What is BCCE and why are people so excited about it?
6/8/20261 hr 10 min
What happens when the world’s largest gathering of chemistry educators decides to try something new? This summer we’re partnering with the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE) for a special series of Monday episodes. In this kickoff conversation, Melissa sits down with conference organizers to talk about the vision behind this year’s event, why community conversations are replacing traditional keynotes, and how chemistry educators are thinking about the future of teaching and learning. Whether you’re attending BCCE or just curious about how people learn chemistry, this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the biggest conversations happening in chemistry education today.
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Time Stamps
0:00 – Introducing our BCCE summer series 2:00 – Why Melissa loves BCCE 4:50 – Meet Ariel Vaughn and Ginger Schultz 7:00 – What are Community Conversations? 8:20 – Replacing keynote speakers with interactive discussions 9:00 – How the conversation topics were selected 13:40 – Empowering the community to shape the conference 14:40 – Previewing this year’s Community Conversation topics 16:00 – Neurodiversity, equity, and communities of practice 19:50 – Why community matters in chemistry education 25:20 – Meet BCCE General Chair Sam Pazicni 28:30 – The vision behind this year’s conference 29:00 – “Reflecting Back and Marching Forward” explained 32:30 – The six conference contexts and Community Conversations 37:20 – Who should attend BCCE? 39:00 – Tips for first-time conference attendees 41:00 – Remote attendance and recorded sessions 45:20 – Planning your schedule with the conference app 50:40 – What to wear and what to pack 57:30 – Madison food recommendations and cheese curds 1:03:50 – Special events, parking tips, and final advice 1:08:20 – Final BCCE details and registration information
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMelissa Collini· Host0:00
[instrumental music] Hey, I'm Melissa, and you might be surprised because Jam's not here today, and you might also be surprised because we're not usually in your Chemistry for Your Life feeds on Monday. But we have something really special for you planned over this summer. This summer, my favorite chemistry conference is happening. It's the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, or BCCE. It is hands down my favorite conference that I've ever been to, and Chemistry for Your Life actually has a booth there every year. I've met listeners at this conference. It is a very cool event. And part of what I love about it is how many different people who love chemistry and teaching chemistry come together. There are science communicators, chemistry instructors from K through 12 all the way to, um, university. There are science commuters, chemistry-- oh, I already said that. [laughs] There are graduate students, postdocs, education researchers, everyone you can imagine. I've met amazing people. I think it's a really good opportunity to network, to listen to different perspectives and different presentations that can change the way that you think about chemistry and how you teach chemistry. So it's a very cool conference, and if you've never been, I really wanna encourage you to check it out. Even if you have been or if you're not sure, um, if you can go this year, there is