Can one correlate the philosophical musings of one of the most famous football coaches in history with the best ACS Student Member Chapters? Yes! The link is in the excellence. Award-winning Student Member Chapters-several leaders of which have been kind enough to write a chapter in this volume-all have caught excellence in one or more facets of what they do. Mio and Benvenuto began this journey to capture the best of Student Member Chapters back in 2015, when they asked some of the best and most active organizations' leadership to put into words what they did that puts them at the top. The editors realized there is not one, specific answer to such questions, but found a wealth of information in what their chapter authors reported. There are more voices in this wonderful chorus, voices of leaders who have great ideas and who have figured out ways to make the fascination of chemistry communicable to our students and the general public. This volume represents some excellent input as to what makes a chapter award-winning, and what keeps its excellence sustainable.

This volume is an attempt to educate, to provide a source of information, knowledge, and wisdom to the person who has spent so much time and energy on his or her schooling. The Council for Chemical Research (CCR) and the American Chemical Society (ACS) have both spent considerable effort over the past decades focusing on how to ensure that graduate education in the chemical sciences remains at the absolute highest caliber, and produces the best possible professionals. In spite of notable efforts from both organizations to prepare graduate students for the professional world, neither has specifically asked what a person needs to be successful once they have both the Ph.D. and the first job in hand. Put succinctly, there is much more to being successful in a career in chemistry than just the hard-earned Ph.D. degree. What You Need for the First Job, Besides the Ph.D. in Chemistry is based on a symposium of the same name held at the 246th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, which took place in Indianapolis, Indiana in September, 2013. This book is the result of seeds that were planted during numerous informal conversations at the annual meetings of the CCR, as well as during such discussions at national and regional meetings of the ACS, and at the ACS employment clearing houses. The authors felt that the same intense focus a person needs to earn a Ph.D. might actually work against the attention to other details needed in order to be successful once he or she has obtained a position. Leaders want to ensure that new hires are working effectively toward tenure, are quickly becoming productive members of their corporate team, or are well integrated into their government laboratory research group. While it is easy to lump factors other than technical competence in one's job under the term "soft skills," this is an oversimplification. This book represents an attempt to have voices from all three pillars of the chemical enterprise - academia, industry, and government laboratories - heard in terms of relating what is important for their newly hired Ph.D.-holders. What You Need for the First Job, Besides the Ph.D. in Chemistry will be a valuable resource for first-time job seekers, as well as those with aspirations of a future career in the chemical sciences.

For more than a century, national and international governing bodies have had some involvement in regulating the quality and safety of food during production and delivery. Since the beginnings of this "modern" food regulation in the early 20th century, the way that food is produced, packaged and distributed has changed drastically. It is difficult to determine if technological advances in the areas of polymer science, refrigeration, and transportation have driven the globalization of the food supply or if the food industry has drawn from these technologies to satisfy consumer's desire and need. Ensuring the safety of food requires a complex and ever-changing set of interactions between producers, distributors, consumers and regulators. As advances are made in packaging and food additives, as food distributions systems evolve to meet consumer needs, or as these respond to environmental and population changes, adjustments to regulatory systems may become necessary. Analytical, environmental and materials chemistry can often play important roles in responding to these changes and in continuing to help with the improvement of food safety and security. These five co-editors bring their respective expertise to the subject of the food system and the chemical advancements behind it.

Professors and research advisors have always endeavored to make the opportunity to gain new knowledge available to their students. However, new knowledge takes different forms. From a student perspective, it comes from reading textbooks and primary literature or attending classes and seminars. Professors share in these activities with their students, but they know that physically taking part in the acquisition of new knowledge through active research is where the true excitement begins. For many, if not all, faculty members research is the source of passion for chemistry, and sharing it with a rising generation of chemists often comprises a substantial part of the decision to pursue a career in the field of undergraduate education. These chapters and additional ones provide starting points for developing such a culture at the department level. In several cases the starting point is redesigning introductory or research methods courses to place a stronger emphasis on authentic research and its associated skills. In other cases the establishment of a thriving research group by one faculty member is the catalyst for initiating the departmental transformation. There are also several examples of how to set up an undergraduate research group in departments that place a heavy emphasis on research, and those that place less emphasis on research. Many of these offer roadmaps for developing interdisciplinary research groups or translating resource-intensive graduate-level research to an environment that is resource-restrictive. In still other cases the research has an experiential learning component. For many of the above examples the departmental/institutional role is not always obvious and may not be influential or important. This is a reminder that undergraduate research need not be "institutional" to be successful.

The Periodic Table of the Elements remains a living, growing document that attempts to map out all of the most primal matter known to humankind. This book preserves our current knowledge and understanding of the Periodic Table of the Elements as it exists at this specific moment in time. The heavy elements have recently been verified and named, and thus complete the seventh row of the Periodic Table, with oganesson being the name of the final element, which had formerly been known as Element 118 or Eka-radon. One can say honestly that it is a rare moment in time when a row of the Periodic Table of the Elements is completed.