National Chemistry Week 2007
    This year’s theme was “The Many Faces of Chemistry”—especially chosen because this was the 20th anniversary of NCW celebrations for the ACS. It was a great chance to celebrate our expanding careers, opportunities and colleagues in chemistry.

Wheel of Fortune    On Saturday, October 6th, 2007 we celebrated NCW at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. The ever-popular Wheel of Chemistry Fortune was spinning for all children to win a prize, dozens of kids made jewelry out of UV-beads, decorated shrinky dinks, discovered acid-base properties of goldenrod paper and had their fortunes told by polymer fish. The NCW Committee would like to thank the Children’s Discovery Museum for hosting our event and Linda Brunauer’s enthusiastic crew of 25 student volunteers from Santa Clara University. With such a great turn-out of both volunteers and participants, this was our most interactive and energetic public outreach booth yet!

Chemistry Panel    Our highlight for NCW this year was an interactive panel discussion on “Drugs, Bombs and CSI: Your Future Careers in Chemistry” aimed at high school and college students and held at De Anza College in Cupertino on Saturday, October 27th. The NCW Committee would like to extend special thanks to our panel of distinguished chemists for enlightening these students to the gamut of careers that are available starting from a degree in chemistry. From the left in the picture: Abby Kennedy (at podium), Marjorie Balazs, James Chesko, Katherine Lara, George Lechner, Natalie McClure, Dave Parker, 2007 ACS Presidential Candidate Howard Peters, Bruce Raby and Cordelia Willis. We would also like to thank De Anza College for hosting this great event. Students and their parents were able to socialize, network and ask their most probing questions about chemistry educations, careers, and passions.
    I would like to thank Cinzia Muzzi of De Anza College's chemistry department for her dedication in co-organizing this successful event with me this year.

    The NCW Committee is proud to hear that Cañada College celebrated National Chemistry Week this year, thanks to the dedication and hard work of professor Anu Pattanayak and her Cañada colleagues. Furthermore, NCW celebrations, including a titration competition, took place south of the Bay Area thanks to volunteer organizer Kristy Morris from UC Santa Cruz.
    This year I received several requests from local chemists, each desiring to take a NCW celebration into their child’s classroom. I am eager for opportunities to work with local parents and to help them organize NCW events for their local community, so I will be contacting interested parents next spring as I begin to plan for NCW 2008.

Winning poster    I would like to thank Natalie McClure for facilitating our NCW poster contests this year. One of our entries (shown at the right), by Amelia Milne of Girl Scout Troop 2562 of Burlingame, of the San Francisco Bay Council won the national first prize for third and fourth graders!
    Finally, I would like to thank Lois Durham for her fearless photography skills at both of our NCW events this year, as well as the other SCV-ACS members who turned out to set up, celebrate and clean up our events.
Abby Kennedy
2007 NCW Chair
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