Reports of laboratory damage, personal injury, and death have triggered increasing concern over the academic safety culture and the safety education of those pursuing studies in the chemical sciences. Student-led laboratory safety teams (LSTs) within academic institutions serve as a new and expanding informal, bottom-up approach to improving the…

Graduate education in chemistry typically follows an apprenticeship model, primarily aimed at preparing students for academia; however, the inclusion of teaching within this apprenticeship is not always clear as faculty, students, and other stakeholders do not agree on the need for instructional training. Despite the variability in training, a…

Over the past two and a half years, the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted almost all aspects of life as people throughout the world were instructed to work-from-home. Scientific researchers, whose work is reliant on access to laboratory equipment, have been acutely impacted by these global changes. In this study, we surveyed graduate students…

The New Haven Local Section of the American Chemical Society held a virtual version of its annual Student Research Symposium prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. A combination of YouTube, Google Drive, Open Broadcaster Software, and Zoom was utilized to hold the symposium which included juried oral and poster presentations. While our aim was to…

Many university science outreach programs involve presentations of research projects to high school students. These presentations often focus more on exciting scientific content and less on fostering direct relationships between high school students and scientists. Such interactions are important for sustaining student interest in science…

We have designed a unique guided-inquiry-inspired course for entry-level graduate students using chemical research as a mechanism to teach research-oriented problem-solving skills. The course has been designed for flexibility around a shared research experience. The curriculum can be modified each year by incorporating a new research project into…

There exists a sparse representation of blind and low-vision students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. This is due in part to these individuals being discouraged from pursuing STEM degrees as well as a lack of appropriate adaptive resources in upper level STEM courses and research. Mona Minkara is a rising fifth…

As active members of the scientific community, graduate students make ethical judgments about the conduct and presentation of their research. Pressures in the research environment often influence these decisions. Because inappropriate decisions can lead to unethical behavior and scientific misconduct, it is important that students understand the…

The loss of talented women from the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline has been widely recognized within science education as a pressing issue, particularly in the physical sciences. To provide a gender-based perspective of a popular educational device, the present study evaluated undergraduate research experiences…

The breadth of knowledge required for the multidisciplinary field of nanotechnology challenges and extends traditional concepts of multidisciplinary graduate education. There is a paucity of information, both general reporting and peer-reviewed studies, on the challenges for graduate students working in this multidisciplinary paradigm, from the…