The MSU chapter of The American Chemical Society Student Affiliates (ACS-SA) was awarded the Outstanding Chapter Award in October, the first time since 2001.
President of Midwestern State’s ACS-SA Sebastian Ibarra says that the award is given differently than someone might expect.
“At the end of every school year, because our chapter is associated with the national organization, we are encouraged to submit a yearly report. We basically report all the activities the chapter did for that year and then the awards are given the following year,” Ibarra, chemistry senior, said. “It’s a little odd because people congratulate me on the award, I was part of the officers last year, but I feel like the recognition should be given to the previous president, Andrew Van. He did an amazing job, putting the report together as well as making sure we were doing community service and involved around campus.”
The criteria for the Outstanding Chapter Award is to be involved around campus, promote chemistry to other students, and participate in community service. The national ACS also encourages student chapters to participate in green chemistry.
Merriam-Webster defines, green chemistry as “an approach to designing and creating chemical processes and products that are safer for humans and the environment, that minimize waste and that are energy efficient.”
“Something unique about our chapter would be the amount of community outreach that we had last year. There were a lot of events that we did for our community. For example, it’s kind of a tradition, we traveled to Bowie elementary school and we put on a chemistry show for the kids. We also helped Boy Scouts during the spring to get their merit badge and a lot more things like that,” Ibarra said.
The MSU Chapter specifically focuses on green chemistry. Co-vice president of ACS SA and chemistry and math junior Austin Groth says green chemistry is a big part of what ACS is trying to increase in all their chapters.
“We took several approaches to helping promote green chemistry on campus by planting new trees and coming up with ways to promote green chemistry on campus as a whole,” Groth said.
Co-Vice President of ACS-SA Glenna Linthicum said the chapter is actively looking for ways to implement green chemistry into everyday life on campus.
“We are a very cohesive group that very much feels like family. We work hard and work together in all we do. We all took turns watering our two trees for an entire year until they reached maturation. We have also started an expo marker recycling project across campus in select buildings that have allowed us to put our receptacles in their classrooms,” Linthicum, chemistry research junior said.
Despite the small number of members in the chapter, the group still found projects to achieve the Outstanding Chapter Award.
“A couple challenges we have faced include the small size of our chapter and college, which limits how many people we have to work on each project and help come up with ideas. Also, the majority of our members are STEM majors, which means we are constantly busy with our classes and trying to study and understand content,” Groth said. “To overcome these challenges we used smaller level projects and built them up so that the weight of each project is less but still reaches its end goal. With multiple smaller scale projects we come up with, we are usually able to have a few people on each one so that the weight of all these projects does not fall onto a few people.”
Ibarra says the chapter could not have accomplished the Outstanding Chapter Award without the help of the chapter advisors.
“The people that should be recognized for the award are our previous president, Andrew Van, our advisors, Candice Fulton, Jinaguo Shao and Rae Keesling. It is thanks to them that we were able to get this award,” Ibarra said.
For membership or questions, contact the advisor, professor of analytical chemistry Jianguo Shao.
Or contact chemistry secretary Sheila Tucker.
940-397-4251 or [email protected]
