PRISMS faculty presented in the 27th Biennial Conference on Chemistry Education
Dr. Steven Chen, the chemistry teacher at PRISMS as well as a longtime mentor and volunteer for Chemistry Olympiad, was invited to give an oral presentation in the Biennial Conference on Chemistry Education at Purdue University in early August, 2022.
In addition to his work at PRISMS, Dr. Chen volunteered to initiate and lead the “Exam Annotation Project” for the US National Chemistry Olympiad (USNCO), which is to explain the multiple-choice questions in the USNCO in a detailed, profound, and educational way! With the support of USNCO office of American Chemical Society and joint efforts of dozens of volunteers from all over the world, annotations of 25 years of Local Exam and Part I of National Exam have been published on the USNCO website in the past two years, including the most recent 5 years (also the most challenging). According to the feedback from students, teachers, and mentors, those annotations are remarkably helpful, which have been used as one of the most important resources for students and teachers to prepare for the Chemistry Olympiad.
PRISMS students including alumni, William Wu (22’), William Shen (23’), and David Liang (24’) joined this volunteering effort with high-quality annotation work published, under the guidance of Dr. Chen. “Writing the annotation for USNCO was a memorable and fascinating experience! Not only did I have the opportunity to express my own thoughts on the solutions, but also I gained a much deeper and thorough understanding of the problems themselves. And I can’t wait to share some new annotations with others in the future.” Said David Liang.
Dr. Chen gave his oral titled with Annotating the past USNCO exams – a group volunteering project in the Symposium of We want YOU for the US National Chemistry Olympiad of the BCCE2022, which is hosted by Dr. Joseph Houck from Penn State University and Dr. Melissa Barranger-Mathys from Ursuline College. Dr. Houck is the head mentor for the 2022 USNCO program.
Dr. Chen is also a leading coach of the USNCO Supporting Program and serves as a Steering Committee member of USNCO Teacher Training Group.