A few of our organizers had collisions with their schedule, so we’re putting off FtBCon for a few months. I’m partly at fault, so blame me — I just got back from the UK, had a week to get everything together, and then looked at my calendar and saw that the date was scheduled right on top of our field experience for incoming biology students. Yeah, I was going to somehow manage an online conference requiring a couple of days of connectivity while shepherding a horde of first year college students around Lake Itasca.
A few others had similar problems with the timing — the end of August turns out to be very awkward for many of us, with academics and students facing other transitions — but I’ll let you all say it’s entirely my fault.
We do have a great lineup in readiness, and it will be even better given a few more months to develop, so none of this is a problem with the speakers, but is entirely due to the distractions that depleted our collection of available organizers.
Finished my 2.5 weeks introducing incoming first years to the College of Biological Sciences at Itasca in July. Love it up there. Let me know if you need a fill in professor!
Whoa. We’re spending two days up there — this is our Bridge to Biology program, in which we try to get the students enthusiastic about biology before their souls are destroyed by chemistry.
We have 5 sessions of 2 full days and 2 half days (for students to travel from and to the TCs) a couple of day offs are thrown in so we can catch up on sleep (manuscripts and grant applications in reality). I teach a 4 hour module on fungal morphogenesis using Candida albicans. The students can see hyphal formation, from yeast cells, in real time. Plus they get to use micropipeters and microscopes, which is always fun.