The chemistry club at Fresno State received a ChemLuminary Award by the American Chemical Society, a national honor they’ve had their eye on for a while.
The Fresno State Student Affiliate Chapter of the American Chemical Society, more commonly referred to as the CHEM Club, is one of the San Joaquin Valley chapters of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and won best student-run National Chemistry Week event in October of 2014.
National Chemistry Week is held in October and revolves around Mole Day, which is Oct. 23.
Donnie Golden, an instructional support technician in the chemistry department at Fresno State and Dr. Melissa Golden, a chemistry professor at Fresno State, are the advisers of the Chemistry club.
Donnie said that during National Chemistry Week the CHEM Club does a lot of outreach programs, a haunted house, and faculty meet-and-greets with the students and submitted their efforts to the ACS and were nominated for the ChemLuminary Award.
“They did some activities really to enrich the local community and kind of educate them more on science and increase STEM literacy,” Donnie said.
Melissa said that the students put in a lot of hard work and the ChemLuminary Awards is a top level that the club had wanted to achieve. It is the first award of this kind for the local section.
“We’ve been working really hard for seven or eight years now just getting the club at a level where it’s really well recognized nationally,” Melissa said.
Donnie said that they were unsure of whether the club would win, and only the president of the CHEM Club went the national meeting instead of all the officers.
Donnie said that he was glad at least one student was able to go and accept the award for the entire club.
Annabelle Lolinco, 21, is a senior at Fresno State double majoring in chemistry and communications and is also the president of the CHEM Club.
Lolinco said that the CHEM Club was very excited to hear that they were nominated and actually won the award.
“It’s kind of like the chemistry equivalent of an Oscar or an Emmy,” Lolinco said Lolinco said the national meeting was a week-long convention held in Boston in August and that the ChemLuminary Awards ceremony was a fancy event that tops off the end of the convention.
“It was just amazing to be there,” Lolinco said, “and be with all the different industry academic professionals that were there and to kind of show off what the Central Valley had and what Fresno State had to offer.”
In March, the CHEM Club will be accepting another outstanding student chapter award and green chemistry award at the spring national meeting.
National Chemistry Week starts this week, Oct. 19 through Oct. 24, and the theme is “Chemistry Colors Our World.”
Lolinco said activities are planned throughout the week at the Memorial Garden in front of the Kennel Bookstore revolving around how chemistry is related to color and to our world.
“We as scientists aren’t scary,” Melissa said. “Science isn’t scary, it’s fun and it’s all around us.”
