I write on the day that I had originally planned as a travel day to Philadelphia for our national meeting. Of course, everything has changed. It is no longer the International Year of the Periodic Table and the ACS has cancelled a national meeting for the first time in its history; sadly, it will take over 100 years for ACS to break its record of uninterrupted meetings that ended this spring. Many people are in my thoughts as the meeting-that-will-not-occur nears. I feel especially sad for the undergraduates who come to a national meeting and are often blinded by science and energized in their trajectory for a very fulfilling career. I also have special empathy toward the many organizers whose countless hours of, mostly volunteer, effort have now been laid waste by a novel virus. After spending 10 years as the program chair in the division, I am fairly well acquainted with the seemingly endless myriad tasks that fall upon the organizers. I can only say, in a heartfelt way, thank you! Your service to the Division and to the world of chemistry is very meaningful. I especially want to mention Patrick Daubenmire, the current program chair for the Division and the two CHED meeting organizers for Philly, Craig Teague and Denyce Wicht. And not to be forgotten, Nicole DiFabio at ACS and her team who organized the hundreds of undergraduate posters. Thank you all. 

But there is hope in the air. Which you can partake of from a safe social distance!  We are heading toward another special year. 2021 is the year that we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Division of Chemical Education. Let’s all plan to gather and celebrate as we move from the concerns of COVID-19 and back to a new normal.

Good luck with your online classes. 

Stay safe and well. With my very best wishes,

Irv

Irvin J. Levy, ACSF, FRSC, Immediate past chair

Greetings DivCHED Members!

Well, I have to say, it’s been a VERY eventful start to my time as Chair. As I’m sure you all know by now, we will not be meeting in Philadelphia for the Spring national meeting and like many of you, I am currently in the process of trying to figure out how I can reasonably (and hopefully effectively) teach chemistry on-line. That being said, DivCHED leadership, including our many committee chairs, have been working diligently behind the scenes to try to maintain or reschedule all the great work, events, and symposia that were planned during the Spring meeting. If you’re involved with any of our committees be on the lookout for emails and virtual meetings (if you haven’t been inundated with them already) and THANK YOU for all you do for the Division!

Despite the recent turn of events, I want to highlight some of the great things currently happening within the Division. First, we officially have a Public Relations and Communication Committee, chaired by Stephen Prilliman, which is already hard at work! I very much look forward to working with them this year and hope their efforts lead to more, and more effective communication within Division membership as well as to those outside the Division.

Running concurrently to this, Jon Holmes and Heather Johnson (among others) have been diligently working to give the DivCHED Website a much needed facelift while also moving the site on to the ChemEdX server. I am excited to see the “sneak peek” and hope the website will be live sometime by the end of March. Keep your eyes out for it and thanks to Jon, Heather and many others for all your work on this project!

Finally, I am happy to report that the ACS Webinar DivCHED co-sponsored, The Secret Lives of Snowflakes, by Ken Libbrecht on January 30th, was a huge success! The webinar had 638 sites tune in for the live broadcast (including several K-12 schools) with an additional 369 people watching the recording within the first 24 hours. I personally had a blast and hope the Division can stay active in ACS Webinars in the future.

I wish you all good health and peace moving into what I anticipate will be interesting times (to say the least)!

• American Chemical Society - A congressionally chartered independent membership organization which represents professionals at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry and sciences that involve chemistry.
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• The American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) - A professional community by and for K–12 teachers of chemistry.