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BIDDEFORD, Maine

UNE students represent Chemistry Club at ACS meeting in San Francisco

Molly Wright, Brea Rivard, and Jessica Woolf perform green chemistry activities at the Chem Demo Exchange.
Molly Wright, Brea Rivard and Jessica Woolf perform green chemistry activities at the American Chemical Society national meeting's Chem Demo Exchange. The UNE Chemistry Club received an Outstanding Student Chapter Award and a Green Chemistry Chapter Award at the meeting.

Three members of the UNE Chemistry Club, President Molly Wright (Biochemistry, ’17), Vice President Jessica Woolf (Biochemistry, ’17) and Brea Rivard (Chemistry and Applied Mathematics, ’19) recently traveled to San Francisco to represent the club at the 253rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).  Also in attendance was the club faculty advisor, Amy Keirstead, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Physics and a member of the ACS Undergraduate Program Advisory Board.

The UNE students participated in several activities representing the club, including accepting their award for Outstanding Student Chapter and Green Chemistry Chapter (one of 46 and 52 chapters, respectively, to receive these awards nationwide) at the student awards ceremony.  Clad in their blue “UNe CHeM ClUB” periodic table t-shirts, the three performed green chemistry activities at the Chem Demo Exchange and represented the only student chapter to have a focused effort on green chemistry outreach.  As an “outstanding chapter,” the club was invited to present at the meeting’s Successful Student Chapters poster session to share their ideas and success stories with other undergraduate students and faculty. 

In addition to the official club functions, the students attended a wide variety of events ranging from networking and graduate school preparation workshops to technical talks and poster sessions. Rivard and Woolf also presented at the undergraduate research poster session.

The students’ travel was supported in part by the UNE Department of Chemistry and Physics, the UNE College of Arts and Sciences, NSF-RUI program CBET-1264511, the ACS Undergraduate Programs Office and the Maine Section of the American Chemical Society.  

About the University of New England

The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.