David Laviska
As a third-year graduate student at Rutgers University, I am working toward achieving my Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry with Dr. Alan S. Goldman. I currently hold the B.A. (Cornell University 199) and M.S. (University of Washington 1991) degrees in chemistry. My goal is to follow the talent I have for teaching and pursue a future career path that will allow me to help younger generations of students see how interesting the study of science can be, and hopefully guide them into satisfying and productive science-based careers. Teaching chemistry will be my own second career" as I previously worked as an environmental chemist for almost fifteen years. During my time as a graduate student, I have been fortunate to experience substantial success in my teaching of undergraduate students, and have been awarded fro excellence in teaching by the chemistry faculty here at Rutgers. In addition, under the auspices of a multi-university NSF grant, I have developed and initiated an "out-reach" program in which graduate students in chemistry go into high school classrooms to teach, interact with, and advise secondary school students. The results of phase one of this evolving program are currently being prepared for publication.

Tina H. Lee
My name is Tina Lee. I'm a student enrolled in the Five-year Teacher Education Program for Physical Science and Physics Education (K-12) at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. I expect the graduate in May 2008 with a degree in Chemistry, and in May 2009 with a Masters in education. I have known that science was a field that I have always been interested in since middle school and I realized how interesting chemistry was in high school. However, chemistry had not been easy for me at first sight - taking the course in my sophomore year did not fascinate me at all. Had I not taken chemistry again my senior year, I would not have known the "attraction" of chemistry. After taking a general course my freshman year of college, I had decided to pursue a degree in chemistry. Though there are many challenging courses I had taken, and much larger area in chemistry that can potentially be ahead of me in the future, I had decided that I want to teach chemistry. I remember a friend telling me when I told her about my decision: "Your kids are going to hate you. I hated my chemistry teacher". I have heard comments like this many times and this made my determination even stronger. I am looking forward to be in a classroom where I can learn to love students, and teach them to love chemistry.