity” non-profit corporation???
Langmuir imprinting
Supports NSF-CAREER grantee in new direction
Preliminary data for new grant at
Dupont/Univ. of Delaware
Grant submitted
Summer at NRL
Student quit graduate school
Experimental flow test apparatus
Simulation expert built apparatus with own hands
Set of tools like that at SAXS line
Real tools in that lab
Manifold for organic synthesis
Badly needed manifold for organic reactions in a lab
where synthesis equipment was dated
SAXS at Tsukuba
2 students to Tsukuba, Japan
Travel to NIST for SANS
Students learn contrast matching—new capabilities
for that research. Survive the drive home after
snowstorm.
Build machine not commercially
available.
Still under consideration—likely will require cost
sharing plus teaching/outreach component.
Global Friendships & Portuguese
CD’s
Ties to regular
track Ph.D.
students and
undergraduates
Recruiting can be fun
Integrative Training:
DIY Legacy Building
Problem 4. A few weeks ago, Professor George Newkome of the University of Akron
lectured on self-assembling hexaruthenium terpyridyl clusters. A sample molecule
appears below:
Shortly after his return to Akron, Dr. Newkome sent a related sample that we took to
Laboratorio Nacional Luz Sincotron (LNLS) in Campinas, Brazil, where small angle Xray measurements were made. You can download a typical SAXS data file at:
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Does the presence of Ruthenium aid or interfere with SAXS?
Guesstimate the size of the molecule from the drawing above, using what you
know about C-C bonds, the diameter of benzene rings, etc.
 Analyze the SAXS data by the method of Guinier to obtain the radius of gyration,
Rg. There are 3 columns of numbers: q in inverse Angstroms, intensity I, and
uncertainty in I. For the present purpose, you can ignore the uncertainty.
 How does the Rg value compare to the "ring" diameter for this self assembly?
 Would you expect Rg from SANS to be the same, larger or smaller?
 Estimate the translational diffusion coefficient of the molecule.
 Do you think the real translational diffusion coefficient will be larger or smaller
than your estimate?
 Estimate the rotational diffusion coefficient of the molecule.
 Would it be possible to measure Drot by polarized (as opposed to depolarized)
light scattering?
 Would it make sense to do zero angle depolarized dynamic light scattering on the
molecule?
These data on a novel synthetic material are less than one week old so this problem
provides, just in time for summer, a natural transition to real research.
Integrative Training
•Visitor’s seminar
•Collaboration established
•SAXS trip to Brazil
•Analyze data for team exam
•All in one month
Integrative Training: Semester-long programming assignment
aiding inter-group research
Macromolecular Systems II, Homework #3 (shortened)
Our group and some others here are getting into DOSY and Prof. Butler
wants a friendly CONTIN, like our ANSCAN. Some translation is
needed, but of course the two programs are totally unconnected. Butler's
program is on a Mac (what else?) and gives output that looks like this:
PS2150_500_31_2
7.2122 ppm
Polystyrene containing MW standards of 500 and 2150
298 K
1.00000000E-03 % little delta (seconds)
1.00000000E-01 % big delta (seconds)
g(gauss/cm)
q^2(big_delta - little_delta/3)
expt_signal
6.65000000E-01
4.40750917E-02
1.00000000E+02
1.66200000E+00
2.75303652E-01
9.88369747E+01
2.65900000E+00
7.04671340E-01
9.57348015E+01
Some
header information (7 lines)
3.65500000E+00
1.33144949E+00
9.25603053E+01
Then: row after row of
4.65200000E+00
2.15689670E+00
8.80876912E+01
G (gauss/cm) Something
y(x)
(etc. you can download the whole file later)
Write a limber, easy-to-use program (a high school student should be
able to use it) that converts Butler's DOSY output to ANSCAN input.
What I meant to say
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The most fun I have had as professor.
Students seem to be having fun, too.
Flexible $$$ for an important experiment.
Revolutionary or weird? Neither!
Resonates with students and (some) faculty.
We are happy to provide copies of the LSU pre-proposal,
full proposal, reviewer comments, this presentation, etc.
Working lunch: filling out Milestone and Landmark reports
Coordinator in Action
Coordinator in Action
Summer intern joining REU/Hughes poster session
Images from Brazil
Chillin’ with Stanford scientist while in
Brazil
Virtual Infrastructure is Better than None at All
IGERT students today
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Interdisciplinary Technology
(the other IT)
Another IT Example: Internet Scheduler
Web Seminar Sign-up With Negotiation
& Length Adjustment
Speaker
Day
Friday
Friday
Friday
Date
2/20/2004
2/27/2004
3/5/2004
(Enter your
Name:
First & Last
Names)
Research
Group
Type of
Seminar
Michael
Baylis
Russo
CT
changde
Zhang
Daly
CT
Elena
Loizou
Schmidt
CT
Erick Soto
Cantu
Russo
CT
Jianhong
Russo
CT
Derek
Dorman
Russo
CT
Hyuk Yu
Russo
FT
Title or Subject
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
TBA
Email
Lipids and Dendrimers
Email
Polymer Scaling
Email
Stuff that gets integrated
L U
Seminars  Research  ”Live” Problem Sets
Visitors  Evaluation Program
Learning  Teaching  Answer Keys
People  Teams  Social interactions
Research  Recruiting  Outreach
Research  Curriculum Development  Student
Leadership  Website Building  Meeting
organization.
Research  Evaluation  LSU Administration
Involvement  Interdisciplinary Technology
Development
Conclusions
• Preliminarily, it seems:
• Very strong students really prosper and do exercise
creativity.
• Weaker students sometimes wipe out—not sure if that’s a
program fault or just student-advisor personality
mismatches, not sure if the rate is higher than in
traditional support programs.
• Medium students who try hard will probably get more
out of this program than through traditional training.
• Faculty involvement: tied to $$$ and/or renewal.
• Teams harder to construct than originally
expected—partly, this is a timing issue.
• Apprenticeship works, but hard to enforce.
Conclusions and questions
• Core courses growing, steadily improving, steadily
involving ex-students to shape it.
• Flexibility to $$$ is the key.
• Will students avail themselves to the pre-doc
experience? If so, will that help their long-term
career?
• Will all the extracurricular activities—what might be
called holistic training—interfere with technical
depth?
• This program is a nightmare to administrate, but
many student-involved activities are creating
“automatic good behavior” patterns—i.e.,
traditions.
• There remain challenges to university infrastructure
in order to do this right.