Welcome to visit the home of Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee at Purdue University in Fall 2007. We are a graduate student group from Purdue University (Fall GSSPC, 2007) and are planing the fall series GSSPC for 2007 with an interesting title "Finding Your Catalyst: Lower the Barrier from the Graduate School to Industry ". The efforts of each GSSPC are continually supported by both the Division of Chemical Education (CHED) and the Office of Graduate Education.

The goal of the Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee (GSSPC) is to offer graduate students an important role in the ACS National Meetings, give them opportunities to develop their leadership skills, and to support them in their desire to make significant contributions to the Technical Program. More detailed information about the goals and interworkings of the GSSPC may be found in the GSSPC Charter. 

A group of graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign spearheaded this process by organizing a symposium for the 231st National ACS Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia in 2006. The current spring committee (Spring GSSPC, 2007) is from The Ohio State University, their symposium entitled "Exploring and Exploiting Nature with Biomimetics," will take place at the National ACS Meeting in Chicago, IL in March 2007.

Key factors in assuring the continuity of this project will be successfully recruiting and mentoring subsequent generations of graduate students in order to establish an ongoing and self-sustaining process that enables graduate students yearly to organize and preside over symposia on topics of their choice at ACS National Meetings. The GSSPC provides an avenue for the inclusion of graduate students in programming in order to promote graduate student membership and involvement in the ACS. Please visit our question & answer page for answers to questions posed to both past and present committees.

We are proud to announce our successor for the Fall 2008 GSSPC----The University of Connecticut Fall 2008 GSSPC: Justin Fair, (Chairman), Besnik Bajrami, Christine Cardillo, Michelle Dean, Susan Gichuki, Sadagopan Krishnan, Naimish Sardesai, Tyson A. Miller, (Faculty Advisor)

We truly appreciate for the gracious sponsorship from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals.

Committee History:

1) 231st ACS National Meeting, Atlanta, GA (Spring 2006). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Dorothy Miller, Timothy Vaden, Marja Engel, Sandra Lee, Alexis Thompson, Courtney Tucker. "Balancing the Equation: Finding a Personal - Professional Equilibrium." Website.

*2) 233rd ACS National Meeting, Chicago, IL (Spring, 2007). The Ohio State University: Nicole Dickson, Soumya Mitra, Steve Rieth, Michelle Roettger, Peng Tao. "Exploring and Exploiting Nature with Biomimetics."

*3) 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA (Fall, 2007). Purdue Univeresity: Amanda Lee, Steve C. Habicht, Sen Li, M. Aruni De Silva, Shucha Zhang and Melanie Wyche . "Finding Your Catalyst: Lower the Barrier from the Graduate School to Industry ."