Chemistry club at BC

Jake Karwoski, Special to The Rip

 

Two members of the Bakersfield College chemistry faculty have started a student chapter of the American Chemical Society.

Bakersfield College chemistry professor Wayne Cooper, and Chair of the Physical Science Department Kenward Vaughan, will be the two faculty advisers for the Bakersfield College student chapter of the American Chemical Society, which will be known as the Chemistry Club.

The two professors have been planning to put together a student chapter of the ACS for the past couple of years, but it is just now coming to fruition.

“We have been planning to put together a student chapter since I arrived here, but there was never enough student interest,” said Cooper.

So far this semester, the club has interest from approximately 20 students and has filled all of the officer positions.

Biochemistry student Larry Rodriguez, the club’s historian, will try to get BC students more interested in the club through social media.

“We are planning on creating a Facebook page,” said Rodriguez. “We are also considering making a Snapchat account for the club.”

Rodriguez is also an officer in Bakersfield College’s Pre-med Club, and says that they created a Snapchat account which helped them get more students involved in the club who weren’t already.

Getting students involved in chemistry and interacting with the community are two of the club’s goals.

“Many people think chemistry is this mysterious and secretive science, but it’s not,” said Cooper. “It is important that we take chemistry to the community and give people a better image of what a chemist is.”

One way the club is planning on interacting with the community is by doing outreach programs to local elementary and high school kids to teach them about science-related fields.

Another goal of the club is to give BC chemistry students an opportunity to become acquainted with one another.

“We want chemistry students to interact with one another and have more resources,” said Cooper.

The club meets every other Friday at 11:30 a.m. in SE 7 at Bakersfield College. The next meeting will be held Nov. 13.