University of Richmond chemistry professor receives grant to produce educational videos for middle and high school students
April 22, 2008
Jeffrey I. Seeman, a visiting senior research chemistry scholar at the University of Richmond, has received a grant to create videos encouraging middle and high school student interest in science.
Awarded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences, the grant will support production of 10 five-minute videos. The videos will target students in eighth through 10th grades and be distributed free to public and private schools.
Seeman will visit science fairs and interview students about their projects. Students will discuss how they chose their projects, designed their experiments, analyzed their data and benefitted overall from doing the project. Nobel Prize winner Dudley Herschbach, a Harvard University chemistry professor emeritus, will narrate.
"These videos are intended to encourage students to have personal, hands-on experience in scientific discovery," Seeman said. "We want them to discover for themselves the joy of science, the fact that science is far more than what they read in their textbooks."
A highly published research scientist for more than 40 years, Seeman is a senior fellow in chemical education of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. He has produced several documentary videos about the work of eminent chemists and filmed productions for Virginia Commonwealth University, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Emory University and Imperial College, London.