Chemical Education Today
Meeting Report
Reports from Abroad by Morton Z. Hoffman
More than 1,800 attendees, including 200 graduate and undergraduate students, participated in the 89th Canadian Chemistry Conference (CCC) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 27–31, 2006. The meeting, which drew more than 1,800 attendees, featured 1,460 oral and poster presentations across the spectrum of chemistry, including four full days of chemical education programming. Sir Harry Kroto (Florida State University) gave a plenary lecture, The Internet, the Second Revolution in Education, to a standing-room-only crowd in the symposium on “Changes in Chemical Education: New Approaches for Labs and Lectures Based on Chemical Education Research.” Kroto also gave the opening plenary lecture of the conference (Architecture in NanoSpace), again to an overflow audience. Morton Hoffman (Boston University) served as the CHED representative to this year’s CCC and served as the CHED Outreach contact as well. He and Norbert Pienta (University of Iowa) presented talks in the “Changes in Chemical Education” symposium. There were also chemical education symposia on “The History of Chemistry,” “Teaching Safety in the New Era of Responsible Care,” “Teaching Environmental and Green Chemistry,” “The Future of Physical Chemistry Education,” and general and poster papers. Geoff Rayner-Canham (Memorial University, Newfoundland) organized a symposium on “Women in Chemistry” that featured talks by CHED members Ann Nalley (ACS President), Janan Hayes (Merced College) and Patricia Perez (Mt. San Antonio College), and Jeanette Brown (Chemical Heritage Foundation). In addition to President Nalley, ACS was also represented by Madeleine Jacobs (Executive Director and CEO). The Chemical Institute of Canada Award for Chemical Education was presented to Gordon Bates (University of British Columbia). Awards were also given to undergraduates for the quality of their poster presentations and for the activities of their Student Chapters. For those who plan ahead, the 90th CCC will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, May 26–30, 2007; the 91st CCC will be held in Edmonton, Alberta, at the end of May 2008.
The 19th International Conference on Chemical Education (ICCE) was held on August 12–17, 2006, at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea. Attracting more than 300 participants from 36 nations, including more than 20 from the United States, the conference, which had as its theme, Chemistry and Chemistry Education for Humanity, was organized by a committee headed by Jung-Il Jin and Choon Do. Welcoming remarks were made by Eun Lee, President of the Korean Chemical Society, which co-sponsored (with IUPAC) the conference as part of its 60th anniversary celebration. Plenary lectures were given by Bassam Shakhashiri (U.S.) Aaron Ciechanover (Israel), Su-Moon Park (Korea), Ann Nalley (U.S.), Onno De Jong (The Netherlands), Viktor Obendrauf (Austria), and Peter Atkins (UK). A chemistry demonstration presentation was made by David Katz (U.S.). David Katz enjoys doing demos! More than 300 presentations were made in diverse areas of chemical education, including 120 posters, many of which were offered by elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Details of the program are available on the ICCE 2006 website, http:// www.19icce.org/ (accessed Oct 2006). A fuller report can be found inVol. 29, No. 1, Jan. 2007 of Chemistry International. CI is available freely online at http://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/index.html (accessed Nov 2006). The conference was also the occasion of the annual meeting of the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education (CCE), which heard reports from its various subcommittees with regard to chemical education across the globe. CCE will meet next in Torino, Italy, on the occasion of the IUPAC General Assembly and Congress, August 4–12, 2007 (see www.iupac2007.org (accessed Oct 2006). The 20th ICCE will be held on August 3–8, 2008, in Pointe aux Piments, Mauritius. The theme of the conference will be Chemistry in the Information and Communications Technologies; see http://www.uom.ac.mu/20icce.htm (accessed Oct 2006) for more information.
Sir Harry Kroto, who gave a plenary lecture in the symposium on “Changes in Chemical Education: New Approaches for Labs and Lectures Based on Chemical Education Research,” as well as the opening plenary lecture of the Canadian Chemistry Conference (Architecture in NanoSpace).
www.JCE.DivCHED.org
Mort Hoffman, an emeritus faculty member of Boston University, is the U. S. National Representative to the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education;
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Vol. 84 No. 1 January 2007
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Journal of Chemical Education
29
photo: Morton Z. Hoffman
ICCE 2006
photo: Morton Z. Hoffman
Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exposition
