Dear Faculty:
The Inorganic Chemistry Exchange is looking for faculty members to participate in a nation-wide exchange of enthusiastic, bright undergraduate students.
In a nutshell, the program matches students from participating departments across Canada with supervisors at a host department. The student is expected to apply to the NSERC USRA competition at the host university. Therefore, the program is highly competitive and in general students accepted to the program have GPAs in the mid 80s or above. Also, the NSERC USRA program can be used to cover travel expenses for the student to and from their host department.
We do require a commitment from the supervisor regardless of whether their chosen student is successful in obtaining an NSERC award. Nonetheless, last year we had over 29 eligible students applying for 6 research positions across the country, therefore supervisors do have a reasonable pool of candidates from which to make their selection.
The requirements for hosting an ICE student are:
- Conduct recruiting and interviews of potential ICE undergraduates at your institution. These students must be returning to full-time study in the fall of 2017. Students entering their final year of undergrad during the 2016/2017 academic year and graduating summer 2017 are NOT eligible for ICE. Priority will be given to Canadians and permanent residents.
- Commit to hiring an undergraduate from a participating ICE university. This involves helping the student apply for an NSERC USRA at your department/university, assisting the student find accommodations in your town/city, ensuring the student’s travel expenses to and from their home town to your university are paid (either by NSERC USRA reimbursements or from your grant). If the student isn’t awarded a USRA at your department, you must still commit to both the salary component at current NSERC USRA rates (minimum $5625 total salary) plus travel costs for your student and your own travel to the ICE conference (estimate around $8000 for travel and salary).
- You and your student must both commit to attend the end-of-summer workshop, which will be held in Saskatoon on August 17th and August 18th, 2017). If you cannot attend this workshop for availability or financial reasons, then you should not participate in ICE this year.
More information about the ICE can currently be found here: www.inorganicchemistryexchange.ca
The program is a great way of showcasing your research group and department to talented undergrads who are considering graduate school. Indeed, many past ICE students have proceeded on to graduate studies.
As the ICE coordinator for 2016-2017, I invite anyone interested in participating as a research supervisor to contact me for further information. The list of participating departments must be finalized by mid-September in order to begin student recruiting so I ask any interested faculty members to contact me by Monday September 12.
My contact details are given below.
Sincerely,
Andrew Grosvenor
ICE Coordinator
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry
University of Saskatchewan
110 Science Place
Saskatoon SK S7N 5C9