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Many academic institutions have looked at various ways to make their faculty a more diverse and inclusive group of people that better reflect the demographic swath of their current and future student bodies. This is even more so important in chemistry departments, where there has long been a discussion on the "leaky pipeline" for women and underrepresented groups. The work presented here examines programs and policies at various departments aimed at increasing the diversity of their faculty applicant pool, and compares them against the reception of the general scientific community by way of applicant demographics and the use of a survey instrument designed to ascertain the advertisement language that lends to a more diverse applicant pool. The combination of these results is then used to generate a list of best practices that administrations and academic search committees can use to improve their ability to attract diverse talent.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Minority Affairs (CMA) endeavors to support all chemistry faculty and staff as they educate all of our students during this pandemic. While the chemistry education community and the ACS have both provided resources as most institutions transitioned to virtual platforms, this pandemic disproportionally affects our students of color, lower socio-economic and rural backgrounds, and students with disabilities. Specifically, these students must overcome hurdles of technology access, environmental disruptions, and cultural pressures in order to be successful. Therefore, CMA has formulated partnerships with both academic and industrial institutions to highlight some best practices to improve future virtual learning experiences of these oftentimes marginalized students. Specifically, the work presented here examines programs and policies at three academic institutions with very different student body demographics and surrounding learning environments (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), and Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD)) with an attempt to identify variables that enhance marginalized student success in chemistry courses. The combination of their results suggests elements such as access to technology, home responsibility, and impostor syndrome, that other learning programs should consider to increase virtual learning success. Furthermore, other stopgap measures implemented at industrial partners give insight as to how these considerations can be implemented during virtual internship programs to meet their learning objectives associated with entering their institutional pipeline.

The College of New Jersey's Chemistry Department and School of Science have been strategically transforming our teaching, learning, and mentoring environments for over a decade through programs that are targeted toward "new majority" students: low-income, first generation, and historically marginalized races and ethnicities. Recently, we shifted from programs that target a small number of students to focus on systemic and structural changes to create inclusive excellence. We formalized our work in a Theory of Change (ToC) that emphasizes mechanisms for our faculty to depart from traditional pedagogy to become experimentalist teachers who use evidence-based practices and data to support our student success. The ToC is built on three pillars: (1) gaining empathy and understanding of our students, (2) a changing toolkit of acceptable pedagogical practices, and (3) a process to create shared language and values and an understanding of our responsibilities to our students. By focusing on mechanism, we do not prescribe a single pedagogy but instead are flexible for different course contexts. Department work on the ToC allowed our faculty to pivot instead of panic during the shift to online instruction. The students noted smooth transitions to remote learning, and more importantly, departmental discussions regarding pedagogy helped faculty to support each other with suggestions and sharing of best practices. As a department, we learned a great deal during the pandemic that furthers our collective work toward inclusive excellence and believe our ToC is transferable to other institutions.

Synthetic exploration of K/Cu/Th/S quaternary phase space has yielded KCuThS3, K2Cu2ThS4 and L3Cu3Th2S7, which are semiconductors with striking variations in color and range of measured band gaps. All the materials are characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, microprobe chemical analysis and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (NIR-UV).

Two new thorium chalcophosphates are synthesized by the reactive flux method and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction method, diffuse reflectance, and Raman spectroscopy. The study conducted shows the remarkable diversity of the actinide chalcophosphanate system and demonstrates the chalcophosphate phase space is still ripe for new actinide-containing structures.

A study was conducted to analyze the structural and electrochemical characterization of binary, ternary and quaternary platinum alloy catalysts for methanol electro-oxidation. The platinum and platinum alloy samples were prepared by arc-melting pressed pellets of platinum, ruthenium, osmium and iridium powders. Results indicated that the catalysts supported a nanocrystalline face-centered cubic phase. Findings also showed that the addition of iridium accelerated the activation of the C-H bonds in methanol.

Two new ternary uranium selenides, AU2Se6 (A = K, Cs) were prepared using the reactive flux method. Single crystal X-ray diffraction was performed on single crystals, showing the crystallization in the orthorhombic Immm space group.

Preparation and analysis of multiple hydrates of simple salts are discussed. Students could be given a starting hydrated salt and asked to prepare another hydrate within the specified temperature range. Students might, alternatively, be given formulas of several hydrates stable over different temperature ranges and asked to find a preparation method. The cation could be determined quantitatively by gravimetric precipitation of the oxalate if the project were to be extended. Then the anion could be found by precipitating with silver or barium ion or by some common volumetric and colorimetric methods. Table lists results of methods as used by undergraduate students and shows the students to have been successful.