Although I have not started my new job at Concordia University yet, I am already busy preparing the lectures I will be teaching in the fall term (and balancing the whole thing with my paternity leave). I will be teaching 2 sections of an introductory analytical chemistry course and 1 section of intermediate analytical chemistry.Fortunately, I have lots of material available thanks to the generosity of previous instructors, who have provided me with a good framework including problems. That is a great help, now that I conceptually lay out the courses myself and prepare the individual lectures.
Working on reviewer comments
Last week I have mostly worked on the reviewer comments for the “Science of the Total Environment” manuscript. Most changes were indeed easily done and for some more insight I have emailed a former colleague, who has worked on the cultivation of fungi, to get some insights on the details of the procedures; if I do not hear back from her, I have to plough through her lab books.
Reviewer 2 is two-thirds done. Reviewer 1 asked for additional references and a more detailed updated of previous work – so I should be able to do these changes too fairly easily.
Manuscript reviewer comments in
Paternity leave? Sort of … reviewer comments from a manuscript that I have submitted in January have now arrived:
V. Cote, G. Kos and P. A. Ariya, A Study of the Microbial Transformation of Malonic Acid and the Fungal Metabolites Produced “de novo” by Three Airborne Fungi: Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus, and Penicillium chrysogenum, Science of the Total Environment (2007, submitted)
I have to do a minor revision – not bad, most comments are very minor, but useful to improve the clarity of the text. There were no objections concerning the science and general framework of the manuscript, so this should be easy. I have to do the revision within 6 weeks to avoid a resubmission.
Paternity leave …
My daughter Sophie was born on June 16 and I am currently on paternity leave, enjoying our new family life. I use the precious time that is left for some small work on my manuscripts and I will start preparing lectures for the fall term next week.
The instructors, who have taught the lectures I will be teaching in fall in the past have generously offered me their notes; thus, I have a framework for both lectures making the preparation a little easier for me.
Webpage Update
It’s been a while that I have checked through pages looking for obsolete content, updates,… but now I have brought my CV and publication list up to date (including the downloadable pdf- files). The changes already reflect my new job, which I am about to start in mid-August.
I have made some minor changes to the other pages as well and updated the blog software to WordPress 2.2. Working well so far.
Some information about my job at Concordia
I have already moved my stuff to Concordia, now that I have received the formal offer from the Dean’s office. It is a limited term appointment at “Assistant Professor†level, which is not bad and a significant improvement with regard to salary and benefits.
I will teach 3 courses each in the fall and winter terms, analytical chemistry for the most part and I am excited at the prospect of teaching full time for at least a while.Preparations have to start well before I officially take my new position, because I would not be ready otherwise.
I mostly work from home now, which gives me quite a bit of flexibility for the preparations that I need to do as a future dad ;). I make good progress, though, with my articles.
Contract expired & new job ahead!
My contract has expired due to a shortage of funds of my advisor. At the moment I wait for my daughter to be born and I will then be on parental leave until mid-August, when I will start working at Concordia University.
However, I continue writing the articles that need to be finished – one on my snow sampling campaign in Tremblant and Mont-Saint-Hilaire and (at least) one reporting my results from my field trip to the Arctic. For the former I have calculated nice back-trajectories to determine the source region of the air that passed over the area prior to sampling in order to get an idea of the origin of VOC that I have identified and quantified in the snow pack using the NOAA HYSPLIT model.
Catching up again …
I have just been to busy during my stay in Vienna and also the weeks after my return were full of interesting events, so I have to catch up once more. Any posts from April 8 until today are postdated, anyway it should be an interesting read, because there are lots of news.
Otherwise I am busy with structuring and writing my Alert manuscript. A rough structure is done and I start replacing the bulleted lists with actual paragraphs. I have also completed a list of figures and tables that I would like to include, which usually helps me to focus on the important issues that I want to present. Things are coming along …
Manuscript writing ….
With my teaching job at Concordia finished at the end of April, my supervisor at McGill told me that she had some money left to employ me during May, which I find extremely kind of her. I currently finish a manuscript on a field campaign that I have conducted in South-Western Quebec; one in a National park in in the Laurentians, a 2-hour drive north of Montreal, and one in a nature reserve 1 hour east of Montreal, 2 quite different environments with regard to closeness to the city, altitude and vegetation.
I have been working on this manuscript for a while and rewritten large parts of it in order to make is less descriptive and more focused concerning the results and their interpretation; I was able to add a few aspects that came up during discussions at EGU last April as well, so in the end I hope for a good quality manuscript.
I have also started writing up the results from the Alert field campaign. After several talks, posters and discussions on an international level, I am very confident about my data and the results that I have obtained. With all the suggestions and ideas that I have received I have a very clear idea, where this manuscript will go.
Got the job!
Today I have received the (good!) news that I will start teaching at Concordia University in mid-August. I was very happy to hear that the search committee has selected me and submitted a recommendation to the Dean’s office. Pending approval, the university will make me an offer to teach full-time (3 courses each) for 2 semesters with a potential renewal opportunity, should there be a need. There are a few details to be worked out, but I am looking forward to new challenges ahead.