Our local ACS section did an ACS-sponosored Virtual Strategic Planning Retreat this weekend. It was a very useful exercise for our medium/small section and we came up with a formal Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Goals etc. which is something we never had before.
One of the goals we came up with was to strengthen our woefully anemic connections to high schools. For example, we are lucky to get a handful of SEED applicants each year and I suspect a big part of it is that the teachers are as over-extended as all the rest of us and may not have the time to engage with us and learn enough about SEED to pass along the opportunity to eligible students.
As we formulated some strategies for strengthening ties, one that I thought worth trying was outreach specifically to administrators, risk management and teachers on regulatory issues such as Hazard Communication, the Lab Standard, demonstration safety etc so that the school administration is likely to perk up and pass it along. I expect that administration is more in tune with what "discovery" means outside the context of "scientific discovery", heh.
We are nowhere near the formal planning stage yet (this is a multiyear plan, obviously). Of course, there are plenty of resources we can leverage, including the LSI (Laboratory Safety Institute), AACT (American Association of Chemistry Teachers), NSTA (National Science Teachers Association), NSELA (National Science Education Leadership Association) and others . But I would be even more interested to hear if anyone has done a similar sort of outreach with their local sections, how it fared, and if anyone has templates they'd be willing to share. This will help us parameterize the available inputs and scope.
I am speculating that a preferred implementation would be to have a canned presentation we can take around to individual schools and establish direct hands-on relationships with individual faculty which can, in turn, lead to additional interactions such as SEED recruitment, our section offering STEM career talks, workshops, etc.
Thanks,
Rob Toreki
