Giving back to our community
175 minutes for chemistry
As part of our 175th anniversary celebrations, we’re asking our members and supporters around the world to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry, whether through outreach, continuing professional development or exploring a different aspect of Royal Society of Chemistry membership.
We’ll be featuring your key stories throughout the year, so keep a look out for inspiration from other members.
We recently spoke to Don Clark, an analytical chemist working at Pfizer, at Kent’s Discovery Park, who volunteers through several different education-based initiatives and has launched a number of programmes himself.
Don tells us about three aspects of his motivation: “The first is almost a feeling of social responsibility”, he says. “When I was at school and during my degree, there were lots of scientists who went the extra mile and that influenced me in wanting to do analytical chemistry. I’d like to give something back.”
Secondly, he talks about future benefit – as a chemist working in the pharmaceutical industry, Don is familiar with the lengthy process of developing a viable medicine and believes attracting the brightest minds is crucial to success. “These medicines are going to transform lives and in some cases, save lives, so at Pfizer, we want to generate the right environment to get students excited about STEM subjects.”
“Thirdly, It’s actually quite fun! I get real pleasure in seeing students go through that light bulb moment.”
An ambassador for chemistry
Don’s outreach activities began when he was encouraged by a colleague to become a STEM Ambassador, a programme run by the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEMNET). Don was already a frequent volunteer for school visits and workshops run by Pfizer, so becoming a STEM Ambassador was a good way to build on this and receive more structured training and support.
Activities were mainly aimed at primary school students but, after having children of his own, Don wanted to focus support on students aged 15 and older. The SIP ambassador programme, part of the Science and Industry Partnership scheme run by Cogent Skills, was the perfect fit.
At those ages, students are starting to think about what they might want to do as a career, so the SIP ambassador scheme has that additional part around careers advice and where particular subjects might take you.
Both schemes aim to bring school students into contact with practising scientists in a variety of careers, to show them what’s possible with studies in STEM subjects. Don recounts one student’s realisation that mathematics doesn’t have to lead to a career in accounting: “Maths was something she was really passionate about but she didn’t like the finance direction she’d been sent in”, he says. “Now, pharmacokinetics is something high on her radar – that’s a really good example of where we’d completely changed someone’s perception about where STEM might take them.”
Don also volunteers with the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF), as a mentor for sixth form students from difficult backgrounds. While this is predominantly an email-based relationship, the SMF encourage face-to-face interaction and Don has found this particularly effective. “I had one student who was in London so I was able to get her to visit the Pfizer site. In science, there aren’t as many female role models as we’d like, so not only did I show her some of the things that go on in my group, but she was also able to meet a number of successful women at the company, all in very different roles but from a science background.”
The SMF is currently looking for more mentors working with chemistry or biology and Don highly recommends the scheme as a way to spend some time for chemistry. “The people that are taken on as SMF mentees have shown they’re very capable of going onto higher education, but maybe come from families where no one has ever been to university or there are cultural or economic aspects that could potentially deter them. Having people that work in industry guide them and give them a different perspective is really valuable."
Supporting chemistry in the classroom
As well as volunteering with well-established programmes, Don has set up two of his own initiatives that focus on supporting practical chemistry in schools. Using a Pfizer budget for academic and community projects, Don launched ‘Lab in a Box’, a programme that allows schools to borrow high specification equipment, at no cost, for use in the classroom. Don and a group of volunteers run teacher training sessions after school to show them how to use the kit for any experiments they want to run. Teachers can add the training to their continuing professional development record, so there is a benefit to both staff and students. Beginning with a small DNA polymerase chain reaction machine, Don’s 'Lab in a Box' now includes an infrared spectrometer, a set of thermal imaging cameras and apparatus that enables schools to communicate with the educational satellite FUNcube.
His second project, ‘Community Lab’, grew with the help of a grant from the Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund, a fund that supports the activities of our Analytical Division. Don was able to purchase equipment, including a bench-top NMR machine and small infrared spectrometer, for the project, and Pfizer’s neighbours, East Kent College, house the equipment in their chemical sciences laboratory.
East Kent College are very supportive of Community Lab and have made lab sessions available so that schools will be able to come in and carry out experiments, using the equipment in an industrial standard laboratory. Don is working with a group of local teachers, supported by Kent and Medway STEM, and hopes to involve other Discovery Park companies in the project.
“We are hoping to formally launch at the end of June. The goal is that Community Lab will be up and running at the start of the academic year in September. Schools in the local community will be using facilities that they wouldn’t have at school and this is supported by real scientists that work on the site.”
We want to make it inspirational for students to see what’s possible with STEM subjects.
A community approach
Don is grateful for the support he’s received from both Pfizer and Discovery Park, as well as companies like Stanburys, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Asynt, that have provided equipment at a considerable discount to support the educational outreach projects.
He also praises the work of other STEM ambassadors at the site, saying: “Lots of them probably don’t get a huge amount of recognition, but the job that they do is essential, both from a company perspective and in inspiring students.”
Don’s advice for anyone interested in getting involved with chemistry outreach is to go for it. “I think it can open up avenues that you’ve maybe never thought about: meeting people, networking with them, at some point you’ll get a light bulb moment. A lot of people say ‘but my job doesn’t involve being in a lab’, and I tell them you don’t have to be in a lab. We have to present material in understandable chunks, we can’t blind people with rocket science.”
“I don’t know if I’ve been lucky or persistent, but I’m really proud of where Lab in a Box and Community Lab have got to. I can see no reason why the sort of thinking we’ve developed here couldn’t be replicated throughout the country. I think there are a lot more ways organisations can work together. We hear a lot about industry and academia finding those links around research but why can’t we do it in terms of inspiring others? I’m really excited by it all and if we can get more people on board it will be even better.”
Further information
For more information on the schemes Don volunteers with, visit:
175 minutes for chemistry
As the oldest chemical society in the world, we celebrated our 175th anniversary in 2016. We wanted to mark this milestone by recognising the important contributions our community makes to the chemical sciences. We asked our members and supporters to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry in 2016 and share their stories with us. We featured these stories throughout the year on our website, in print in RSC News, and on social media using #time4chem.
Tell us your story
If you've been involved in an event or activity, or just have an interesting story to tell, we want to hear from you! Please get in touch using the online form or tweet us @RoySocChem using #time4chem.