Colorado State Receives Major Grant To Introduce Creative Approach To Teaching Chemistry In Community Colleges Nationwide
Monday, December 2, 1996
FORT COLLINS--Nearly 2,000 community-college chemistry
instructors nationwide will learn a creative and greener approach
to teaching chemistry under a four-year grant by Colorado State's
Center for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education.
The grant, $205,000 per year through 1999, is supported by
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The grant was awarded
to the center through a subcontract from The Partnership for
Environmental Technology Education, a non-profit organization
that links technical resources from governmental and private
agencies with community colleges.
Under the grant, the center will develop a curriculum to
teach community-college chemistry instructors how to implement
small-scale chemistry in their classrooms, an innovative approach
that uses less chemicals and equipment than traditional teaching
methods but integrates creativity in experiments to illustrate
basic chemistry principles.
Fifty instructors from community colleges nationwide will
attend a two-week course at Colorado State in June and receive
support over the next four years to implement small-scale
chemistry in their college courses.
The grant also will establish a national network of 20
community and technical colleges as centers for training high
school, community/technical college and university chemistry
faculty. The goal is to have 24 instructors attend two-week
courses in each of these 20 centers annually, reaching an
additional 1,920 teachers over four years.
"This visionary grant brings together expertise at the four-
year university level with two-year community college instructors
and does it in a way that enables them to teach others," said
Fred Stein, the center's director and a chemistry professor. "The
purpose is to teach chemistry in a way that also teaches
pollution prevention."
Traditional chemistry methods use large amounts of chemicals
and often require costly equipment, two factors that make
teaching chemistry difficult in smaller community colleges and
high schools, Stein said.
"Teaching and learning traditional chemistry is a polluting
exercise," Stein said. "Doing chemistry the traditional way with
beakers, Bunsen burners and lots of chemicals is not
environmentally sound, and it isn't cost effective."
Colorado State chemistry professor Stephen Thompson
developed small-scale chemistry in 1972 as a way to reduce
chemicals, equipment costs and waste while maintaining the
integrity of chemistry learning. Today, about 3,000 freshman
chemistry students at Colorado State learn small-scale chemistry
each year.
Thompson replaced traditional beakers, ring stands and other
glassware with petri dishes, tiny plastic tubes and well trays
small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. Using this creative and
inexpensive method, students can actually see the effects of
pollution, acid rain and greenhouse effects inside a petri dish.
Because small drops of chemicals are used, experiments are
cleaned up with cotton swabs.
"Even though it's scaled, the chemical reactions and
procedures are the same," Thompson said. "The whole idea is to
use smaller amounts of less toxic chemicals and conduct
experiments in a way that reduces pollution without sacrificing
teaching quality."
The first year after small-scale chemistry was adopted at
Colorado State, the budget for equipment and chemical purchases
dropped from $60,000 to $5,000 annually. The method also
completely eliminated chemical waste, saving an additional
$50,000 a year.
About 50 colleges and universities and 100 high schools
nationwide use Thompson's methods in chemistry courses.
This latest grant will enable the center to reach a large
number of instructors in community colleges, where enrollment in
chemistry courses is rising while budgets for chemical and
equipment purchases are decreasing, said Thompson, who will help
develop the curriculum.
"The costs of high-tech laboratories and equipment often are
too astronomical for community colleges to absorb," Thompson
said. "Small-scale chemistry speaks to those pressures and
presents a unique opportunity to change the way we teach."
The Center for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
was created in 1989 to develop ways to improve and reform
existing curriculum and create new approaches in teaching
science, math and technology from kindergarten through the
college level.
Since 1991, the center has received more than $15 million in
grants to establish teacher enhancement programs, increase the
number of underrepresented minority students in science, math and
technology fields and sponsor research and development in those
disciplines at Colorado State.
This latest announcement marks the second major grant
awarded to the center in a month. The center recently announced
its involvement as co-principal investigator in a $5 million
grant from the Colorado Alliance for Minority Participation and
National Science Foundation to double the number of minorities
earning bachelor's degrees in science, mathematics, engineering
and technology statewide over the next five years.
The cornerstone of the center's success is the National
Center for Small-Scale Science, which was founded to develop and
disseminate small-scale science methods and technology. The
center also has become a national leader in creating innovative
approaches to teaching science, math and technology, said John
Raich, dean of the College of Natural Sciences. Raich was
instrumental in starting the center seven years ago.
"This is a major way in which science programs at land-grant
institutions can contribute to an outreach mission," Raich said.
"The center has been tremendously successful in forging
connections with constituents in K-12 and community colleges."
This page © 1997-1998 World Wide Express, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Many news stories on RamLine.com come from the Colorado State University Public Relations Office. You can get copies of the news releases directly by filling out this form.