The Chemistry Department Outreach Program is organized through the ACS chemistry club at UCSB.  The goal of the Chemistry Club is to promote chemistry awareness, to furnish information on career and educational opportunities and to provide community service.  With full support from the chemistry department, our outreach program was started with the help of approximately thirty undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members.  Feedback from those involved in the teaching aspects of the program has been equally as positive as that from the participants.  Undergraduate participants report that they feel a new confidence in the subject matter, and an enhanced degree of understanding that is inherent with teaching a subject. 

By introducing both students and parents from diverse backgrounds to UCSB, and enabling them to work with UCSB students who are also from diverse backgrounds, we hope to provide them with a new impression of the University.  We want them to see that the university is in fact an attainable goal for them, an option that perhaps they had not previously considered.  Our long-range goal of the program is to stimulate an interest to pursue a higher education in science at a UC campus.

                                                         Petra van Koppen, Ph.D.