The Experience Continues

Last week, Jason and Tonja from IMSEP were able to make it over to the company to see how everything was going for the teacher externs. The other teacher externs were wrapping up their experiences here and they are now finished here so I am the only teacher extern left. Nonetheless, it was nice to get the opportunity to sit down and talk with Jason and Tonja about our experiences this summer. They were interested in knowing how things were going so that they could spread the word about our great experiences and the exciting things that we will be taking back to the classroom. It was a good reflection time to gather a lot of our thoughts from the summer and how we are going to carry things over into the classroom. I have a project in mind that I want to add to my curriculum for next year that is very similiar to the type of work that I have done this summer and it would be very good for freshman level students. I hope that I can bring the project together. My idea is to have students complete a project as part of the culmination of a recyling unit that is done in my class. I will have students generate biodiesel from leftover oil/fat food waste from our schools lunch program which is similiar to a process that I have worked with here with one of my companies products. It won't be exactly what I did here, but students will create a valuable chemical product, which is done in the chemical industry on a regular basis and students don't realize it. They will create the product, test it for quality, which I did a lot of this summer, and mock market the product to be sold. Then realistically, we will be able to donate this product to our schools maintence crew that they can use in their various diesel appliances. Hopefully I can pull this project together because I think it would be a good learning experience for students to see the practical applications of chemistry so that it benefits society, and its not just about doing random reactions for no reasons other than just to see what happens.

Lunch With the Owners

Yesterday, all of the teacher externs had the opportunity to have lunch with the founders and owners of the company. I had this opportunity last year as well and it neat to sit down and discuss my experiences and how the company has changed over the last year. The owner gave some really good advice last year to all of the interns and externs. He said if you really want a good job opportunity in the science industrial business world, then become a sales person with a science background. He said all science businesses always need more and more sales people to sell their product and they would highly prefer them to have a science background so that they know their product. Since, science businesses are a business, and know just a research company then they have to have knowledgable people to sell their products. So, I took the owners advice last year to let students know about this type of opportunity that most people do not think about. I had students do presentations about model science products that they made, for example a wind turbine, and try and sell them to me as the customer. I understand that a future in sales is not for everyone but I did have several students at the end of the year tell me that they wanted to go to school in order to become a science sales person. Not only that, students who have no interest in sales, work on their communication and sales skills which will help them for any type of job that they go into. Anyway, after having lunch with the owner, I told him that I took his advice to let students know about science sales career options, and he said that was wonderful because he believe most high schools do not let students know about that particle career path so people with science backgrounds usually do not go into sales. He also commented that they get some of my future students as science sales workers. I think this is the whole goal of this program, to actually interact with the business that I am working with, and get ideas from the people working here, and carry them back to the classroom. If I did not have this experience then I would have never had the opportunity to get these ideas from the owner and that is why I think this experience is great.

Late Night

It is currently 9:48 PM on Tuesday July 6th and I have about another hour before my experiment finishes up at work. I came in from 8 am to noon to work on some things that needed to be done, then I left and came back to work from 5-11 PM so that I could set up a process experiment that had to run exactly ten hours. This way I can come in tomorrow morning at 9 am and test the samples from the process experiment. This is a good learning experience for me that I can teach to my students. The idea is that we live in a work world where workers have to be flexible and a lot of times work off the job as well. Companies want employees who are flexible and get the job done. Last summer when I worked at Kemin I was only given one project for the summer. I think that they were unsure what to do with me at first, because typical interns only worked on one project at a time. With my experience from last summer they have given me much more of a work load, still not quite as much as a regular employee, but still a good amount. Here at Kemin, and most likely with other businesses, it is all about getting the job done, and not how many hours you work. The days of the 8-5 job don't always apply anymore. Sometimes, you have to flexible or even take work home with you in order to get the job done, and companies want to see employees take this initiative. Its not that they are overworked, sometimes they may get off earlier, its just sometimes employees are expected to make some sacrifices for their job. This may be a simple and silly connection to the classroom, but I have heard some teachers make the argument that homework is not valuable to students. Some teachers say the reason being is that students don't put the right amount of effort into or even complete the assignment. I agree that homework may not be the most important aspect of education but it still needs to have a strong emphasis for the simple fact that in the real world you will be expected to meet deadlines, even if this means taking work home, just like homework. Students need to polish this 21st century skill because in the business world it is all about deadlines.

Regarding other things in the previous week, my work here at Kemin this summer has been very collaborative, working collabortively is one of the most important 21st century skills. I have been working closely with the plants process engineer on various work that needs to be done with him. We have meetings about once a week, sometime more often, to discuss where we need to go with certain studies, what needs to be tested, how it should be tested, and so forth. We have even held Skype calls with the departments vice president who was traveling to meet with a customer about our results. I think it would be a great idea to have students use Skype in a collaborative fashion on some sort of activity or project that they are working on in class. I have several projects in my class to infuse this idea in order to make the project more collaborative and more real world. For example, students giving presentations for a certain project, I may have them go to another room and then complete their presentation via Skype. This happens more often in the business world then you would think. Well, I need to get back to finishing the process experiment, the wait time is over, and I should be able to get out of here pretty soon!

End of Week Three?

My third week here at Kemin this summer is coming to a close. Time has gone by pretty quickly. Luckily, I am working here for ten weeks this summer, otherwise, I would be half way done already. Interestingly, I believe that I have already learned more here in three weeks then I did in my six weeks here last summer and I still have a lot of time left. I discussed this in my previous post, the fact that I have learned a lot about industrial chemistry methodology. I have continued learning about the practicality of chemistry methodology, and ways to carry the real world aspects into the classroom. Also, I had an interesting conversation with my supervisor and co-worker today about the idea of teachers spending time working in the business aspect of science. We discussed the idea that you as individual do not learn about science until you actually spend time working in science, whether it be working on research as a graduate assistant, or just working with a company. The theoretical concepts learned in school help, but the experiences are the most important. My supervisor even mentioned that it would be a good idea for science teachers to work in an area of science for an extended period of time, like a couple of years before teaching, so that teachers would become more knowledgeable. I agreed with him. This program that I am working with is great at doing that, and I am glad that I have been able to do this two summers now because I have learned that much more. Hopefully the IMSEP externship program grows into a program in which all teachers have the opportunity to work with companies every summer, because it truly is the best type of professional development.

Busy Days

I have been at Kemin for over a week now in my second time around here. Things started off pretty busy at the beginning of this week. I began testing a Kemin material that the company has been looking into. I have learned a lot this week, especially in the areas of just getting used to different methods in the lab. I believe that real world chemical methods are often overlooked in the secondary high school chemistry classes. I don't think that students neccesarily need to being methods that are at the level of things done at Kemin, but some of the basic concepts need to be taught to students, especially methods like uv-visible spectroscopy and basic chromatography, because these methods are widely used in the many different types of chemical industry. I think the lack of teaching these methods may be due to lack of knowledge or resources of the teacher. Teacher's may not know how to do these methods, dispose of chemicals, or even afford the proper equipment. Professional development can definitely help in these areas, and placing teachers with companies during their summer time off is a great opportunity to develop great teaching skills that cannot be learned elsewhere. One other thing that has become clearly evident this summer is that if you want to hold a successful job, then you have to work hard, and I think a number of high school students lack this. There are many factors for this but I believe one of them is because students are not required to complete challenging work in their classes. For example, plenty of workers here at Kemin work at least 9 hours a day, and sometimes even take work home with them. Sometimes I have noticed that some classes are being watered down and the students aren't being challenged. Well, I have to get back to work here, I will try and keep on keeping you updated.

Round 2

Hello again! I am back at Kemin for another summer as a teacher extern working in partnership with the Iowa Math and Science Education Partnership. I began my second summer of work today. This year I will be working at Kemin for a total of ten weeks. Kemin has atleast three different projects in mind for me this summer and I am excited to get started. Again, due to a confidentiality agreement, I can not disclose specifics about my work this summer. One of the main projects I will begin working on immediately, deals with researching a more economical option for a Kemin product. Also, I was given a tour of the Kemin Health manufacturing area and it was pretty impressive to see things on a larger scale. Later in the day, I was able to discuss with my main team member and advisor, where we will be heading with the summer work.

Grand Finale

I finished up my final day with the company today. I had a very great experience during my six weeks with the company. My final two weeks were very busy but filled with excitement. It involved lunch with the owners, a possible breakthrough on the project, a presentation to the company, more free lunches, and a company softball game.

In having lunch with the company owners, I discussed with them what they were looking for in top potential employees. They stressed the idea of diversity. In today's global work environment it is important to be as diverse as possible. They have workers who need to have science background as well as other education depending on their job. For example, they have patent lawyers who work for them and it is very beneficial for them to have a science background. They said this is happening all over the science industry. They love to have employees who are specialized in more than one area.

The project in which I was working on took a little different direction due to my previous work. Instead of continuing on with the exact objectives that they gave me, I began investigating a different idea of the project due to my findings. The company gave me the freedom to pursue this other alternative and I may have sparked an idea that could lead to a new alternative for the novel compound they are extracting.

As part of my time at the company, they had me give a presentation to the department on my summer work. This was a great opportunity to discuss about IMSEP and also share my findings will working on the project during my 6 weeks. I received great feedback about my work and proposed ideas. This even an involved a discussion with the VP of the department how they planned on pursuing my ideas even further.

The presentation was followed by a day of team building activities which was focused on helping to make the department even more productive. I actually participated in a few activities that I would like to carry into the classroom to help my make classroom more productive and team-like. This day ended with a very fun activity. We had a company softball game which was very fun activity to have at the end of my experience.

This was a tremendous experience and it has better equipped me to prepare my students for the 21st century job field. I learned a lot about the science industry. There are a number of different job opportunities in the science industry outside of just lab work. Also, technology and communication is at the center of the science industry. I will be able to share ideas about the science industry with my students, engage students in work-like activities, and help prepare students who are wanting to a pursue a career in chemical industry.