2022-23 Outreach and Panel Review Recap

In late summer 2022 an open house was held, attended by 79 visitors including 48 from industry. In January 2023 the IPRIME midyear workshop was organized by Charfac and consisted of a broad set of methods talks mostly by the technical staff. Over this past summer the staff provided a nearly comprehensive series of weekly seminars/user forums. These were well received and have spurred suggestions for further seminars during the academic year as well as next summer. (More ideas are welcome.) Some staff members also guest lecture in curricular courses in any given academic year (e.g., Materials Characterization, CHEM5210). Please contact us if interested in methods-focus lectures. 

Other noteworthy recaps include last fall’s panel review of the CharFac, which was shaped by (i) a 40-page report covering six years of activity as well as strategic planning and issues; and (ii) a day of stakeholder listening sessions overseen by a panel of three UMN faculty plus one professor from Georgia Tech. Some major points in both the report and the listening sessions included (a) a desired strengthening of faculty-staff interactions (dialog/collaboration) so as to benefit university research as well as career development for staff members; (b) a push for increasing the number of workshops and user group meetings (cf. previous paragraph), website/newsletter communications, and advisory committee meetings; (c) an increasingly complex suite of techniques and related strategies for training and usership. For more information or discussion of these points or related topics, feel free to email cfac-dir@umn.edu.