Presentation to Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Yesterday

I gave a presentation to CHE 794 yesterday. Below is a description of the course from the NJIT course catalog:

ChE 794 - Professional Presentations for Ph.D. Students (0 credits)Intended to help students make better technical presentations. Each student is required to make a presentation on a research topic; guest lectures will occur during the semester. Effective From: Fall 2007

Professor Boris Khusid asked me to talk about how I use Powerpoint in my work. I gave a brief introduction on how Powerpoint can be used effectively and that it should assist the speaker and not be a distraction. I then described the 4 Powerpoints that I use at NJIT to teach chemistry/chemical engineering students to find information from print and electronic sources:

1. General Introduction
2. How to Find Physical Property Data
3. Chemical Abstracts and Scifinder Scholar
4. Scopus and other resources

My training has to be very cursory. I also invite students to come to me in the future if they need assistance in finding information. They did seem to be attentive, but nobody asked questions. Under these circumstances it is impossible to assess the impact of the lecture. I don't expect students to become chemical information specialists, but just to be aware of the resources in their field that are available now and in the future when they move on to another academic program or to industry.