Engaging Student Affiliates in Local Section Activities

One of the least-used assets of the local section is often the student affiliate chapters. These students are enthusiastic, energetic, and a resource waiting to be tapped by the local section. Student affiliates in local section activities can be engaged in numerous ways.

Here are some ideas for combining the enthusiasm and energy of the student affiliates with the resources of the local section: 1) Team up for National Chemistry Week (NCW); 2) hold an undergraduate poster session before each local section meeting; and 3) offer small awards to student affiliates who help with demonstrations and other outreach projects.

National Chemistry Week is a natural collaboration for the local section and the student affiliate chapters. Particularly for local sections that are geographically challenged, the student affiliates can play a vital role in covering the area for NCW. The local section can provide all the materials and resources from the national organization, as well as some extra personnel for demonstrations, while the student affiliates organize the events. The local section can coordinate activities between local industry and student affiliates—the industrial representatives usually appreciate this! After the activities are done, the local section can post each student affiliates chapter’s contribution on the local section website. The students appreciate this recognition and are usually more than willing to send photos of the events. The local section may even want to hold an awards ceremony for the student affiliate chapter that contributed the most to the NCW celebration.

Another avenue for engaging the student affiliates in local section activities is to hold a yearly undergraduate poster session competition. This event can be organized in several ways, but one successful method has been to give students the opportunity to present their posters during the social hour before each local section meeting. At each poster session, the posters are scored. At the end of the year, the presenters of the top posters are awarded financial support to attend the spring national ACS meeting the following year. An Innovative Projects Grant is an excellent way to garner support for a program like this. The students appreciate the opportunity to compete for support to attend a meeting, and the local section has more students attending the local meetings.

Finally, the local section can help support the student affiliates in their outreach to the community. This support can be provided through small grant awards to help buy supplies for demonstrations or to purchase equipment necessary for a program. The student affiliates are then responsible to report the project’s success back to the local section.

To find out which student affiliate chapters are active in your local section, you can check out the web site.

Kimberly Pacheco
Local Section Assistance & Development Subcommittee
ACS Committee on Local Section Activities

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