Award Category: Best Overall Local Section Committee on Minority Affairs
Contact Person:
Name: Darryl R. Prater
Address: 4901 Searle Parkway Skokie, IL 60077
Phone: (847) 982-8665
Fax: (847) 982-4657
E-mail: darrl.r.prater@pharmacia.com
Description of Activity/Program:
The Chicago Section's Minority Affairs Committee has worked hard to expand our scope to encompass more than just the mentoring of ASC Scholars. We have reached out to community college students like those at Olive-Harvey College and invited them out to our annual Holiday Party in December. One of our staunch members is a professor there and this year invited students and faculty to be a part of our Christmas celebration. At the Northwestern University celebration of the Basolo Award in inorganic chemistry, we invited the ACS scholars to the dinner celebration after the award recipient's lecture. We worked with ACS Scholars at University of Illinois Chicago when we hosted activities there for Chemistry Day this fall. One activity with ACS Scholar Kortney Ward was to have her meet with an engineer who had experience working in a chemical plant in the Monsanto and Searle organizations. Since Kortney was working with IPM who performs project work at Searle on a contract basis, she wanted to know the extent of career opportunities for a chemical engineer. I introduced her to a 5-year veteran of Searle/Monsanto and invited them to lunch to discuss chemical engineering aspects from the practical point of view of an experienced engineer.
Our biggest mission of the year was to sit down with officers from the newly formed National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) and plot our strategic direction for the year. Some members of the Minority Affairs Committee have dual memberships in both organizations. We met in September of 2002 to discuss future collaborations and activities that we could host together such as the Mentoring Open House on Saturday November 16th, 2002 held at Chicago State University. At this event we let interested students and faculty know of our programs and activities.
On Wednesday October 2, 2002 we, along with many science and female advocacy organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers, assembled to listen to partnership opportunities with the Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago. Marc Siciliano from the science department at the school was looking for scientific advocacy organizations to partner with the school to provide mentors and role models for the young ladies at the school. Each society listed their minority and female science outreach programs. The school has predominantly minority students from the inner city (80% -90% black and Hispanic young women) and their curriculum focuses on math, science and technology. The school has classes from 7th through 12 grade and its needs working scientists to come in and talk to the young women and mentor and take them under their wings. A story on this was published in our Chicago Section Chemical Bulletin and we reached out to NOBCChE and others that were interested in taking on this endeavor with us. We were pleased to find that we had some interested ACS members as a result of the newsletter article and recruited mentors in addition to those in our minority affairs group and NOBCChE. Among the science advocacy groups interested in this project were the Illinois Science Teachers Association, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Concrete Institute, Institute of Food Technologists, and Association For Women in Science Chicago.
The former chair of Chicago Section Minority Affairs Committee, Charlotte Lee, has been busy since the Chicago Section Percy Julian Symposium. With her help, the Institute for Science Education and Technology has planned another Percy Julian Symposium in the coming year at Oak Park River Forest High School. The Institute specializes in using the latest technology to train science teachers and assist high school students in completing science research that include references from the classroom, the library, and the Internet.
An event targeted for underrepresented minority high school students was the 2002 F.U.T.U.R.E. (Faction United To Unveil Resources Through Education) College Fair, April 20, 2002 in Harvey, IL (the community is approximately 90% minority). A Section member represented us at the fair and provided the students information on the many different careers they could pursue after getting a degree in chemistry. We also gave them information on the many services provided by the ACS career service department. Some of the pamphlets included were: "I know you're a chemist but what do you do," the booklet that contains information on several careers in chemistry, and the career services catalog. Approximately fifty students, along with their parents stopped at the table for information and they had plenty of questions.
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc sponsored another event targeted towards young African-American girls. The program called Delta Academy had a seminar entitled "Non-traditional Careers for African-American Women" which was held May 11, 2002. A section member gave a talk on the many different careers in chemistry and what we did as a chemist. We also provided an experiment for the girls to perform. They made chemical meringues from water, egg whites, citric acid and baking soda. The girls were very interested in chemistry and they had a lot of questions. We invited the girls to Chemistry Day and many did attend.
Please provide a 2-3 sentence abstract that describes your activity.
The Chicago Section Minority Affairs Committee has been involved in the mentoring of our ACS Scholars and fostering new relationships with the newly formed Metropolitan Chicago chapter of NOBECChE. It has included in its outreach programs the Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago and community college students.
