June 1, 2006

Present: Carl Salter, Karl Oberholser, John Ranck, Jim Foresman, Gary Hoffman, Dan Libby, Jeff Wolbach, Brent May, Kevin Range

There was no official agenda. Topics focused on the nature of future meetings.

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It was decided that next year's meeting should be held on Wednesday, May 30 through Saturday, June 2, 2007.
In order to encourage attendance by students, a preliminary workshop/introduction to computer packages was suggested for Tuesday, May 29, 2007.
A one-day, on-line meeting (chat session) was suggested for Jan. 5, 2007 (the Friday after New Year's Day)

There was an attempt to get students involved at this meeting, but it did not seem to work. Thoughts were solicited.
The timing seemed reasonable. Many students are just starting summer research and attending the MoleCVUE meeting is a good way to get introduced to many computer packages.
It was suggested that many students are intimidated by the nature of the presentations and the assumed familiarity with the packages and concepts. A one-day introductory session was proposed (see note in item 1).
This session should start with a "holistic" viewpoint and allow the students to get up to speed. Parenthetically, the idea of a "summer school" might attract potential vendors.
It was suggested that we don't want to teach to the students in our presentations. We want to treat them as colleagues. However, there was some sentiment that seeing how material is presented in a classroom could be valuable for other faculty.

There seems to be a difficulty keeping people involved in what was started at the MoleCVUE meetings through the year. It was suggested that a winter meeting could provide the needed "kick-start".
JR volunteered to serve as the technician for the meeting. However, someone else must organize the content. Carl Salter will look into this.
A notice should be sent out prior to the meeting to assess interest/motivation.
A potential topic for this meeting is a discussion of publicity for the group and a statement of the group's philosophy/mission. It was suggested that a properly stated philosophy may attract students.
Another suggestion was the use of computing in teaching.

It was suggested that software developers be invited. Getting them together may be productive.
For instance, pymol is good with graphics but poor with chemistry. Atomsmith, on the other hand, is good with chemistry, but not so good with graphics. Each package is developed by a single person. Getting the two developers together may lead to a better package.
It was also pointed out that the JMOL development is a one-person operation.
Roadblocks for this meeting: JF said that getting feedback and overcoming inertia were the biggest obstacles. GH said organization at Etown went relatively smoothly.
It was stated that we could have used more lab time.