April 27, 2022 - Class of 2022 Chemistry major/Computer Science minor Chesse Doane wasn’t sure what sort of job to pursue after graduating in May. But after attending the National American Chemical Society Meeting in San Diego this March with eight other students, Doane’s future is clearer.
“They had all these vendors out on the conference floor,” Doane said. “I went up and asked what sort of jobs I could do and learned I could be a field technician. There’s a lot of chemistry involved, and I know how to deal with the hardware and the software.”
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Brittnee Veldman, Ph.D., took the students to the conference in San Diego on a trip that took place annually before the pandemic. In March, Veldman was finally able to take students to the conference for the first time in two years.
“Chemistry is essentially the central science,” Veldman explained. “It’s the fundamental study of matter. It’s part of all the sciences and we can’t cover all of them in the time our students are with us."
So, Veldman likes to expose her students to what is the largest gathering of chemists in the world to give the students an idea of how vast the opportunities are in chemistry.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said Chemistry major Leslie Perez, who has spearheaded a new approach to water filtration using nanomaterials.
“I’m very interested in the environment and there are so many ways to apply chemistry," Perez said.
Perez, Armando Acevedo and Eli Lew are all interested in environmental chemistry, and all three said they were able to explore the field in depth while at the conference.
“It was very intimidating and overwhelming at first," Lew said. "To me it was like navigating the real world because there was a lot going on. There were a ton of events, so it was intriguing to see how broad chemistry really is. I learned a lot, and my next step is to apply to an internship in Switzerland next summer.”
This level of enthusiasm was exactly what Veldman hoped to inspire with the trip, which was made possible through CSUCI’s Instructionally-Related Activities (IRA) fund.
“We saw professors, undergraduates and graduates just like us pretty much from the whole world,” Acevedo said. “We would not have had this kind of experience in our hometown.”