CSU Faculty & Students Lead the Way at STEM Conference

Chicago State University Assistant Professor Valerie Goss has been attending the annual meeting of the  National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) since 1994. She serves as faculty advisor to the CSU chapter of the organization that focuses on increasing exposure of science, technology, engineering and math programs to minority students. Goss was recently profiled in Chemical and Engineering News:  

Valerie Goss saw the flyer that changed her life in 1994. An undergraduate student at Chicago State University, Goss was walking through the chemistry department when the announcement for a scientific poster competition caught her attention. Although the competition at a conference in Atlantic City, N.J., was far away, Goss made it her mission to attend. She applied for and was awarded a scholarship sponsored by the chemical company Rohm and Haas to cover her travel expenses. She carefully crafted a presentation out of data she had collected on the role polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons play in reversible DNA mutations. Then she nervously made the journey to the conference and presented her research.

And she lost. Goss didn’t win anything for her effort. But looking back on that trip, which was her first time attending the annual meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), Goss can’t help but smile. That’s because, to Goss, winning or losing at that competition ultimately wasn’t important. What was important “was that I was there and had seen so many black faces involved in science,” Goss remembered. “I was blown away.”

Read the full article here: http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i44/Paying-Forward-NOBCChE.html