Externship for IMSEP

The Experience Continues

2010-07-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-06-25T12:00:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

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.

End of Week 3

2009-07-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

As my third week here comes to a close, I have made good progress on my assigned project here at the company and I had some good conversations with my fellow employees. I had a conversation with my boss yesterday and discussed with her about the idea of incoporating a a workplace like atmosphere into the classroom. I will be working with my fellow scientist here to try and design a high school chemistry level project that is modeled around practices that are at the company. I will also be working to try and bring some of the scientist to the classroom to speak about their jobs and help with the project. This would be a community service opportunity for the company and the students would really benefit as well. One of my goals in my final two weeks here at the company will be to organize this project.

Week 3 Continues

2009-07-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day recording the results from my research project into the required lab book format. As I worked and looked back at some of my work, I started thinking about how I could implement the skills and ideas that I have learned here into the classroom. One ideas was to further build student skills on communicating scientific work. Another idea that I had is to teach students how to properly calibrate technology based lab equipment. As I gather more and more ideas I would like to formulate a work based experience that can be implemented into the classroom. One will be for grade level 9 science and the other will be for upper level chemistry students. I have less than 3 weeks here at Kemin and I will be working hard to use my resources here to begin to bring everything together so that I can carry this over into the classroom.

Half Way Point

2009-07-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

I am at the half way point here at the company and my time here as been very beneficial on two levels. One way is that I have further developed my science skills in the area of chemistry by learning the current methods they are using here at the company. I could incorporate these current practices into the my curriculum. For example, HPLC is a method that is used quite frequently here at the company to indentify compounds and I could use a similiar type of chromotography in my classroom.

Another way my time has been very beneficial here is that I have learned a tremendous amount about the corporate aspect of science and how to prepare students for it. For example, there are more aspects to the corporate science field than lab work. Most students think that if you have a career in science then you work in a lab. The employees working in the lab are not the employees dealing with science. There are lawyers who write patents for the company , management provides direction on projects, vice presidents giving presentations on their products, and marketing and sales employees selling the chemical products to other companies. All of these preceding employees are not working in the lab but they have to have a science background in order to do their jobs. They have to have a science background to communicate with lab employees so that they communicate to the people they need to as part of their work.

As you can see, the corporate science world is a very diverse work place and they want diverse well skilled employees. Potential employees are not focusing on becoming diverse well skilled employees because the current education system is not properly preparing students. The current education system does not educate students on all the career options and what is happening in the evolving career fields. Careers are changing due to various reasons (environmental changes, economic challenges, technological advances) and for these reasons employers want and need well skilled diverse employees so the education system needs to help prepare students for this. Teachers need teach students practices that are occurring in the job field or at least make them aware of them so student interest can be sparked. This just isn't happening as much as it should. For example, I have had conversations with current employees here at the company who work in the lab with me. They told me that when they first started here that they were not well prepared for the type of work that they needed to do. Simple lab procedures that they do everyday now took them awhile to get used to because they had never done them before. They said it would have been a huge benefit to have focused more on lab methods during their education because that is what they do in the lab field. They said that colleges should do a better job of preparing students for the work place. Colleges and high schools alike should be keeping up on their research by knowing what practices are taking place in the job fields so that they can be taught in the education system. Isn't that the point of the education system anyway? To prepare their students for the job field.

My fellow lab workers also said that the education system does a poor job of educating students on potential jobs. I told them about the IMSEP program that I am working with this summer and how its goal is educate teachers about the current job field so they can better prepare their students. I continued to tell them that this will be done by teachers learning about all the various career options and learning about employbility skills that businesses are looking for and having the teachers teach these types of ideas and skills in the classroom. They thought this was a great idea and they wish this would have been done while they were in the classroom.

Thus far, I am at the half way point of my experience and it has been tremendously beneficial to me as teacher. I can't wait to get back into the classroom and use the knowledge that I have learned this summer in my curriculum. This experience will help me do my part as an educator in helping prepare students for the real world and I look forward to learning much more in my next three weeks at the company.

Week 3 Begins

2009-07-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last week was a shortened week due to the Fourth of July Holiday, so I had a long weekend. I came back at the beginning of week 3 regevunated and ready to go. I spent most of my day in the lab testing a number of different samples. I wasn't able to find what I was looking for but that is the nature of lab work. Success usually doesn't happen before you spend a good deal of time searching for what it is that you desire. A good deal of my day was spent testing and coming up with new hyposthesis. Students in the classroom who are coming in the workfield need to have the ability to hypothesize, run experiments, evaluate their results, and think of new ideas if the desired results were not achieved. Students tend to give up when they do not succeed but they won't make it very far in the work place if they do. Well, my day is done here and the ideas for the classroom are continuing to swirl in my head.

Week Two

2009-06-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here I am at the beginning of week number two at the company. Today, I had to report to safety training in the morning. Safety is a big priority in the chemical industry and this should be strongly stressed in the school environment also. In the afternoon, I had to collect possible sources for the project that I have been assigned.
One thing that I will take back to the classroom, is to help students develop their responsibility to complete given task. Many students do poorly when they have been given an assignment to do where they have to take the initiative to complete several aspects of the assignment. A lot of times in the business world the project will require the employee to take the initiative to organize and have the responsiblilty to finish the project with little supervision. Students need to have the organizational skills and responsibility to manage projects and complete them even when there is little supervision.
Well, my day is done here at the company and I look forward to coming back tomorrow.

First Week is in the Books

2009-06-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I have just finished my first week at the company. It was nice to get my feet wet during the first week and become comfortable here. It has only been one week here but I already have a number a different ideas and concepts that I can bring to the classroom for my students. This is going to be a really great experience for me to grow as a professional and it will really allow me to bring some new and exciting teaching practice to the table next year. So much has happened during the first week and I can tell with all the work that I have to get done that I will have many more experiences I can use to enhance my teaching skills.

Training Day

2009-06-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

I spent a good deal of my time today being trained for certain laboratory procedures that I will have to use as part of my project. The company is very particular about the way procedures are carried out in the lab. Everything needs to be exact in order to make sure that they are seeing the correct results. Also, they need to be able to reproduce their results, so accuracy and precision is a must in the lab. I am looking forward to getting my hands wet in the lab and tomorrow may be the first day that I get the opportunity to do just that. Another day in the books and I am looking forward to coming back tomorrow.

Making Progress on the Project

2009-06-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today, I made good progress working on my assigned project. One way that the company functions is to patent means of producing a specified chemical so that they can sell it to other companies. The project that I have been assigned to has a patent pending on the method so I am unable to disclose specific information about the project. The overall goals of the project is extract a specified chemical from the best source possible. The company already has a very good canidate but it is part of my project to indentify and test potential sources for the specified chemical. This will be my first objective this summer. The second objective will be to further test the specified chemical to better the production of this chemical.
As I was working on this project, I started marking down 21st century skills my work would align well with. Also, I started writing down specific ideas for learning activities that could be used in my classroom. For example, the company puts out a newsletter that gives an update on what they have accomplished. I could set up a mini science business in my classroom and the students would have to occasionally write newsletters to their parents to give an update on what they are doing in the classroom.
Well, my day is done here at the company. Another very exciting day is in the books!

First Two Days

2009-06-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have finished my first two days at the company. The ideas are beginning to fly in my head on how I can incoporate 21st centuty skills into my teachings. I feel very fortunate to get the opportunity to learn about what is taking place in the job field. I feel very confindent that I will have a large number of valuable experience that I can share with my students. Also, I will be able to add these experiences to my skill sets as a teacher and this will make my teachings more real world applicable.