Chemical Education Today
Report: ACS Division of Chemical Education
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Highlights of the Dallas ACS Meeting by Tom Wildeman, Mark Freilich, and Paul Kelter
Photo: Tom Wildeman
Without a doubt, a primary feature of the 1998 Spring National Meeting in Dallas was the High School Program, which was organized by George Hague, and the impact that the Texas teachers had on other participants. Over 150 teachers registered for the meeting and participated in the program. Their organizational skills were used to reinstitute the High School/College Interface Luncheon. (The High School/ College Interface Luncheon will also be held at the Fall ACS Meeting in Boston.) The Division’s Tuesday evening banquet was masterfully planned by Diana Mason of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Besides the barbecue, the highlight of the evening was a memorable talk by Nobel Prize winner Robert Curl on the behind-the-scenes activity leading up to the prize announcement. His humility and availability to all who were present were truly an inspiration. At a special dinner on Saturday evening, Mary Virginia Orna, the current Division chair, and Betty Moore, an associate editor of this Journal, were recognized for their longtime service to the Division. Mary Virginia was the treasurer for over 10 years, and Betty was the editor of the CHED Newsletter for 17 years. These two are heavily responsible for the current vigor within the Division. Fortunately, they continue to guide the Division and chemical education in their current positions. W A fuller description of some of the symposia convened at the Dallas meeting are available in JCE Online at http:// jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1998/Jun/abs669.html.
Most ACS awards are presented at the spring meeting, and the Awards Symposium is the vehicle for the presentation addresses by these winners. The common theme in all of the talks was activity-based learning. Maria Walsh, recipient of the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching, showed video clips of herself teaching in the old and new activity-based mode. The theme continued with Zafra Lerman (recipient of the ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences) showing many ways of linking arts activities to the learning of chemistry. Rabindra Roy (winner of the ACS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution) stressed the role of undergraduate research activities in chemical education. Finally, Stanley Smith, the winner of the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education and one of the founders of computer activities in chemical education, gave a fascinating history of the use of computers in education. The 729 papers and posters presented in the 16 symposia of the Division’s program showed that chemical education research and applications continue to be innovative, controversial, and vibrant. We are in an exciting time of developments that seem to occur at breakneck speed, and we are, as a Division, clearly prepared to spearhead these innovations and take them into our classrooms. The results of the Dallas Photo: Tom Wildeman
Meeting Overview
Stanley Smith (left), the winner of the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education, was introduced by William R. Robinson (right).
Zafra Lerman (left), recipient of the ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences, was introduced by V. J. Shiner, Jr. (right).
Rabindra Roy (left), winner of the ACS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution, was introduced by Roger Bates (right).
Maria Walsh received the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 6 June 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education
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Chemical Education Today
Report: ACS Division of Chemical Education meeting indicate that chemical educators see the important and delicate balance among multimedia, cooperative classroom teaching strategies, and assessment of the models. Content of the Dallas symposia demonstrates the continued commitment of members to explore questions and test answers relating to the formidable task of helping others learn chemistry. The Process of Chemical Education We are now seeing in full bloom the influence of doctoral programs in chemical education on Division programming as well as the influence of these programs on the design of courses, laboratories, and textbooks. In a series of symposia on cooperative learning, educational theory, chemical education research, and applications of these activities to large lectures, we heard and were stimulated by concepts such as constructivism, experiential learning, metacognition, epistemology, ontology, methodology, Piaget theory, and meaningful learning. It appears that master teachers have integrated aspects of these learning theories into their teaching methods either by experience or through the study of educational research. It also appears that because college students are the products of teachers who have successfully used these methods in K–12 education, professors in large lecture courses will increasingly experience the odyssey described by Mary Nakhleh of Purdue University. She took two years to sort through the literature on educational theories, came up with a theory-based teaching style that was comfortable, and redesigned her course based on this style. She says the payoff is liberation from the fear of having her students not learn, and this has given her confidence in the new student-centered methods that she is now using. State-of-the-Art Symposia Two state-of-the-art symposia were held. Peter Ford of the University of California at Santa Barbara organized “Nitric Oxide Chemistry in Biology”. The talks ranged from a discussion of the fundamental roles of nitric oxide in bioregulation and immunology to diseases in which either the overproduction or underproduction of nitric oxide may play an important part. Medicinal chemistry related to the design of new drugs to treat such diseases was reported, as were studies of the mechanism by which a principal biological target is activated by NO. Also described were fundamental principles of the bonding between NO and metal centers as well as mechanism studies of the reactions between NO and ferro– and ferri–heme complexes. The second state of the art symposium, “DNA—The Molecule”, was organized by Don Franceschetti of the University of Memphis. How far molecular dynamics and visualization had advanced was shown by explaining how two very similar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons formed from very different adducts with DNA. The symposium described the technology of forming DNA dendrimers and some of the uses of such many-fingered creatures, as well as how the information storage capability of DNA is used in problem-solving in the emerging
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field of DNA computing. Finally, an innovative hands-on workshop was introduced at which graduate students led high school students in learning about DNA and basic biotechnology. The theme was that the possibilities of DNA chemistry are only now being fully explored, and there is much to look forward to. Methods of Using Technology in Teaching In the technology sessions it became clear that at this time Internet access is sufficiently slow that distance learning is only reasonable in special instances, such as campuses in sparsely settled areas. On the other hand, Web-based course administration, CD-ROM development, and casual student use are welldeveloped. For those of us who have been waiting to have someone else adapt our course Web site, the time has arrived. A number of publishing companies provide a course administration and student-use program that can be put on the local server. This should allow many more general chemistry courses to modernize course administration while still controlling the learning process. Another instance where distance learning has been successful is with the national online course for undergraduates, sponsored by the Division’s Committee on Computers in Chemical Education. The number of students and institutions enrolled in “Environmental and Industrial Chemistry” in spring 1998 has more than doubled over last year. Information on the next course can be obtained from Leonard Archer at Missouri Western College. [A detailed description of this symposium by Jimmy Reeves, its organizer, is available on JCE Online+.] Perhaps the future of educational technology in chemical education was best summed up by Harry E. Pence, SUNY Oneonta, who related that over 25% of the classes at institutions of higher learning today use email, and 9% use additional WWW resources. This rapid change by our usually entrenched institutions of higher learning is unprecedented. Moreover, the future use of media as an educational resource is bright because younger faculty who are comfortable with the technology will ultimately decide its fate. Look for more symposia on the themes of learning theory and using technology in the classroom, especially if you are going to the 15th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at the University of Waterloo in August. A word of warning: Do not expect a registration form for this meeting to be sent to you. The primary method for registering is on the Internet at http://sciborg.uwaterloo.ca/bcce/. Tom Wildeman, program chair of the Division of Chemical Education, is in the Department of Chemistry and Geochemistry, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401; phone: 303/ 273-3642; email:
[email protected]. Mark Freilich and Paul Kelter were the meeting chairs for the Dallas ACS Meeting. Freilich is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152; phone: 901/ 678-4445; email:
[email protected]. Kelter teaches at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, P. O. Box 880304, Lincoln, NE 68588-0304; phone: 402/472-3512; email:
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 6 June 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
