FROM BRETT PRICHARD
CACC PUBLIC RELATIONS
Top Photo: Dr. Jeremy M. Carr
Central Alabama Community College (CACC) recently joined companies Merck, Southern Research, and Oakwood Chemical in sponsoring the Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SERMACS, https://www.sermacs2021.org) in mid-November. The highly successful conference reignited face-to-face, scholarly discussions about chemistry largely absent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CACC’s contribution specifically helped facilitate a chemical education symposium, entitled “Classroom Chemistry: Innovations in Practice”. This symposium, organized by CACC Chemistry Instructor Dr. Jeremy M. Carr, centered around recent advances in teaching and learning.
“We invited chemistry teachers from as far away as University of California at Riverside and Cégep André-Laurendeau in Canada to share their current chemical education research,” Carr said. “Closer to home, we also invited speakers from The University of Mississippi. CACC’s sponsorship helped defray travel costs for guest speakers.”
The Classroom Chemistry symposium abstracts spanned a wide array of hot topics in chemical education including advances in adaptive learning technologies, successes in flipped classrooms, new laboratory experiments, as well as up-and-coming computational techniques.
All SERMACS attendees were invited to attend the Classroom Chemistry symposium. Attendees balanced their time between the Classroom Chemistry symposium and 1000 other ongoing presentations.
“At one point in the symposium, we had so many people in the room that we literally ran out of seating,” recalled Carr. “Attendees were standing through presentations, wanting to hear about some of the more recent advances in chemical education. I think this is a topic that’s important to a lot of scientists, and I’m ecstatic that it went over so well.”
Attendee reviews were outstandingly positive.
“The Classroom Chemistry symposium was a great event – it was terrific to reconnect with other faculty again, and it was energizing to see so many great ideas in practice.,” remarked Murray State University chemistry professor and textbook author Dr. Kevin Revell. “I came away with several important insights that will potentially impact my own classroom instruction.”
Dr Jack Eichler, chemistry professor from University of California at Riverside, had similar thoughts. “This was a well-organized symposium that had a great mix of talks. Attendees learned how technology can enhance student learning, how service-learning can be embedded in a lab course, and how computational methods can be integrated into a lower division course. I’ve been attending chemistry education symposia at ACS national and regional meetings for over a decade now, and this was one of the most useful and rewarding sessions I have attended.”
One important aspect of SERMACS was face-to-face interaction. For those in the Classroom Chemistry symposium, these aspects provided ample opportunity to discuss future collaborations including future research projects and grants exploration.
One particularly interesting idea was the creation of a STEM teacher institute, similar to the highly successful, National Science Foundation-funded Chemistry Collaborations Workshops, and Communities of Scholars (CCWCS) retreats
“Several of us agreed that there was a need to develop peer training opportunities to truly enhance teaching and learning in science education. This is a project we’re looking into developing, and we couldn’t have had these face-to-face discussions without CACC’s sponsorship,” explained Carr.
“We are very fortunate to have Dr. Carr here at Central Alabama,” Jeff Lynn, president of CACC stated.
“He is a phenomenal instructor, but he is more than just an instructor. Dr. Carr is a strong leader who continues to build partnerships with us and other institutions.”
For additional information please contact Brett Pritchard at 256-215-4254 or [email protected]
