December through Winter 2026

This was my first time attending Pacifichem, it was a great experience presenting at a chemistry education symposium. Being able to meet with former colleagues (Brett McCollum) and those who educated me from New Zealand (Joanne Harvey) was such a delight. There's nothing wrong with maintaining connections with those who made a difference in your life. I have since re-joined the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry to bolster my New Zealand connections.

Guest lectures from the Fall semester came in December with Jackson Knott coming up from the University of Lethbridge to present about the chemistry of pottery for the inorganic chemistry class to a very full room of interested attendees. And for the Winter semester, Dr. Edward Hsiang from the University of Calgary came to talk in March about asymmetric catalysis in the organometallic chemistry class.

Several independent projects progressed in the Winter semester, with senior research students Adam, Declyn, and Elise continuing their research into their final semester. Both Adam and Declyn presented posters at the Research Days symposium at MRU, gaining some much needed experience presenting in a conference-style setting.

As part of a continuing collaboration with Dr. Nicoleta Nedelcu, Fred wrote a paper that was recently accepted as part of a special issue in Coatings. The publishing process was painful at times, but Fred braved the whole thing and took on more than most undergraduates ever could. Such a monumental achievement. See the article here.

Spring projects are about to begin, with newcomer Ben receiving a Faculty of Science and Technology Summer Research Assistantship, Declyn missing out on USRA-NSERC but scoring research funding in the form a Provost Award, and Abby with an Alberta Innovates Summer Research Studentship on Green Chemistry. Hoping to see lots of success with these projects as several Chemistry Education manuscripts get submitted in the next few weeks, there will be added focus to seeing the natural products work produce publishable results!