The switch to distance learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has required chemistry instructors to quickly adapt and innovate to provide remote instruction as effectively as possible. With minimal advance notice, developing and delivering online lecture materials that are engaging and laboratory activities that approximate a hands-on experience has certainly been an all-around challenge. Creating content that ensures the inclusion and success of all students, including those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH), requires a great deal of consideration to be effective under any circumstances. To be sure, mainstream courses that are inclusive of D/HH learners necessitate, at the very least, the successful inclusion of access services (interpreters and captionists). However, in these abnormal times, an online instructional environment that accommodates D/HH students’ preferences and abilities and that is attentive to the unique social and emotional challenges that many of these students are experiencing must be established. Our campus provides both direct instruction and mainstream instructional environments for D/HH students, giving us unique perspectives on how to instruct and support students with the pandemic-forced switch to online learning. With this communication, we endeavor to share these observations and experiences with other chemistry faculty so that they may support D/HH students in their own classrooms and laboratories.
Indicators suggest that the amount of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in natural waters may be increasing. Climate change has been proposed as a potential contributor to the trend, and under such a mechanism, the phenolic content of DOC may also be increasing. This study explores the assessment of the phenolic character of DOC using multidimensional fluorescence spectroscopy as a more convenient alternative to traditional wet chemistry methods. Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) is applied to fluorescence excitation emission matrices (EEMs) of humic samples to analyze inherent phenolic content. The PARAFAC results are correlated with phenol concentrations derived from the Folin-Ciocalteau reagent-based method. The reagent-based method reveals that the phenolic content of five International Humic Substance Society (IHSS) samples varies from approximately 5.2 to 22 ppm Tannic Acid Equivalents (TAE). A four-component PARAFAC fit is applied to the EEMs of the IHSS sample dataset and it is determined by PARAFAC score correlations with phenol concentrations from the reagent-based method that components C2, C3, and C4 have the highest probability of containing phenolic groups. The results show the potential for PARAFAC analysis of multidimensional fluorescence data for monitoring the phenolic content of DOC.
Scientific undergraduate research in higher education often yields positive outcomes for student and faculty member participants alike, with underrepresented students often showing even more substantial gains (academic, professional, and personal) as a result of the experience. Significant success can be realized when involving deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) undergraduate students, who are also vastly underrepresented in the sciences, in interdisciplinary research projects. Even d/hh Associate degree level students and those in the first two years of their postsecondary careers can contribute to, and benefit from, the research process when faculty mentors properly plan/design projects. We discuss strategies, including the dissemination/communication of research results, for involving these students in research groups with different communication dynamics and share both findings of our research program and examples of successful chemical and biological research projects that have involved d/hh undergraduate students. We hope to stimulate a renewed interest in encouraging diversity and involving students with disabilities into higher education research experiences globally and across multiple scientific disciplines, thus strengthening the education and career pipeline of these students.
Conducting research with deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students and professionals can be productive and rewarding to the researcher, their research group peers, supervisors, and faculty mentors. However, these efforts can also prove to be intimidating for faculty members/laboratory supervisors, especially to those who are new to working with this population. As is the case with any traditional research initiative, safety is of paramount importance and additional safety and communication considerations for working with D/HH individuals are discussed. Years of experience have indicated that barriers to working with D/HH researchers in the science laboratory are rarely primarily safety-related (as there are strategies to address and remedy these issues), but can rather be "attitudinal" or due to general apprehension when host laboratories lack information/experience in working with this group of individuals. The goals of this article are to discuss laboratory safety strategies for working with D/HH individuals on research projects in the chemical and biological sciences and encourage faculty and supervisors in other organizations to involve and hire these competent scientists who bring valuable/diverse perspectives and experiences to the workplace. Though written from the perspective of academic settings, the best practices outlined here are predominantly transferable to governmental and industrial laboratories.
A goal of the Laboratory Science Technology program at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology, is to produce graduates with strong foundations in applied science, hands-on laboratory applications, and "soft skills" necessary for competitive employment as laboratory technicians. Graduates of the program earn Associate degrees, and if qualified, transition to related baccalaureate programs. Those who finish either an Associates of Occupational Science or Associates of Applied Science degree programs tend to go to work in the chemical, biological, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, environmental, forensic, industrial, and food analysis fields. At first glance, the LST program appears to be a typical chemical technology program similar to many others. However, it is the only one of its kind in the world. In order to achieve its successes it had to overcome unique challenges because it serves a large and unique population of deaf and hard-ofhearing students. Program challenges include enrollment, staffing and funding, and students/ graduates finding cooperative works experiences/jobs. Still, through the use of outreach to future students, industrial alliances, curricular modifications, and other unique features, the program in now sustainable and growing.
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