News from Journal House

Visit JCE at ChemEd 2003

If you will be attending the ChemEd 2003 meeting (more information below), you will want to know about these JCE events. There will be a JCE booth where you can learn all about the Journal of Chemical Education, about JCE Online (for all subscribers), JCE Software—and meet Diana Mason (high school editor) and Erica Jacobsen (associate high school editor). Both have experience in the high school classroom. Stop by, meet them and check out the latest teacher-friendly materials from JCE. This is a good opportunity to subscribe or renew, as well.

In addition, there will be two JCE Workshops: one will be on Classroom Activities, which are extremely popular with teachers; the other will be help for getting published in JCE, aimed at high school teachers.

Summer Reading—Coming in June

It’s that time again: Summer Reading! With the hope for some time for leisure reading this summer, Jeff Kovac, Dick Pagni, Hal Harris, and Brian Coppola have suggestions for stimulating, thought-provoking, or just interesting reads—in the June 2003 issue.

Awards Announced

ACS Announces High School Teacher Awards

Mary Jane Christopherson

Great Lakes Region. Mary Jane Christopherson, a teacher at Chosen Valley High School, Chatfield, MN, will receive her award on Saturday, May 31, 2003, at the Awards Banquet at the 35th Great Lakes Regional Meeting at Loyola University in Chicago, May 31–June 2, 2003. Christopherson, the only physical sciences teacher at her school, teaches physics, physical science, and environmental science as well as chemistry. She finds ways to stimulate the scientific interest of young people in the small rural district where she works. She has led chemical demonstration-training workshops for area teachers and encourages her students to assist at those workshops and in carrying out demonstrations in the classroom.

She keeps current with the latest in high technology methods. Many of her students attending colleges and universities find their understanding of the technology exceeds that of students from larger districts! Her peers consider her a great motivator of young people, which shows in the makeup of her classes. The number of young women pursuing science with her has grown until it now equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of young men.

Rebecca Isserhoff

Middle Atlantic Region. Rebecca Isserhoff of Stella K. Abraham High School in Hewlett Bay Park, NY, will receive her award during the Pre-college Teacher Day held as a part of the 36th ACS Middle Atlantic Meeting on the campus of Princeton University, June 8–11.

Her peers, colleagues, supervisors, and students recognize Isserhoff as a devoted and dynamic teacher and mentor who is constantly challenging and encouraging her students to pursue their dreams in the sciences and reach for unimagined academic heights. She has turned more than one struggling generalist into a future chemist through the highly successful research program she developed. Two of her students recently won a national competition for their development of a viscometer, which measures the viscosity of ultra-thin film polymers.

Isserhoff’s students recognize and applaud her incredible ability to share her extraordinary knowledge of chemistry with them. She is for them an outstanding role model.

Joan Beardsley

Northwest Region. Joan Beardsley of Squalicum High School in Bellingham, WA, will receive her award at the Awards Banquet during the 58th ACS Northwest Regional Meeting on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman, June 12–14.

Beardsley has amassed a distinguished record both in and out of the classroom. She has obtained grant funding for several ventures and organized a lecture series for students and the community. Her program, Sci-Tech Buddies, pairs high school and elementary students to find answers to questions such as “What are the germiest places in a school?” (Vending machines!) She is very involved in examining issues on equity in science, mathematics, and technology education and has been recognized with numerous awards including the Wooding Award for Professional Excellence from Western Washington University; she was a finalist for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching.

She uses creative and innovative classroom techniques that not only illuminate the intricacies of chemistry to her students, but cross the curriculum to include writing, mathematics, and other life skills relevant to a student’s personal growth. She is a faculty leader who generates momentum and enthusiasm among administrators, curriculum coordinators, and assistant superintendents—a leader in the best and most effective sense of the word.

Sally Mitchell

Northeast Region. Sally Mitchell of East Syracuse–Minoa Central High School in East Syracuse, NY, will receive her award at the Awards luncheon during the 31st ACS Northeast Regional Meeting at the Prime Hotel and Conference Center, Saratoga Springs, NY, June 15–18.

Mitchell has had a significant and positive influence on the national chemical community, through both her exemplary contribution to high school chemistry teaching and her public service. For 20 years she has been a passionate educator, giving presentations at national conferences and science museums, headlining workshops, presenting chemical demonstration programs, and working with college students on outreach activities. She most recently was named Mole of the Year, an honor bestowed by the National Mole Day Foundation.

She is especially enthusiastic about the Chemistry of Cooking and has passed this enthusiasm on to her students through extracurricular activities and excursions. She has mentored and coached numerous chemistry clubs, Olympic teams, and science fairs. Affiliation with a major airline enabled her to visit science museums around the globe shaping her view of chemistry as a wonderfully dynamic science—a belief with which she motivates both her students and colleagues through her humor, dedication, accessibility, encouragement, enthusiasm, and pursuit of excellence.

Welch Foundation’s Hackerman Award

The Welch Foundation, a private foundation for basic research in chemistry, has selected Xiaodong Wang of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas as the 2003 recipient of the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research. The $100,000 prize recognizes young scientists conducting basic chemical research at Texas institutions. Wang’s biochemical research is on apoptosis, a phenomenon where cells activate a self-destruction program.

Courses, Seminars, Meetings, Opportunities

ChemEd 2003

ChemEd 2003 will be held July 27–31, 2003, at Auburn University, Alabama. The meeting is expected to draw hundreds of high school and college chemistry teachers from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and Europe; middle school science teachers can also benefit from attending. Symposia, demonstrations, invited speakers, posters, idea-sharing sessions, social events, and more than 300 chemistry workshops and presentations have been organized. Attendees at this series of meetings traditionally go home with many ideas and materials for their classroom.

At ChemEd conferences, chemistry and education carry equal weight. The exchange of ideas is an important function, and networking with other teachers is a highlight. There is a full complement of activities, academic and social, for all members of the family. There will even be a ChemEd Antique Road Show Auction for buying, selling, or trading chemistry-related objects.

For more information about the program, events, and registration, visit the Auburn University ChemEd 2003 Web site (accessed Mar 2003).

Eastern Analytical Symposium

The 42nd Eastern Analytical Symposium will be held November 17–20, 2003, at the Garden State Exhibit Center, Somerset, New Jersey. There will be a special symposium at this year’s meeting honoring the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the Raman effect. A list of tentative session topics and other information may be found at the EAS Web site (accessed Mar 2003).

Call for Papers

The journal Chemistry Education: Research and Practice (CERP), now in its fourth year of publication, invites contributions for a peer-reviewed issue on the theme of chemistry and environmental education, for publication in May 2004. Contributions may be either research-based or practice-oriented, focusing on chemistry/science education–environmental education–environmental chemistry/science relationships, and related education issues in research, curriculum development and implementation, teaching–learning strategies, and assessment methodologies. The guest co-editors for this theme issue are Uri Zoller, University of Haifa–Oranim, and Michael Skoullos, University of Athens. Inquiries about research-based contributions should be directed to Zoller (Faculty of Science & Science Education–Chemistry, Haifa University–Oranim, Kiryat Tivon, 36006 Israel) and practice-oriented contributions to Skoullor (University of Athens, Department of Chemistry, Panepistemiopolis Zographous, GR-157 71 Athens, Greece). Submissions should be sent by post (not email) to arrive by November 30, 2003. CERP, formerly CERAPIE, may be found at this Web site.

Applications Being Accepted for the Dorothy and Moses Passer Education Fund

This fund was established by a generous donation from Dorothy and Moses Passer. Moses (Mike) Passer was for many years the head of the ACS Education Division. The Fund supports grants that provide funding for teachers in small programs at two- and four-year colleges or universities that do not have any advanced degree programs in the chemical sciences. The awards are to support continuing education activities that must be directly related to the applicants’ teaching and must take them away from their campus. Applicants must be full-time faculty members at their institution. The applications are reviewed by a committee.

There is no application form: the application must include a description of the proposed activity and how it relates to the applicant’s teaching with dates, locations, titles, and contacts; a brief description of the applicant’s institution and department; a short curriculum vita; an itemized estimate of expenses, amount of aid requested and sources of all supplemental funds. No support will be given for general attendance at national, regional, or local ACS meetings, nor for any sabbatical support. Closing dates are three times each year: January 1, April 1, and September 1. Electronic applications are preferred. For further information or to make inquiries, contact Donald E. Jones; mailing address: 3726 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Apt. 108, Washington, DC 20008.

Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE)

CAEE, with an interest in engineering education, has recently been established by the University of Washington (lead), Colorado School of Mines, Howard University, Stanford University, and the University of Minnesota. Collaborators are City College of New York, Edmonds Community College, Highline Community College, National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, San Jose State University, Women in Engineering Program & Advocates Network, and Xavier University. The general timeframe of the project is January 2003 through December 2007.

The goals of the Center are to expand the community of leaders in engineering education; embrace diverse perspectives in research and teaching innovations; emphasize teaching in the professional development of engineering graduate students; increase the number of engineering faculty who teach effectively for all students; and strengthen the engineering education research base.

The Center elements include Scholarship on Learning Engineering, Program for Enhancing Engineering Teaching, and Annual Engineering Education Institutes. For further information contact the principal investigator, Cynthia J. Atman, Director, Center for Advancement of Engineering Education, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Washington, Box 352180, Seattle, WA 98195-2180.

Associated Chemistry Teachers of Texas

The Associated Chemistry Teachers of Texas will host their eighth biennial conference, “Chemistry by the Sea”, at Texas A&M University at Galveston. The conference will begin on Tuesday, July 8, 2003, with registration and opening remarks by Gregory Choppin of Florida State University. Choppin will also present a talk on the status of nuclear science in the United States. The conference continues through Saturday, July 12, 2003. Invited speakers include George McKelvy, Georgia Tech University, and Jeff Hepburn, from Iowa, who will share teaching tips, analogies, and activities for chemistry classrooms. Many varied presentations dealing with technology in the classroom, teaching gifted and talented students, and advanced placement are planned. Field trips include Moody Gardens, the Ocean Star drilling platform, NASA, a “water chemistry” tour of Galveston Bay, and other local attractions. For exhibitor, registration, and presenter forms or for more information, visit the ACT₂ Web site (accessed Mar 2003), or email Roxie Allen.