FSU Students Brian Day and Christopher Lodder Present at American Chemical Society National Meeting, Receive ACS Award

2016 Mar 25

Frostburg State University sophomore Brian Day, of Keedysville, Md., and junior Christopher Lodder, of Dunkirk, Md., presented at the 251st American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition held in San Diego in mid-March. The two presented the educational outreach and professional development activities of FSU's chapter of the Student Members of the American Chemical Society (SMACS) at the Successful Student Chapters Poster Session with a poster titled "SMACS Attacks Chemistry."

Day and Lodder also accepted an award from ACS to the FSU SMACS chapter for its activities and outreach in the 2014-2015 academic year. FSU's SMACS chapter was one of 314 student chapters recognized at the event and one of only 97 to be recognized with a Commendable Award, only one step lower than the highest award category of Outstanding.

The outreach activities for which SMACS was recognized included participating in more than 10 chemistry demonstrations for K-12 students in the region, including two new schools from outside Allegany County: Frankfort Intermediate School in Mineral County, W.Va. and Crellin Elementary School in Garrett County, Md. SMACS also participated in the Western Maryland STEM Festival where they helped attendees make homemade lava lamps from soda bottles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfSkqmvusSg) and the Western Maryland section of ACS to host a National Chemistry Week event on the theme of "The Sweet Side of Chemistry," which was a finalist for a ChemLuminary Award from ACS. Finally, SMACS helped judge poetry submitted by K-12 students in the region as part of the national ACS poetry contests for National Chemistry Week and Earth Day.

Four FSU students presented their research at the conference. They also attended presentations by leading chemists in fields such as nanotechnology and computational chemistry, exchanged outreach ideas with members of other student chapters around the country, attended a career fair and learned about exciting new products and technologies in the chemical sciences at an industry exhibition.

Funding for the students to attend this meeting was provided by FSU's chapter of SMACS and FSU's Department of Chemistry, as well as though grants from the President's Experiential Learning Enhancement Fund, the Student Government Association, the Western Maryland Section of the American Chemical Society and the American Chemical Society.