This project is in the area of analytical and surface chemistry, broadly defined. During the ten week period between 1 June 1988 and 9 August 1988, five faculty members from colleges that do not offer the PhD degree in chemistry will carry out collaborative research with seven analytical and surface chemistry faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Research participants from the undergraduate institutions will be selected from among applicant who respond to UNC's announcement of the summer research program. This activity is analogous to the support of faculty from undergraduate institutions through NSF Research Opportunity Awards (ROAs) and represents one of UNC's attacks on the national crisis in production of PhD chemists with expertise in the area of analytical and surface chemistry. In this project, participating faculty from the undergraduate institutions will not necessarily have prearranged their summer research activities with UNC analytical faculty members, rather they will establish their collaborative arrangements after they have had an opportunity to consider fully all of the research programs of the host institution participating faculty members. In addition to the research focus of the activity, UNC faculty and scientists from industrial laboratories in nearby Research Triangle Park will present a series of lectures covering frontier research tools and topics that constitute modern analytical and surface chemistry and discuss research opportunities in this broad field. Also, representatives from funding agencies from both Federal and private sectors that have a strong commitment to the support of quality research programs in undergraduate institutions will address the participants and describe the mechanisms whereby such support can be competitively sought. One particularly important goal of this project is to assist the participating faculty from undergraduate institutions to begin to establish a network of vital academic analytical chemists in four-year institutions in the southeastern United States that can help to address vigorously the problem of attracting outstanding young talent to the challenging and technologically important subfield of analytical and surface chemistry.
