The ACS Chemistry Achievement Award

All cultures, all demographic groups, have traditions they hold to be sacred and special. The Fore tribe of Papa New Guinea (used to) eat their ancestors, Muslims fast during Ramadan, and New Yorkers drop a ball every year, to name a few.

And sure, those all SEEM weird looking from the outside in - but I'm sure the practitioners think society would be irredeemable if these traditions stopped.

Chemists have traditions too. For instance, American Chemists meet up twice a year in huge conventions to show off their explosions and discoveries.

The usual.

Gordon College Chemists have a few special traditions too - if you wanna learn about them, read the blog!

One tradition, however, holds a particularly special place in our hearts - selling cookies.

Some few years ago, we all decided that it was a good idea to sell cookies for future freshman. Well, sorta. Each year we sell Mason jars of gingerbread, chocolate chip, or oatmeal raisin spice cookie ingredients to friends, family, and a large portion of the Gordon College community - with fun Christmas or Thanksgiving decorations! Each jar makes about 40 cookies of the selected variety. These jars are sold for $10 each, and the profit goes to a scholarship for incoming Chemistry freshmen, given both to next years Chemistry freshmen and to an endowment fund for the long term future of this scholarship. Our goal for the endowed scholarship is $25,000 - of which we (after this year) have $4,800.

One of our favorite parts of this is the cookie packing event.

Ingredients Pre-Packing

The entire GCACS gets together, watches a movie (Avengers this year!), and packs cookie ingredients in jars together.

Sometimes there's more movie watching than packing....

But believe me, we're very on task.

This year, under the leadership of Rachael Albury (who was assisted by Justin Andrews and Ruth Chadwick), our chapter sold 207 jars, with a profit of $1500, all of which went to the scholarship fund for next year and for the endowment.

We got assistance from several sources which I must mention.

•  The Chemistry faculty for guidance and assistance.
• The ACS students for going beyond the call of duty.
• Shaw’s Supermarket in Ipswich, MA for donations.
• Dawson’s True Value Hardware in Beverly, MA for donating 10 cases of jars (at about 9 jars per case, this is a total of 90 jars).

 The highest sellers were Bria P., Sarah M., and Stacey S. - in that order.

Good work all! Hope ya'll have a happy Ramadan this year!

Aslo a big shoutout to Rachael Albury, who organized the bulk of this! 

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Thanks Rachael!