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Steve Anderson Tales of Toxaphene in the Great Lakes Deborah Swackhamer, Ph.D., Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Minnesota will be our speaker for our next quarterly meeting. Dr. Swackhamer will give us an update on her continuing work in the Great Lakes ( Dr. Swackhamer last addressed the MCF as a focus Speaker at the 1993 Spring Symposium). The meeting will be held at the Minnesota Brewing Company’s Rathskeller Room, on Tuesday, October 13, 1998. Social hour will begin at 6:00p.m. and the seminar will begin at 7:00p.m. Complimentary beer, soft drinks, mineral water and Subway sandwiches will be served. Please check next month’s newsletter or the MCF website (http://www.minnchrom.org/) for more information or call Steve Anderson at (651) 737-0533. Directions:
The MCF is sitting in a good spot this year as we are planning to return to the Earle Brown Center. The excellent comments received from members point towards this being a good spot to hold the symposium. The MCF is exploring new speakers for the symposium and will have an excellent line up. We hope that each member looks at their work and will consider presenting a paper at the Symposium this year. An issue that I would like to bring up with the membership is one that every organization that has been around for a while runs up against, that being new membership. The MCF is almost 20 years old, and during that time it's done a good job of educating members as well as allowing networking with others with similar interests. We need to get the word out to other chromatographers out there that we exist! We have to look at bringing in that coworker of yours who would benefit from an organization such as this. So, I am asking each of you to look around and give this newsletter to someone you know who may be interested in joining us. Bring them along to one of our quarterly meetings and let them see what we are all about. Tell them about our website (minnchrom.org) and the Spring Symposium, and how you've used the resources the MCF provides. Thank you for your time and participation in this great
organization. If you have any ideas on how to make it better please to do not hesitate to
call me or drop me an email. Thanks! HAVE YOU VISITED OUR NEW WEBSITE? Yes! We are on the worldwide web!! You can find us at the address www.minnchrom.org Many of you may remember seeing the demo at the Spring Symposium. If you did not, please take a few minutes to visit the official MCF website. If you are wondering why is the name different from our well known acronym, MCF, here is the answer. The name MCF has been taken by other groups. We searched in all the domains such as *.com, *.net etc. Everywhere someone has already obtained the rights to use MCF. Although the new name may not be as obvious, it is still easy to remember. Of course once you are on the MCF home page, please make sure to add a bookmark. The web page has many useful links. For example, you can find the information about an upcoming course organized by MCF. There is a separate link to the MCF events such as seminars, symposium etc. I do not want to go on with what you will find there. Be adventurous ! You will be surprised! The web page will be updated at least once a month. If you have any news item related to MCF, please send an email to rravichandran@mmm.com. Another nice feature we are evaluating now is the possibility of setting up a Discussion group. Type in www.minnchrom.org/discussion. You will find yourself on the discussion page. You can initiate a discussion on a separation topic or problem. This is a fully searchable discussion forum. Please see if you find this useful and send a comment back to the webmaster. I want to thank David Eikens for his valuable help in setting up the website. Of course, this would not have been possible but for the support and encouragement of the MCF Board. Thank you all the Board Members. Ravi Ravichandran MINUTES OF THE 12 AUGUST 1998 BOARD MEETING Present: K Brezinka, L Charpentier, A Dallas, D Eikens, K Grandprey, J Jopke, R Ravichadran, T Robison, P Sackett, T Wilson Treasurer's Report: The current balance of $18,043 doesn't reflect income from the Symposium or the July GC course, a more realistic value is somewhere around $30,000. The final damages for abandoning the Convention Center were $3400 including the $1000 deposit, a payment which will not be repeated. The IRS actually admitted they'd made an error in assessing us a $260 late payment penalty on our taxes. Program: Dan Armstrong will be keynote speaker at the 1999 Spring Symposium, and the first quarterly meeting will be held 13 October at the Rathskeller in St. Paul; Deb Swackhamer of the U of M will speak. The topic and location for the January meeting are still in a state of uncertainty. Education Committee: We had 19 paid attendees for the intro to GC course with a limit of 24 students, John Freeburg and Gary Reineccius received their usual stellar reviews. Kim is trying to set up a 3-day experimental design course in late Oct/early Nov with Lars Pekay, with a 1-day follow-up session a month or so beyond. Suggestions for courses are always welcome. Symposium Committee: The committee is still without an official chair; volunteers are always welcome. We're locked into the 18th to 20th of May 1999 for the next Symposium, the contract is signed and D'Amico and Sons will once again cater. Newsletter: Kristi Brezinka of Surmodics has taken over for Diana Budde of Land o'Lakes, and deadlines will continue to hover around the 25th of the month for the next month's issue. Old Business: We've started a trial discussion page on our website which is searchable by topic. To add the feature permanently would cost around $300. Several vendors have inquired about links from our page to their sites, and Ravi will draft a letter describing details of what we need and what it'll cost to have it done. There's been no news on the progress toward tax-exempt status. New Business: Luke would like us to tap sources of potential members to the MCF by putting notices in local corporate and ACS newsletters, etc etc etc. We're particularly concerned about our lack of connections with the 5-state academic community, and the difficulties of keeping our mailing list updated. ANNOUNCING THE 1998 MCF UNDERGRADUATE AWARD WINNER! Each year the MCF solicits undergraduates to submit a proposal for a short research topic involving the separation sciences. This year's winner is Lee Stanek, a Junior at Winona State University, where he is majoring in chemistry. He was presented a scholarship of $2,500 at the past (1998) Spring Symposium in May. The winning Proposal, entitled "GPC Analysis of Polycyclohexene Oxide Produced in Iodonium/Methoxyphosphine Co-initiated Visible Photopolymerizations" will be presented at next year's Spring Symposium (mark your calendars!). The proposal will use GPC to study the length of polymers produced by the ring-opening polymerization of cyclohexene oxide using various methoxy phosphines. Lee is a native of Crystal, MN. Lee's advisor, Dr. Thomas W. Nalli. Assistant Professor of chemistry, received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Rochester, NY. Good Luck in your research Lee! We all look forward to hearing your results! |
