The 2013 West Regional Meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) will take place March 22 to 24 at the UO's Ford Alumni Center.
The theme of the three-day meeting is “Green Materials: Sustainable Approaches to Tomorrow’s Challenges.” Jim Hutchison, a green chemistry pioneer who holds the UO’s Lokey-Harrington Chair in Chemistry, will deliver the keynote address.
“The University of Oregon has one of the biggest green chemistry programs in the world,” said Darren Johnson, an associate professor of chemistry at the UO who serves as the faculty sponsor for the Oregon NOBCChE chapter. “So many groups are looking at green chemistry and sustainability these days … these are highly relevant topics for us to be focusing on.”
NOBCChE was incorporated in 1975 to assist people of color with their academic, professional and entrepreneurial pursuits in chemistry, chemical engineering and related fields. The Eugene NOBCChE gathering is expected to draw around 100 attendees from West Coast states.
The conference schedule includes:
- A free, one-day science educator teacher workshop for high school science teachers from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, March 22.
- Opening remarks by Yvette M. Alex Assensoh, the UO’s vice president for equity and inclusion, and Mike Haley, head of the UO Department of Chemistry.
- A presentation by pharmaceutical executive Paul Richardson on “Green Chemistry at Pfizer”
- A speech by Malika Jeffries-El, an associate professor of chemistry at Iowa State University
- An address by Bend Research, Inc., Senior Vice President David Lyon
- A presentation by Douglas Keszler, director of the Center for Green Materials Chemistry, a joint venture between UO and Oregon State University
Other conference highlights include student presentations and a student poster session/mixer. The Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists (COACh), the grass-roots organization co-founded by UO chemistry professor Geri Richmond, will host a workshop for business professionals that runs concurrently with a professional development workshop for students presented by the University of Oregon’s Graduate Internship Program.
The Oregon University System chapter of NOBCChE – the regional chapter hosting the Eugene meeting – was founded just two years ago. The group draws students and faculty members from the UO, Portland State University, Oregon State University and Eastern Oregon University.
“These kinds of organizations are extremely important for students and for creating career building opportunities, particularly for underrepresented students in the sciences,” Johnson said. “Conferences like this help build the sense of a science community that sometimes gets lost in the day-to-day duties of conducting science.”
The NOBCChE meeting is being made possible through the support of several UO offices and partner organizations including the Office of Equity and Inclusion; the Materials Science Institute; the UO chemistry department; the College of Arts and Sciences; Life Technologies; Pfizer; the UO Office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education; and the UO Graduate Internship Program.
- from the UO Office of Research, Innovation and Graduate Education