Education and Outreach
Philosophy
There is a wonderful connection between active research and engaged teaching. Teaching provides an opportunity to demonstrate the merits of basic research to both
undergraduate and graduate students and share the excitement of discovery. In addition, the skills developed in teaching at all levels result in tangible benefits on
research.
Teaching and Curriculum Development
In addition to teaching upper division undergraduate
courses and graduate courses, I enjoy teaching in the First Year Chemistry Program at A&M and more recently Freshman Chemistry to our majors with a goal to present the material in the larger context of atmospheric/environmental chemistry and sustainability to demonstrate the relevance of the course work to modern problems/solutions in our society. As part of this effort I have given general audience talks on atmospheric chemistry and have been involved in the development of lecture and laboratory materials for the program.
I have served as the coordinator of an effort to revitalize the physical chemistry laboratory in our department, revising the experiments to better reflect the current state of physical chemistry research. The outcome, due to the hard work of many faculty, was a significantly improved laboratory the quality of the undergraduate experience. The new course consists of modules centered around concepts/techniques and more accurately reflect the current state of physical chemistry research. Topics including scanning tunneling microscopy, nanoparticles, single molecule spectroscopy, and solid state NMR allow students hands-on experience with modern instrumentation. Oral examinations and laboratory reports in ACS Journal format have also been implemented.
NSF Funded Outreach
In the past have been strongly involved with 2 NSF funded educational outreach programs during my tenure at Texas A&M University; PLC-MAP which serves 7th grade through high school science teachers in the greater Houston area, and ITS program through a module entitled “A Molecular
View of the Environment”. The Information technology in Science (ITS) Center was one of ten NSF Centers for Teaching and Learning. The goal of the ITS Program was to increase the number of science education specialist working in K-12 classroom and increase the number of current teachers who seek an advanced degree in science & mathematics education. There was a programmatic emphasis on the use of information technology and modeling to do and understand science. Scientists also help teachers to see ways in which they can bring real scientific findings into the K-12 classroom.
Community Outreach
Our research group continues to be involved in
educational outreach in the community, participating in Chemistry Open House and interacting with local school systems. The group enjoys performing demonstrations and talking about science and chemistry to all ages.
Chemical Education Publications
Laura E. Ruebush, Michelle M. Sulikowski, and Simon W. North, “A Simple Exercise Reveals the Way Students Think
About Scientific Models” Journal of College ScienceTeaching 24 (2009).
Laura E. Ruebush and Simon W. North, “The Teaching of Consecutive First-Order Reaction Kinetics: A Chemical
Education Research Study on the Impact of Hands-On Demonstrations” Chemical Educator 13, 131 (2008).
Laura E. Ruebush, Ethan L. Grossman, Stephen A. Miller, Simon W. North, Janie F. Schielack, and eric E. Simanek, “Introducing Authentic Inquiry to High School Teachers with Curriculum-relevant Principles During an Intensive
Three-Week Summer Session” School and Science Mathematics, 109, 162 (2009).
George Lucchese, Robert R. Lucchese, and Simon W. North, “A New JAVA Program for Graphical Illustration of
the Franck-Condon Principle: Application to the I2 Spectroscopy Experiment in the Undergraduate Physical
Chemistry Laboratory“ Journal of Chemical Education, 87, 345 (2010)