While much of the focus on developing effective outreach and service learning programs is on design and administration, an equally important part is finding and developing relationships with appropriate community partners. In developing Chemistry in the Community (a service learning class at Tulane University), we found it important for our students to have the opportunity to work with K-12 students across the age spectrum, from pre-school through high school. Learning for students was enhanced when they had to think of not just how to explain a concept, but how to target it to students with a particular background- or no background at all. Moreover, the development of more interactive and sustained relationships with community partners spanning multiple years allowed increasing integration of our outreach activities into their curriculums, as well as providing opportunities to bring our community partners in to the classroom to talk to our students about STEM education in New Orleans. In this talk we will discuss our strategies for finding and developing community partners in general, how we integrated community partners more fully in our service learning class, and how the unique environment of the New Orleans public school system effected both partner selection and development.

Chemistry in the community: Developing community partners in New Orleans

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.