CAS CONNECT 2016

3 I n the short time Oklahoma State University chemistry assistant professor Chris Fennell has been in Stillwater, he has already built a nota- ble history of outreach, including two programs he volunteered for this past summer. “As you know, new faculty, we proba- bly don’t know any better, so we volun- teer for everything under the sun,” Fennell jokes, describing how he became involved with one of those programs, the OSU Alumni Association’s Grandparent University. For the past 13 summers, GPU has welcomed “legacies,” children or grand- children of OSU Alumni Association members, aged 7-13 and their grandpar- ents to spend a few days on the Stillwater campus to engage kids in academics at OSU and create fun family memories. In the fall of 2013, the OSU Alumni Association began recruiting faculty and staff from the chemistry department for GPU’s summer 2014 session. Fennell, in his first faculty position after finishing three years as a research fellow, immedi- ately volunteered Since 2014, Fennell has gone from hosting the GPU welcome sessions to teaching his own course for the past two summers titled “Molecular World Building,” which he describes as “Minecraft for molecules.” By improving upon existing molecule- building model kits, Fennell has been able to show the importance of molecule shape and size within molecular systems in his outreach efforts over the past few years. This summer, he went a step further, using the chemistry department’s 3D printers to make model kits that each student could take home. “I’m trying to push the limits on how small we can get the kits, so we can build them for many students in a reasonable amount of time,” Fennell explains. “They get to take something away from the event and actually have it be useful later in life. Also, building new teaching tools with 3D printing is all sorts of fun.” Just after this summer’s GPU, Fennell had even more “fun” when he began modifying the course and model kits for a July workshop he would be teaching for OSU’s Juntos (“Together”) program. Formed in 2007, Juntos is a part- nership between the OSU Cooperative Extension and Family Consumer Sciences programs that seeks to help Oklahoma’s at-risk Latino youth graduate from high school and enroll in higher education. A Summer of Science OSU assistant professor’s volunteer work expands minds PHOTO: GARY LAWSON/UNIVERSITY MARKETING Students in OSU’s Juntos program use model ki ts developed by assistant chemistry professor Chr is Fennel l . By Jamie Hadwin, OSU High Performance Computing Center