About the UCI Chemistry Outreach Program
Although chemistry is so important that it is often called the central science, opportunities to learn chemistry have declined. In the past, lively demonstrations and interesting laboratory experiments were used to engage students in high school chemistry classes. Issues of safety, disposal, and cost now limit teachers' abilities to incorporate demonstrations and laboratory experiments, rendering the subject less exciting and less relevant to the students' daily lives.
The UCI Chemistry Outreach Program was developed to address these issues. In the UCI Chemistry Outreach Program, a graduate student or postdoctoral coordinator sends teams of graduate and undergraduate student volunteers to Orange County schools to perform demonstrations and talk about chemistry. The coordinator contacts the high schools, develops the demonstrations, recruits and trains the volunteers, and supplies the volunteers with materials needed for the demonstrations.
The program is able to provide high-quality presentations to thousands of students annually because it is well organized. The volunteers are capable of making presentations after only a couple of hours of training, because the coordinator provides them with scripts that give details of each demonstration, stage cues for the volunteers, safety and disposal information, and diagrams to draw on the board.
For more information, please contact Professor James S. Nowick (jsnowick@uci.edu, 949-824-6091).
