Houghton-Mifflin/ICUC First-Year Chemistry Award 2008 Update

Award Presentation in Venda, South Africa

Liliana Mammino writes to us from Venda, South Africa about the impact of the ICUC / Houghton Mifflin Awards for Excellence in First-Year Undergraduate Chemistry. This award, given to one student per ICUC member school each year, was presented to one of her students this year. Congratulations to the student and to Liliana for helping us see the ICUC in action across the globe.

She writes:

I have been waiting for the newsletter of our university (in Venda, South Africa) to publish the photo of when we gave the ICUC certificate to the best first year student registered for a chemistry course. I wanted to send a copy of the newsletter to you, with that photo . But it appears that things take the usual geological-magnitude time. So, for now I am sending just the photo as an attachment. The student is easily recognizable. The gentleman on the right is the HOD (Head of Department) of the Department of Chemistry and the gentleman on the left was the Dean of the School (he left on Wednesday, for a job in another place).

The photo was taken by a student. We had tried to ask that somebody from the RPC office (somebody who is running the newsletters), and we had postponed the small ceremony several times because of this. Finally, we decided to do it even without the official photographer, because we wanted to do it before the end of the first year general chemistry course. We are actually in the classroom where I teach the first year chemistry course, and, since we were standing in front of the students, we ended up being against the board. A real classroom situation!

- Liliana Mammino, Venda, South Africa