By Deborah Kania, Craven Community College

Fifth-year Craven Early College (CEC) students Emily Chance and Sar Oo attended the 253rdnational meeting of the American Chemical Society held in April in San Francisco, Ca.

Chance and Ooand Craven Community College instructor Don Carpenetti presented, Evaluation and refinement of theprocedure used to prepare training samples for arson detection K-9s.

This chemistry honors program project started in 2015 by former Craven CC students SydneyGiammona and Nicole Miller.

The project has been a collaborative effort between the students, NewBern Fire Department Marshal Danny Miller, and Darby who is a female K-9 arson dog trained as anaccelerant detection canine.

According to Hill, the collaboration between the fire department and chemistry program hasachieved the fire departments goals of acquiring training fuel that is consistent, readily available andaffordable.

We appreciate the help for the training fuel, said Hill.

In fall 2016, Chance picked up where the previous students left off as part of her honors project inchemistry class.

Oo assisted Chance with the laboratory experiments and making of the training fuel.

The students spent extra time out of class to complete the project.

Chance and Oo said they enjoyed learning more about chemistry and its many educational andcareer opportunities at the conference.

They also had some time to tour San Francisco, includingdragging their chemistry instructor around a nine-story mall according to Oo.

Carpenetti also presented, Reciprocal peer tutoring in general chemistry: Benefits to informationretention and lowered student test anxiety, to his peers at the chemistry conference.

Chance and Oo are both graduating from CEC in May with honors and as members of the PhiTheta Kappa international honor society.

Chance will graduate with her high school diploma, and an associate degree in arts, generaleducation and science.

She will attend N.C. State in the fall to study chemistry and forensics.

Afterreceiving my bachelors degree, I would like to enlist in the military, said Chance.

Oo will graduate with her high school diploma, and an associate degree in arts and science.

Shewill attend Elizabeth City State in the fall to study pharmaceutical science.

After college, Oo said shewould like to be a researcher.

The week before the chemistry conference, Carpenetti was honored in Los Angeles as a 2017National Science Teachers Association (NTSA) award winner in the college level category.

Thechemistry project was one of the abstracts he submitted in his application for the annual award. Theseteachers and science education professionals have shown tremendous dedication and commitment totheir students and to science education, noted NSTA President Mary Gromko.

Carpenetti plans to continue to recruit future students to continue working on this project.

Carpenetti said there is more to learn. When you conduct one experiment, it usually creates three orfour more, he said.

Deborah Kania is the director of marketing, communications and development liaison at CravenCommunity College.

Read more:
Chemistry project that helps local fire department presented at national conference - New Bern Sun Journal