DRAFT Mission

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Mission Statement and Goals

Our goal as an organization is to develop an interest in chemistry and the STEM fields in people of all ages by making scientific education and professional development easily accessible and appealing to a wide audience. We aim to foster young people’s interest in the sciences, develop the general public’s basic knowledge of chemistry, and provide professional career development to young scientists in our community As MSU SMACS continues to grow and develop, we aim to expand our impact to a larger community by making our resources available online Demystifying chemistry/chemical education and demonstrating its accessibility to students and the general public Ensuring that chemistry and a STEM education is available to everyone regardless of personal background Fostering an open frame of mind by demonstrating the endless possibilities made available to us through scientific discovery

Potential Mission Statements

MSU SMACS brings chemistry into the hands and minds of anyone willing to explore
MSU SMACS promotes chemical education to young and old through active demonstrations of its accessibility
MSU SMACS aims to eliminate the intimidation felt regarding STEM subjects by engaging the public in accessible chemistry education and promoting the professional opportunities available in those fields

Active Accomplishment of Our Goals

Partnering with local elementary and high schools to encourage an interest in chemistry and science throughout all ages Conducting exhibitions of intriguing and educational chemical demonstrations at large events on campus of MSU and throughout Starkville, MS Assisting in tutoring efforts offered for chemistry students at MSU Developing and publishing chemical experiment videos that demonstrate key principles of chemistry Holding professional development meetings for our members to learn about the employment opportunities available to them and how to become competitive applicants for those positions Act as a liaison between students and faculty of the MSU Department of Chemistry to foster the continual improvement of the educational experience within our department  could be listed under goals with a more direct statement under the “actions”?

Zoe Fokakis Testimonial

I became a member of SMACS during my first semester as a student at MSU. I was already a chemistry major, though at the time I was considering switching majors if I felt another department would be more conducive to my goal of going to medical school. My first year, SMACS was rather small and only held a few meetings throughout the year. Even so, it gave me better insight into the close-knit chemistry department at MSU, a bond that was much more evident in upper classmen than in our very large freshman class of chemistry majors. It contributed to my decision to remain a chemistry major through my remaining undergraduate education. My sophomore year was when MSU SMACS truly began to grow and develop into the powerhouse that it is today. Under the direction of former president Allie Hanson, SMACS began to conduct more outreach events than in the previous year, and I saw the impact it held. I participated in almost every one of the score of events held throughout that year, which allowed me to see how we could impact our community. Outreach events like our National Chemistry Week Tailgate Extravaganza and I Am Girl made me realize how much I enjoyed the excitement and amazement of our audiences as they learned that chemistry was much more accessible than they may have thought before. At this point, I decided to run for an officer position so that I could continue to engage with our community and share my love for chemistry. That spring I was elected President for the following academic year; though my team’s work began right away as we began to plan in April for the fall semester’s events. We continued to build upon Allie’s leadership and strove to make SMACS recognized across campus. My work as president was difficult as we were often navigating unchartered territory for our organization. As we grew our active membership and reached out to our community to partner with local schools, our department’s support of our mission grew as well. While already supportive of our organization, our department head began to invite me and our vice president to monthly faculty meetings to discuss our events and the aspects of our department that needed improvement that students had reached out to us about. In one year, we more than doubled our active membership, started a scholarship for SMACS chemistry majors, redesigned the student lounge, partnered with local elementary schools for four events, and won a national award for our Second Annual National Chemistry Week Tailgate Extravaganza. It was the spring semester of my year as president that I began to realize how much I had developed as a young professional because of my officer position in SMACS. At the beginning of the year I had been a relatively timid student who wanted to help and lead but wasn’t sure how and certainly didn’t want to be pushy or overstep my place in our department. By the end of the year, I had learned how to maintain a professional demeanor with my peers and my superiors, while still voicing the concerns of students, goals of my organization, and plans for our future that deserved to be heard. I had stepped out of my comfort zone many times to initiate conversations with MSU and Starkville community leaders to grow our organization. The traits I had gained from my work in SMACS translated with ease as I became a more active and vocal researcher both at MSU and abroad. By August, I was travelling with two more SMACS officers to represent our organization and our state as we accepted the ChemLuminary for the Best National Chemistry Week Event Organized by a Student Group. As we stood on the stage for our pictures, I remembered the evening months before when we had crowded into Professor Dornshuld’s office working on our nomination form. I was overwhelmed with joy not just at having succeeded in accomplishing a large goal of ours, but because of the strong community and friendships that had grown from my involvement with SMACS. While I learned plenty from the professional development meetings held in my four years as a SMACS member, the organization had become much more for me by holding an executive position. As I enter my final semester as an undergraduate and reflect on the many officer positions, organization memberships, research positions, and volunteer experiences I’ve had, it is my time as SMACS President that I credit with the largest percentage of my professional development within the academic sector.

General Ideas

Having a “Share your Testimonial” option on the website (maybe either under this page or under a “Contact Us” page that would allow us to add specific statements from both members and the community. We could promote that to our audiences after each event. Example: after holding an event that is geared to high school students, we could send an email thanking them for their participation, recapping the event, and offering a link to the “Share Your Testimonial” page so that they can share either a general comment or a specific moment that they appreciated about the event
Testimonials could be more broad like my example or could be more specific such as “One of my first outreach events as a SMACS member was the strawberry DNA extraction we led at the local elementary school. Helping the fifth graders to observe the DNA for themselves and seeing how enthusiastic they were about learning more about what DNA is and how it works was a great reminder of why I want to be a middle school science teacher!”  hypothetical, of course, I don’t actually want to teach middle school, but hey maybe that was someone else’s experience! 😊
After doing this freewrite I decided to look up more examples and advise for writing mission statements. While reading about a specific research lab’s time writing their mission statement, I saw they also created a “vision statement” that captures their long-term (5-10 years) goals as a group. I thought this could be a good addition to our website, but I think it should be created by the current officers as led by Matthew, should they want to do so. Here’s the link to the post from the research lab: https://gain.nd.edu/news/creating-a-mission-and-vision-statement-for-our-research-group/