The purpose of the Chemical Education Research (CER) Committee is to inform educators about chemical education research, to foster scholarship, and to encourage improvement in the quality of chemistry education research. This vision is achieved through a variety of avenues for educators to learn about CER, while providing a platform that highlights work and methods within the field.
The current leadership of CERC (past chair Nikita Burrows, chair Elizabeth Day, and chair-elect Regis Komperda) are working to implement changes in the committee structure and activities to best align with the revised vision and mission of the committee and the DivCHED Strategic Plan.
Since our last report, CERC has organized and supported initiatives that align with the DivCHED Strategic Plan
- National ACS Symposia: Elizabeth Day served as symposium coordinator and managed the efforts of both CERC committee members and volunteers external to the committee. We offered three national symposia in 2025: Research in Chemistry Education at Spring 2025 ACS (San Diego), Research in Chemistry Education at Fall 2025 ACS (Washington), and Putting CER into Practice at Fall 2025 ACS (Washington). These symposia were organized by committee members Ryan Stowe, Gina Frey, and Regis Komperda; their efforts were supplemented by volunteers Brandon Yik (UGA, now committee member), Bill Donovan (U Akron), Li Ye (CSU Northridge), Katherine Havanki (Catholic University of America), Jackie Fajardo (U Delaware), Johanna Herman (U Delaware), Lauren Genova (U Delaware), and Yiben Wang (Villanova).
- Collaborative Efforts: CERC members worked with ECCES Committee on virtual ECCES conference for graduate students and postdocs.
- Budget and Funding Support: For 2025, CERC spent its $750 budget allocation on support for the ECCES conference and reimbursements for volunteers who presided over national symposia. For 2026, CERC has a $3000 budget allocation to offset travel expenses for volunteers at these national meetings. This use of our budget demonstrates DivCHED commitment to access and equity.
We have several plans for the upcoming year, including:
- Sustained symposia and conference presence: We will continue organizing symposia for ACS national meetings and BCCE. These events will continue to showcase cutting-edge CER while providing volunteer opportunities and funding to chemistry education scholars looking to become more involved with DivCHED.
- Support for ECCES programming: We will continue to support ECCES in their planning of events like the Graduate Student and Postdoc Conference and their national symposia.
- Incorporation of Science-and-Technology-Studies themed symposia through a possible collaborative symposium with the HIST division.
- Curation and recommendations of methodological resources: Building on the community's previous efforts to curate methodology resources (CHIRAL, Stains' spreadsheet, etc.), we will explore hosting links on our committee webpage to these resources as well as a new list that is curated by committee members. This new list will include a short narrative recommendation by a committee member. Novel or complex methodologies will be pitched to Journal of Chemical Education as a tutorial feature in their publication.
$3000
We used the 2025 budget of $750 to fund volunteers who were going to the ACS conferences to preside over the sessions that the CERC committee was in charge of organizing. We also provided funding to ECCES for gift cards to guest speakers for the collaborative effort on the Graduate Student and Post-Doc Professional Development online conference. We will use the $3000 budget in 2026 similarly.
We provided $240 to the collaborative effort with ECCES to provide guest speakers for the Graduate Student and Post-Doc Professional Development Conference. We also offered $125 to each presider for national ACS conference symposia sponsored by CERC.