Highlights

• the upcoming Sci-Mix poster session
• the upcoming Frontiers in Chemistry lectureship
• the recent chemistry day at the museum

Comments from the Chair

By Brian Eklov

As I was driving in to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum to set-up for our annual Chemistry Day event, it struck me that we had the perfect day for this year's theme: Chemistry Colors Our World.

The trees lining the streets sure were putting on a show, and the deep green of the chlorophylls, the yellows of the carotenes, and the reds and purples of the anthocyanins, all against a deep blue sky - it was striking.

A big thank you to all of those who chose to spend a Saturday afternoon sharing some chemistry with the community. As you can read below, we had a great turn out, a great response from the attendees, and a great time sharing some fun experiments with some very eager young minds. I am already looking forward to our 30^th annual Chemistry Day next year.

Looking forward, mark the evening of November 10th on your calendars. This is when we will gather at Bells for our annual SciMix gathering.

Dust off an old poster, bring a new one, or just bring yourself. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone has been up to over the last year.

I have two reminders for you:

ACS Elections

ACS elections are going on now, both for KACS and national. Please take a moment and add your voice to our choices in governance

KACS Volunteers

The KACS is still looking for volunteers. We are actively looking for a Communications Chair, and we have an open position on the executive committee. If you have any interest in either, please let us know. Time commitments are small, but the impact on our programs is not.

Brian Eklov, Ph.D. (KACS Chair)

National ACS intensifies outreach to Industrial Chemists

Excerpted from the Fall Councilor Bulletin sent by ACS

Early in 2015, the Committee on Corporation Associates (CA) developed a strategic plan for the next two years to address the needs of industry scientists and the companies that employ them. The CA mission is to influence ACS programs, products and services to meet the needs of chemistry-based enterprises, while providing a business and corporate voice to the ACS membership and Board of Directors. Our aspiration is that these changes will catalyze innovation through a thriving partnership between industry and ACS. One of the CA focus items is to better communicate challenges facing chemistry-based companies. CA will analyze and share data collected on companies and their employees, identify unmet needs, and communicate findings to governance units throughout the Society. In addition to these drivers, CA committed to contribute to Society efforts in public policy, and to provide strategic funding to programs throughout the Society to aid industry members.

During the CA meeting in the Spring of 2015, the outcomes of recent studies and surveys of industry members were discussed. The items most important to industry members were topics that are relevant to their current job, topics and training that provide members with new information and increased productivity, networking/collaboration, and ways of improving company processes. The survey also indicated that industry attendance at national meetings is low because industry members are unable to find what they need to take back to their companies and show that they connected to make business decisions.

To address these concerns, we are working with ACS staff to improve services to industry members. Examples of these improvements include the creation of a new website for industry at www.acs.org/industry. The latest version, which was rolled out in the summer of 2015, has sections devoted to networking, innovation, research reports, professional training, meetings & conferences, webinars, and a directory of service providers & consultants.

Staff was also asked to retune the Industry Insights newsletter (example issue: 13 May 2015), and to create an Industry Voices blog to meet industry member needs for timely information and stories related to life in industry. The newsletter now has over 33,000 subscribers and readership of the blog is growing steadily. An online registration form was created for the newsletter to facilitate subscriptions.

In the Fall of 2015 at the Boston meeting CA cosponsored an industry-related ACS Presidential Symposium entitled Transforming University-Industry Partnerships for an Innovative Future. This symposium highlighted the role of better university-industry partnerships in driving more innovation which will lead to a more competitive nation. Speakers challenged the existing framework for partnerships with perspectives on how to better enable, execute, and energize collaboration. In addition, the impact on individuals was explored, including graduate student perspectives on benefits and challenges from industrial collaborations.

Stay tuned as we continue to improve ACS for industry!

Sci-Mix at Bell's

The Kalamazoo Local Section of the American Chemical Society will host a Sci-Mix Poster Session, generously funded by Zoetis, on Tuesday 10 November 5-9 pm at Bell's Eccentric Café. This call for abstracts requests that poster presenters submit the required information by Wednesday 4 November to be eligible to win $50. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to participate.

Instructions

Presenters should email the following information to Elke.Schoffers@wmich.edu by Wednesday 4 November.

• poster title
• author list with * for the presenter
• institution information
• an abstract to enter the prize drawing

Non-prize presentations will still be accepted until Mon. 9 November to reserve an easel.

Please note that each attendee who is (1) a current ACS member, or (2) a poster presenter or (3) a Zoetis employee will receive two complimentary drink tickets. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to participate.

Frontiers in Chemistry Lectureship

C–H Borylations: Green Chemistry that Inspired Green Ambitions

Robert E. Maleczka, Jr. – Michigan State University

Tuesday 3 November 2015

Ir-catalyzed C–H borylations can eliminate the need for halogens, alkyllithiums, and/or cryogenic conditions for the syntheses of cross-coupling partners. Moreover, their chemeoselectivity and atom economy allows for the combination of catalytic borylations with subsequent chemical events. Given the prominent role cross- couplings play in the preparation of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and organic electronic materials, industry has shown considerable interest in such C–H activation processes. Indeed, the Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute deemed cross-couplings that avoid haloaromatics as one of their top aspirational reactions.

Download the event flyer

Download the abstract for this lecture

Sponsored By

For more information, please contact Dr. James Kiddle at James.Kiddle@wmich.edu or call 269-387-5440

2015 Chemistry Day

KACS 29^th National Chemistry Week Outreach

By Lydia E.M. Hines (photos by Elena Hines)

Once again, cold weather arrived early in Kalamazoo, Michigan, just in time for our much-anticipated National Chemistry Week (NCW) hands-on-chemistry outreach to our community! It was a good opportunity to stay indoors, so 1000 patrons (children and families) visited our chemistry-themed activities in our area’s two-storey museum and the Volcano demonstration outside the building, on Saturday, October 17, 2015, from noon to 4 pm. Our long-time partner, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, diligently added extensive publicity in the print media (5 venues), in 2 TV shows, and on several FM and AM radio programs to our online flyers sent to schools, libraries and other targeted audience groups.

Among our visitors were one family from Grand Rapids who heard the ad on TV :), two large Girl Scout groups and several area teachers who eagerly took ACS's American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) information, as well as home-schooling families, who were delighted with all the age-appropriate information we had available for them - Celebrating Chemistry and ChemMatters.

As in other years, enthusiasm among both KACS members and other volunteers continued to build as the event neared, and our accommodating colleague at the Museum, Mrs. Annette Hoppenworth, expertly fit in 80 volunteers presenting 25 activities. “Worker bees” for the duration of the event included many High School students, undergraduates and graduate students, local industry representatives, college and university faculty and others who just enjoy seeing the excitement registered on visitors’ faces each year.

Sincere appreciation is extended to each one who made this event another HUGE success.

Note: What follows is a story about how our Section's programs work hand in hand to continue giving: Readers should be aware of our Local section's 33-year history of administering a Competitive Exam followed by an Awards Program; well, as I was looking over the names of the High School young people who, over the past several years, have been given awards by our Section for their exemplary performance on our Competitive Examination, I came across four names that sounded very familiar because they appeared on the list of volunteers at our 2015 Chemistry Day – one was that of Sarah Glass, a 2013 awardee, a graduate of Wayland (MI) High School, and the other 3 were Hannah McQueen, Josiah Turpin, and Chris Vennard, 2015 awardees. Sarah is now studying chemistry at Kalamazoo College and is one of the leaders of the Chemistry club on that campus; as such she has been instrumental in organizing and enlisting a group of her fellow students to present activities at our Chemistry Day at the Museum both this year and last. The other three are 2015 awardees and continue as students at Gull Lake High School. It is exciting to see these young people enthusiastically participating in an activity that shares the importance and fun of chemistry with the younger generation.

Elephant toothpaste

Chemiluminsecnece

UV-sensitive polish on my nails, collectin my goodies.

Green slime