Summary

The Rhode Island College Physical Sciences Department, RIC’s Feinstein School of Education and Human Development, and Providence Public School District are implementing a program program (Rhode Island Computational Chemistry Summer Institute) whereby high school teachers and students participate in inquiry activities in inorganic, physical and biological chemistry, using computational chemistry as the main tool.  Teachers will take a two-week course and be trained to use computational chemistry to implement inquiry experiments at the high school level.  College students with research experience in computational chemistry will serve as mentors, and high school teachers and students will participate in short research projects, thus enhancing their content knowledge and scientific literacy.  Experts from other institutions will present lectures for a summer seminar series in computational chemistry.  All participants will present their findings in a local symposium and in an international conference in computational chemistry.  The goals of this program are to better equip teachers to instruct and mentor students using scientific discovery, to provide a scientific research and inquiry experience for teachers, and to expose students to the wonders and excitement of scientific discovery, thus increasing their enthusiasm and improving recruitment and retention of science students.  This program is being funded by a Title II Grant administered by the Rhode Island Office of Higher Education.