Just like the Scouts always say: Be prepared.

Sometimes, even despite the best planning, things don't go as expected and you really have to be able to improvise. As you can probably guess, today was one of those days. 

One of the researchers in the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing (DIRS) lab has a connection to a biological imaging class at nearby St. John Fisher college. They were interested in visiting CIS and hearing about other types of imaging and their applications. The plan was to take the class on a short tour of the labs that seem most relevant to the subject of biological imaging; so, the Biomedical and Materials Multimodal Imaging Lab and the Multidisciplinary Vision Research Lab. I offered to coordinate the tour with lab directors, after which the class would hear about our graduate programs from the Graduate Coordinator and then hear more about DIRS lab research. The tour was to kick off at 1:45 and last from 15-30 minutes. Solid.

1:45 comes and goes... then 1:55.... then 2:05.... at which time I went down to the labs to let the speakers I was working with know that the class hadn't shown up yet and we did not know where they were. I made the executive decision to wait 10 more minutes and if they hadn't shown up yet, to forget the tour altogether. One of the lab directors had already given up, which is just as well because sure enough, 2:15 comes and goes still with no word from the class. At 2:30, I gave up.

Well the class must have eventually arrived because right around 4 PM a large group appeared outside my door hoping for a tour. I was in the middle of designing the new online undergrad booklet but agreed to put it aside, and kept my fingers crossed that there would be people around in the labs to present; otherwise, I'd wing it on the fly. Thankfully, there were some people still around in both labs who could describe their particular research in detail, and I was able to fill in any gaps with my own knowledge of what the labs are up to. Phew.

After about 20 minutes their day was over and it was time for the class to leave. Although the trip didn't exactly go as planned, I think everything worked out just fine. The students seemed quite interested in what they were hearing about and got really intrigued by the eye trackers. A number of the students personally thanked me and seemed very grateful. With any luck, some of them will keep Imaging Science in mind for grad school ;-)