STEM educationImproving chemistry teaching throughout North America

The Dow Chemical Company and the American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) are partnering to invigorate chemistry education and support STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education in the nation’s schools.

Dow and AACT will work together to convene a series of teacher summits and create more than 750 lesson plans, multimedia resources, demonstrations, and other high-quality chemistry teaching materials for use in K–12 classrooms. The work will be supported by a $1 million contribution from Dow to the AACT spread over a four year period.

An ACS release reports that AACT was launched in 2014 by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The partnership with Dow promotes the main goal of AACT — to provide its members with resources that foster top-notch chemistry instruction grounded in everyday life.

“We are thrilled to be working together with Dow to support teachers of chemistry across the country and develop the workforce of tomorrow,” said Madeleine Jacobs, ACS executive director and chief executive officer. “We hope that this partnership can serve as a model that will catalyze greater engagement between chemical industries and local communities.”

“A skilled STEM workforce fuels innovation and economic prosperity and creates solutions that improve the quality of life for people across the globe. At Dow, we value teachers’ critical role, both in inspiring chemistry excitement and in helping students to gain the key skills they need to be successful in STEM careers,” said Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive officer. “As the founding partner of this program, we are proud to collaborate with ACS on this first of its kind community to empower chemistry teachers inside and outside of the classroom as they work to inspire the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.”

Dow says its STEM mission is to build the workforce of tomorrow by supporting teachers, motivating student achievement, developing careers, and collaborating with communities to transform STEM education into a driver for innovation, manufacturing, and economic prosperity. Through its STEMtheGAP initiatives, including the AACT partnership, Dow says it is trying to provide more resources to teachers, drive excitement in young people around STEM topics, and increase the number of students who choose STEM majors, ultimately preparing these students to be successful in STEM careers.

“This new partnership comes at a critical time,” said Adam Boyd, AACT program director. “Enrollment in high school chemistry classes is on the rise. Yet, only 35 percent of high school chemistry teachers have both a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and are actually certified to teach it.”

In order to prepare these teachers for the challenges they face in the chemistry classroom, Dow and AACT will host a series of teacher summits in cities around the country, with the first summit occurring this summer in Midland, Michigan. Approximately thirty chemistry teachers from surrounding communities will attend the weeklong summit. They will work with Dow volunteers, known as Dow STEM Ambassadors, to identify improvement opportunities in K–12 classroom resources and develop lesson plans, multimedia presentations and other materials that better meet teachers’ needs. As part of this effort, Dow STEM Ambassadors will help teachers incorporate career-based examples into their teaching resources, educating students on future potential career opportunities.

Lesson plans and other classroom materials developed at the Dow-AACT teacher summits will be available to AACT members via the association’s Web site, www.teachchemistry.org.