Chemistry Students awarded two grants from ACS

The St. John's University Student Chapter of the American Chemical Society has been awarded two grants from the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC. The Innovative Activity Grant (IAG) and Community Interactions Grant (CIG) proposals were submitted over the summer and the Student Chapter was recently notified of their success.

Through the IAG grant, the student chapter will host a series of debates on controversial environmental topics. The ACS student chapter hopes to educate its students on global challenges and promote evidence-based approaches to chemistry through critical thinking and scientific reasoning. This will also solidify relationships between the student groups in the sciences that began last year with the Science Alliance.  Some of the proposed topics for debate are industrial pollution, hydraulic fracturing, recycling and global warming. For the students to attain an understanding of these issues, they will be shown movies such as “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Gasland.” Topics will be announced in advance so that students will have time to research beforehand. Based on their research and their views after the showing of each documentary, the students will divide into teams and present their arguments. Though the documentaries show only one point of view, students will be encouraged to explore both points of view. Faculty will pose as moderators during the discussions.

The second grant, CIG, stems from a successful series of programs presenting “Chemistry is Fun” shows that were originated by the chemistry faculty members over twenty years ago.  The new twist to this program is that it will be run completely by the ACS Student Chapter.  Programs will be presented to local elementary school students either at their own schools or here at St Johns.  This program has St. John's Chemistry students demonstrating exciting chemical experiments that revolve around changes in physical properties of the substances (i.e. colors, phases, etc.). The hands-on portion of the shows invites the elementary students to make silly putty, play with oobleck, and eat ice cream made from liquid nitrogen, among other activities. With the CIG, the student ACS chapter hopes to record the Chemistry is Fun shows, and subsequently provide a copy for the elementary school teachers. Teachers can then show the video again to their class and discuss the chemistry that is involved in each demonstration. In addition, because the demonstrations change from one show to the next, teachers can go back through the recorded videos and show their students how one concept in chemistry can be applied in different ways to produce different results.