Lumigen Instrument Center welcomes local Detroit students for Neinas Chemistry Day
The Wayne State University Department of Chemistry hosted Neinas Chemistry Day 2023 on March 17, 2023, welcoming over 120 middle school students and their teachers from Neinas Dual Language Learning Academy in Detroit, Michigan. This annual educational event was sponsored by the Detroit Local Section of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Peter and Mrs. Karen Frade, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Neinas Chemistry Day was founded by Sue White (WSU Allen Group Laboratory Manager and Chair, ACS Detroit) and is organized by her in partnership with multiple groups, including Dr. Judy Westrick (co-lead of CLEAR's Chemical Analysis Core) and the Lumigen Instrument Center, which has participated since its inception in 2019. Neinas Chemistry Day is designed to directly connect children from low-income families with higher education at a R1 research institution and provide an introduction to STEM careers.
The interactive aspects of this half-day program include: diverse volunteers interacting with the students in groups (1:10) for the entire program; connecting the kids with a positive experience with science and college so they could picture themselves at university; introducing children to state-of-the-art research labs with entertaining demos to teach science concepts; and showing diversity in chemistry and chemistry careers with our 60 volunteers. In addition, a T-shirt contest was held at Neinas and the winning student design was printed on T-shirts provided to all Neinas students and teachers prior to the event as a keepsake of the day.
The program started with breakfast in a lecture hall with two speakers who outlined careers available to students at university, including STEM careers, and described their personal journeys from high school to college ending with how they chose their career in science. Next, the students rotated through four stations: two separate demonstrations by faculty, hands-on experiments in a large research lab, and a demonstration plus hands-on activity by the Lumigen Instrument Center, directed by Dr. Judy Westrick. The Center staff provided a breakfast presentation (Dr. Perera, Senior Scientist), led the hands-on experiments in a large research lab (Dr. Perera, Senior Scientist), X-crystallography demonstration and hands-on activity (Dr. Cassandra Ward, LIC, Associate Director) and a tour of the mass spectrometry laboratory (Dr. Judy Westrick).
During the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory tour, Dr. Westrick stated the instrument name and a quick explanation on how that instrument was used by Wayne State University scientists, specifically highlighting the community projects. The gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometer is used by CLEAR scientist to determine the impact of legacy volatile organic contaminants on Detroiters. The inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer is used in the D-LEAD project to measure lead concentrations in Detroit homes and the liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometer is used to analyze for harmful algal bloom toxins in local inland lakes.
At the end of the event, the Neinas students and teachers joined together with all the volunteers for a pizza lunch in the atrium of the Chemistry Building.