The Santa Monica College Chemistry Club is an innovative space on campus for students that love chemistry and science, regardless of their major. The club offers a variety of networking and professional development opportunities for members such as hosting STEM professionals for speed networking and lectures, arranging trips to off-campus professional events, and holding workshops about resume building and university transfer. The club also spearheads on-campus science outreach events including Santa Monica College’s first annual Earth Week STEM Festival and Science Saturday experiments. The Earth Week STEM Festival promotes an interdisciplinary science community on campus and engenders community good will to the college by bringing local families onto campus for a fun and educational experience. The Festival featured 27 interactive demonstrations, served nearly 80 families, and involved seven STEM clubs and a dozen STEM faculty. For Science Saturday, club members organized and led a group of John Adams Middle School students through a spectrophotometry experiment to determine the concentration of food coloring in Mountain Dew from the preparation of standard solutions and generation of a standard curve with a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. The club also works off-campus in the local community schools. For example, the club visited the Will Rogers and Grant Elementary schools afterschool programs to conduct safe, hands on experiments including an exploration of the non-Newtonian fluid, Oobleck, and extracting DNA from strawberries. Additionally, the club elicits funds from student government and generates income through the sale of laboratory safety goggles, local restaurant fundraisers, and attending network television tapings. Finally, the Club promotes green chemistry practices through organizing the Earth Week STEM Festival for the Santa Monica community and presenting at the College Sustainability Fair to highlight how the Chemistry Department practices green chemistry, namely, the Club featured a revamped Limonene Extraction protocol using steam and detergent. Through the numerous activities and events that the Santa Monica College Chemistry Club engages in, the Club is able to foster an interdisciplinary, fun, welcoming, and supportive environment for students to explore their interests in science.

Santa Monica College chemistry club: A student chapter with an emphasis on professional development, outreach, and green chemistry

2019 Spring National Meeting

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